America's ring of fire


After a wildfire in 2010 burned 15,000 acres outside Flagstaff, triggering evacuations and a fatal landslide, voters approved a $10 million bond issue to transform the local fire department and fire-prevention practices. Part 4 of a package of stories on rampant homebuilding in wildfire-prone forests (starts at 35:25) tells how firefighters spend most of their time cutting trees to thin the forest to mimic its pre-settlement form, when periodic fires were a normal and small-scale threat. Suppressing all fires, letting forests thicken, and building homes in them calls for a new prevention ethos.

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