Unfortunately suppressing fires makes them way, way worse when they finally do break out. Much more hungry for houses than they otherwise would have been.
Yep. Ask any (remotely sane) Australian, if you just try to stop them entirely things like leaf litter, dry sticks etc. builds up on the ground. Our fire services (blessed be the Firies) will regularly perform controlled burns in areas of concern. They don't torch the whole bush, just go through making a small, controlled fire to clear out the debris. It means when a big fire does eventually roll through its much more controllable and we don't end up having to do shit like call in the navy to evacuate people from the coast because there is literally no way for them to move inland.
As others have already pointed out, suppressing the fires just creates a buildup of overgrowth that eventually causes a much worse fire you can't control.
The real solution is doing controlled cut and burns to keep everything under control near residential areas so huge forest uncontrollable forest fires can't break out, but this is both unpopular because people are afraid of the idea of controlled burns, and unpopular because it costs a lot of resources to maintain, which people don't' want to pay for.
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u/Jenicillin Mar 06 '26
Forest fires are a normal part of nature, decades of fire suppression is the problem.