[czinck]

This is a cry for help, not some myopic bureaucrat thinking they're clever. Most of the USFS budget goes to forest fires (both fighting them and prevention), up from 16% 30 years ago, and they're now saying just fighting the fires is taking up too much of their budget to do much of anything else. The USFS already announced they won't hire any seasonal employees next year, which means basic things like emptying trash cans probably won't happen.

Unless you think they should just let the fires burn, which would be catastrophic.

[XorNot]

Also it needs to be contextualized further: fighting wildfires is done to save lives. When they have to make a distinction between funding for prescribed burns, which are a mitigation but not prevention measure, and having the people and resources on hand to defend settlements then they're going to choose the latter.

Prescribed burns are treated as a panacea whenever there's wildfires, but they are only a mitigation strategy - you're still always going to have wildfires, the degree of severity and in what areas is what matters (they're also not cheap: it is after all, just starting a forest fire you try to keep under control).

[jwlake]

Firefighting is only done to save property. People are completely beside the point. The problem is people don't know when they live in a town (defensible) and the countryside (you're on your own). In general the forest service is spending way too much time and resources in places that they should always let burn. You can actually build and live in a forest fire zone. Its much more convenient to ignore that though.

[shiroiushi]

>Unless you think they should just let the fires burn, which would be catastrophic.

Why? I think it's probably the best thing to do. If the USG doesn't want to allocate enough money to properly manage forests, then why not just let it burn? If that results in some towns burned down, that's fine: voters in those towns can complain to their elected representatives and maybe vote for someone else.

[shiroiushi]

Update: the voters in these towns have voted now, and they voted overwhelmingly for the party that wants to cut federal spending, so I think "let it burn" is absolutely the right thing to do now, and is likely what's going to happen.