Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 13.2 Socio-political Aspects of Catastrophic Fires
Wildfires that encroach on the urban environment and result in loss of
property and lives have many ramifications. In high-density landscapes such
as southern California losses from wildfires are often recovered through litiga-
tion of responsible parties. Recent examples illustrate widespread distribution
of blame for such events. Following the 2003 fires in San Diego County,
California, which included the 110 000-ha Cedar Fire, hundreds of home-
owners filed a lawsuit claiming wrongdoing by one of the major insurance
companies for underinsuring their properties (Marshall
2007
). This insurance
company in turn brought a lawsuit against the California Department of
Forestry and city and county of San Diego to recover damages it incurred
because of purported negligence on the part of these agencies in controlling the
fire (Steele
2004
). Due in part to expectations that the U.S. Forest Service
should be able to completely control all wildfires, a homeowners' class action
lawsuit was brought against the federal government (Scarcella
2008
). Just 4 yrs
later a significant portion of the area that burned in the Cedar Fire was
reburned by the Witch Fire (
Table 13.1
; Keeley
et al.
2009b
). This fire puta-
tively originated from a power line and soon afterwards the state government,
homeowners and insurance companies filed suits totaling hundreds of millions
of dollars against the regional utility company (Perry
2009
; Soto
2010
). In
response the utility company threatened countersuit lawsuits against fire
victims (Naiman
2009
).
This power company acknowledged that power lines started several other
large fires in 2007 and a total of 167 fires during a 5-yr period in San Diego
County, California. Because these mostly occurred during extreme Santa
Ana wind events it was proposed that this important source of catastrophic
fires could be reduced by placing power lines underground in known corri-
dors of high winds (Keeley
et al.
2009b
). The power company proposed an
alternative plan that involved switching off power to all customers in high-
risk areas, which comprised much of the eastern portion of the county,
during Santa Ana wind events (Jones
2008
). Although this blackout area
would affect 60 000 customers for several weeks each year, and despite the
likelihood that during blackouts many of them would rely on gas-powered
generators (known to ignite fires from sparks), there was local political
support for the plan (Lescure
2009
). This issue is likely to continue to gain
in importance as power lines have been implicated in 20% of the major fire
events on state responsibility lands in California (Cal Fire data, unpub-
lished). In this respect California is not unique as power lines have been
implicated as the ignition source for a number of fires during the Black
Saturday bushfires in Australia (
Table 13.1
).
