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Fires are getting bigger, and the effects on our forests are dire. But increasingly, there's a growing concern for human safety as we begin to push further into the forest.

About American Forest Fires:
Are government policies and bureaucracy the REAL fire starters in America? Are answers to a major crisis staring us in the face? Learn what brought us to this point, and the innovative solutions which could keep disaster from setting nature ablaze.

This clip comes from Season 1, Episode 1: "Burning Down the House"

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Transcript
00:00Fires are getting bigger, and the effects on our forests are dire.
00:06But increasingly, there's a growing concern for human safety as well, particularly as
00:11we continue to push deeper into the forests.
00:15Somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 or 30 million homes have been built in the wildland
00:20urban interface in the last 25 years.
00:22That's the interface like we're seeing between homes and forests.
00:26We're putting infrastructure into these areas at a very rapid pace because people want to
00:35build their homes in the forest.
00:37They want to be close to nature.
00:39There's a legion of retiring baby boomers who are now moving to smaller rural communities
00:46that give them the opportunity to access the out-of-doors.
00:50Since 1980, 40% of the homes constructed in the United States have been built in such
01:00areas in what fire scientists call the wildland urban interface.
01:07The problem it creates is that when you build a nice house in the woods, if a fire comes,
01:14you're sort of expecting the local government or the state government or the federal government
01:20or some combination of the three to try to help save your house.
01:25Luckily, the Forest Service had gotten very good at stopping fires.
01:30From the 1930s until 2002, there were very few large forest fires and nothing we would
01:35now call a megafire, but every year without fire or mechanical clearing only increases
01:41the fuel load.
01:43The forests and the new communities in them were becoming a ticking time bomb.
01:48In 2018, that bomb went off.
01:57The deadliest fire in California's history hit the rural town of Paradise, California.
02:0386 people perished and the town was destroyed.
02:06It was a wake-up call for everyone living in fire-prone areas.
02:10The government was forced to respond.
02:13This was a new kind of emergency.
02:15It required much faster action than deliberately slow laws like NEPA and the Endangered Species
02:20Act could accommodate.
02:23The question was, we can't wait for processes to slow us down, and how do we treat the preventative
02:31action like an emergency and with the pace of an emergency?
02:36So Governor Newsom put out emergency declarations that enabled us to change our environmental
02:42practices.
02:43He waived CEQA, the environmental law, and also directed Cal Fire to go into emergency
02:49operation mode to execute emergency fuel breaks throughout the state.
02:55This was not an academic exercise, but a crucial requirement for communities.
03:00Paradise was only the beginning.
03:02Every year since, the fires have gotten bigger and more destructive.

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