As the West burns, a town fields its own amateur firefighters

An Indonesian government program called Masyarakat Peduli Api, or “Fire Care Community,” aims to improve community responses to wildfires and restore peatlands — valuable ecosystems that store carbon. Through community engagement and education, this volunteer fire brigade patrols the peatlands and addresses small fires before they spread. The program remains underfunded, but residents recognize the importance of their work.

Summer in the Northwest presents a great risk of wildfires. A pile burning operation, just one facet of the strategy that Oregon has enacted to conserve its forests, clears undergrowth to lessen the risk of mega-fire. The work stimulates the local economy and provides employment, but it's also a very small part of what needs to be done.

A collaborative experiment between Indigenous community activists, tribal officials, loggers, nonprofits, and the U.S. Forest Service is delivering firewood to residents who need it for heating and cooking. The program, called Wood for Life, also doubles as a forest management initiative to thin out Arizona’s forests to prevent deadly wildfires. The shuttering of a local coal mine and the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this home heating crisis and group members in 2020 delivered a total of 650 cords of wood to several Indigenous nations.

Kittitas County is leading the way in Washington state in efforts to distribute the coronavirus vaccine thanks to having a strong disaster management system in place. The county is accustomed to responding to disasters, such as wildfires, and tapped the deputy fire chief of Kittitas Valley Fire and Rescue to lead the incident response team. He explains, "The infrastructure that we have with everybody communicating, everybody willing to be flexible and play whatever role's necessary and an understanding of (incident command system) and emergency operation centers gives us the framework to do it."

As communities work to contain the coronavirus outbreak, the risk for emergency responders to contract the illness is high; but in Massachusetts, departments are putting new practices and plans into place to address this. From changing the way police respond to calls, to creating a backfill system if or when officers are quarantined, the departments are working to keep both their responders and their communities healthy.

Outdoor enthusiasts make effective citizen scientists. In Montana, Adventure Scientists pairs outdoor adventure-seekers with scientists looking to collect data in remote locations. The volunteers gather data that inform US Forest Service and other conservation studies. The project has led to research collection by volunteers worldwide.

Friends of Trees, a nonprofit organization in the Portland area, are not just planting trees because they help combat climate change and improve air quality, but because they also help stop major flooding and avoid erosion. While it can be expensive to maintain the trees and clean up the leaves from storm drains, these trees could prevent millions of gallons of rainfall from flooding neighborhoods as extreme weather events are expected to increase in the future.

California’s Sonoma and Butte counties have been taking new approaches to wildfires – rather than preventing them, they’re hoping to support the ecosystem to withstand them and bounce back. This resilience-centered approach includes controlled burns, fuel breaks, cross-organizational collaboration, and educating the public – especially homeowners – about how they can help.

Coordination and planning can prove to be the best defensive measures against wildfires. Funded by the US Forest Service, the Community Planning Assistance for Wild Program (CPAW) promotes community fire adaptation, including measures like prescribed burns. Policymakers and city planners enrolled in CPAW benefit from teaming up with foresters, economists, and other experts to model risk and mitigate the impact of fires.

Prescribed burns help prevent the devastating impact of uncontrolled forest fires in Western states. In states like Colorado, the US Forest Service, local governments, and nonprofits, are working to improve forest habitat and protect communities from wildfires by increasing the acreage of forest exposed to controlled fires. After years of policy that aimed to reduce fires, agencies are now working to restore ecological balance and prevent future natural disasters.