No One Is Regulating Wildfires

One of the primary problems with wildfires is that, without regulation, there is no reason to think that the circumstances that cause them, or the plans to fight them, can be managed with supervision.

The example Bloomberg uses is LA to describe this problem. There was virtually no coordination during the massive wildfires in January. Firefighters came from some localities. There was no master plan, and the situation became a political football. The blame cycle has not gone away.

Texas Floods

One challenge in LA was that the wildfires were spread across a large area geographically, which covered some separate cities and towns. Each managed its part of the wildfire problem.

The LA problem is not unique. Based on a series of blame that has begun because of the flood in the Texas Hill Country. It killed 135 people. The blame has ranged from problems with FEMA to a controversy about whether Texas had the money to build a system of alarms, to the local authorities. The investigations will probably go on for years.

In all likelihood, the drop in FEMA staffing and the federal firefighter force will make the problems more significant. 

Wildfires are just a piece of a larger, troubling problem.