SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A new letter, signed Tuesday by Tuolumne County's Board of Supervisors, aims to prevent the next big fire from occurring by asking the U.S. Forest Service not let fires burn out.
Board members voted 3-2 to sign the four-page letter, authored by board chair Anaiah Kirk, to the Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Interior, U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chair, U.S. Senator John Barrasso, and the U.S. Forest Service.
The letter calls on the Forest Service to "replace the current let burn Agency-wide internal direction with the Initial Fire Attack."
In an August memorandum, which sparked the creation of the letter, Forest Service Chief Randy Moore said that while the agency's primary strategy in 2021 was initial attack, fire resources would only be committed to fires where the agency has "a high probability of success and they can operate safely and effectively." An "Initial attack" refers to not letting fires burn out on their own by attempting to extinguish all fires regardless of conditions.
The Forest Service has continued to deny the existence of a "let it burn" policy. Nearly 80% of land in Tuolumne County is federally owned.
Kirk and other Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors members say the Forest Service has not followed their rulemaking process for setting up policies and until changes can be made to the policy-making process, the Forest Service should focus on extinguishing all fires beyond the 2021 fire season.
"If we were to let fires burn, they explode and they're not just little fires that creep through," Kirk said. "These fires are so hot that when they go through, you're basically killing the landscape for generations to come."
Part of the letter also calls on the Forest Service to reform their policy-making process by allowing input from counties and the public.
"I think, right now we need to be extinguishing every fire that we can," Kirk said. "In the interim, let's have a policy discussion, a rulemaking process which includes all the counties, all the American citizens."
The U.S. Forest Service says they are unable to comment because there is not a let it burn policy in place.
