Don't tell the tourists that Florida's on fire.

Wildfires - a d?j? vu phenomena in America

I have a fascination for fires! No, not like a pyromaniac, but rather
the phenomena of wildfires which annually plague the US.

With my originating from England, it was not a phenomena I had ever
previously given any thought to, until I took up residency in Florida
some 4 years ago. My interest is not from the angle of "Oh lookie!
There's a fire up the road&;#8230; Let's go watch&;#8230;"
Rather, it's from the angle of "Oh my God! I had no idea of the scale
of these things!" - both the actual numbers of fires and the scale of
devastation in terms of acreage (not to mention homes, buildings and
lives). And then, finally, from a journalistic point of view, when I
began to delve into the whole 'wildfire phenomena' at both State and
National level.

It really all began in May of '98 - the first year of what has now
become Florida's fourth year of drought, surpassing all records for
200+ years. I go into some greater detail in a couple of articles I
previously wrote, one of which is posted under the title "The Ocala
National Forest - don't tell the tourists&;#8230;" Then the other,
looked at the phenomena from the perspective of journalistic reporting
and how easy it is to give a meaningless and underplayed 'report', by
using euphemisms and inaccurate numbers/statistics.

What fascinated (and astonished) me the most, though, was not the
numbers of fires and total acres destroyed (In 1998, some half million
acres were destroyed in Florida alone), but how it is successfully it
is kept relatively 'low key' and out of the news media as much as
possible, in what is one of the world's most popular tourist
destinations. Take the Everglades as an example. Even as I type, some
22,500 acres have been destroyed and continues to burn. This has forced
road closures time and again. Take Disney World, Orlando - As I type, a
fire exceeding 1,400 acres burns into its third or fourth day,
spreading choking smoke for several miles. Just two of an ongoing
epidemic of fires which have been breaking out across Florida. Some
2,679 fires responsible, for the destruction of some 204,000 acres have
burned in Florida this year, and we are not even into summer!
To clarify what I mean by 'low key' in the media, ask anyone, who lives
in Florida, how bad the scale of fires is, and I can almost guarantee
you they will have no clue.

It's not even as if this were a one off 'event', although, without
argument, this year surpasses the number of fires for the same period
of time of 1998. And in June 1998, Bob Crawford, then commissioner of
Florida announced "This is the worst wild-fires we've had in modern
history - There is no precedence for this." Add to that, another
statement of his, "The State of Florida is in an emergency situation...
(it) is a 'Tinderbox', one end to the other." Interesting, also, that
this year's situation was first described as "atrocious", by Florida's
Governor, Jeb Bush and then, 24 hours later, described it as "very
perilous"

What really fascinates the hell out of me, however, is how it is almost
nigh impossible to get any reliable and consistent information from
anywhere, in order to get a clear overall picture at local, regional,
State and National level. What information is readily made public, is
compartmentalised and fragmented, and at times contradictory.

But then, why should this concern me - and why, specifically, the
wildfire scenario? And, just as importantly, why should it concern you?
Well for a number of reasons, is the answer.

For myself, a personal reason is that I live in a forest region, and
the Forestry Service's fire chief has just announced they are not going
to man their remaining 35 fire-watch towers due to financial cut-backs,
courtesy of Jeb Bush. (You didn't know that Florida has the world's
largest continuous forest of sand pine scrub and scrub oak, along with
giant palm trees? - True, it's not a theme park, so you can be
forgiven!) We 'locals' are the first to know about it when the smoke
and fire are on our doorstep, and then it gets reported (maybe) in the
news, days or weeks later. I guess it would also be kind of nice for
those due to arrive as tourists, to have such information, so they can
at least bring an oxygen mask - but then, if they were told in advance,
they may just cancel their travel and vacation arrangements?

On a different level, as a journalist, I have this bizarre concept that
it would be nice to be certain that what I am told (and may pass on) as
'fact' is vaguely 'factual'. Conversely, as a 'consumer' of news, I
keep hoping that some of the stuff I read or hear on TV is accurate -
important stuff like "You have a 10 mile wide fire with flames reaching
70 feet, just 10 miles away, BUT moving at a rate of X miles per hour
in your direction&;#8230;" No, that scenario is neither hypothetical
nor an exaggeration. It's happened here before on my proverbial
doorstep. In fact, only yesterday, 5 fires burned less than 2 miles up
the road from me, and ash was falling like rain. And you think I am
being alarmist or paranoid!?

Ultimately, I would like to stem my ever-growing cynicism about 'news'
and 'history' being something one can use to make well founded
decisions - "should I hang in here, or get the hell out of here?" type
decisions - when, in reality, 'mainstream news' and 'official
information' is more like 'Wheel of Fortune' and statistics (as in
"Truth, Lies and statistics..").

And to give an example of why I increasingly feel this way, plus where
my d?j? vu is coming from, I share with you the following article I
wrote just towards the end of last year:

The Miracle Fires in America that 'Unburn' - We Need MORE fires!

First, in September 2000, Wyoming led the way, then Arizona. Three
weeks later miracles occurred in another four states - Oregon, Nevada,
Missouri and California. It is Nevada, whose newly discovered phenomena
is the most miraculous and spectacular.

And had it not been for the diligence of the American government
agency, the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) that, over the
years, have gathered the records of how many wildfires have burned and
how many acres were destroyed across the US, from their numerous
intelligence sources, perhaps these miracles would never have come to
light.

State by state a chart has been meticulously maintained by the NIFC and
displayed on their www.NIFC.gov website. This chart has shown the
accumulated numbers of wildfires in the tens of thousands, and acres
destroyed in the millions, so that, at any given time, anyone
interested in this annually recurring series of natural disasters could
get a comprehensive picture of what the United States has to contend
with from 'Dear ole Mother Nature'.

And the year 2,000 has been one with a trend which surpasses just about
all previously recorded years of wildfires - At least that was the case
until a new phenomenon occurred in September. Fires that
'UNBURN'!

The phenomenon was first seen in Arizona and Wyoming. On August 29th
the NIFC had noted that from January 1st, Arizona had suffered a total
of 3,175 fires accounting for 89,813 acres burned. Similarly, Wyoming's
tally was a total of 608 fires accounting for 275,466 acres
burned.

Little would anyone expect that, within just a month, a never before
witnessed event was to occur. New accumulating figures showed both
states to have a continued increase in fires (Arizona with 160 more and
Wyoming with 19 more), BUT the accumulated acres burned were to
decrease! Yes - a miracle - fires that unburn! Arizona had unburned
5,277 acres and Wyoming had unburned 1,318 acres.

Was this a one-off, or should I say 'two-off' miracle, I wondered?
Inevitably, the NIFC proved these miracles to be mere hoaxes, when
Janelle Smith, NIFC External Affairs, explained to me, "Our
intelligence section [an anathema if there ever was one!]gathers these
figures from regional offices throughout the country and stores them in
a database. There are times when errors are made in the reporting
process and corrected figures are then recorded. While this does create
confusion for someone like yourself tracking these numbers [Oh someone
like me who likes to have factual information - As opposed to someone
who doesn't give a damn whether the information is fact or
guesstimation? In that case why bother collecting any
information&;#8230; Hell, Why don't you just draw numbers from a hat
and save the taxpayers a lot of time and money!?], we can only report
what is reported to us. I wish there was a better, more precise
explanation, but this is all I have."

Well, that would seem to lay that to rest, at the close of September,
in a brief exchange of correspondence between myself and Janelle Smith.
And of course, now that these errors and the flawed system they had,
had been exposed, it would inevitably be corrected (wouldn't it?).
Unless, of course, this was no mere hoax or flawed 'intelligence
reporting system'.

So, just three weeks later, my faith in miracles was renewed as I
browsed through the NIFC's latest updated figures. For the entire US,
in just three weeks of October, there had been a further 3,828 new
fires. This brought the accumulated total since January 1st to 83,027
for all of the United States.

BUT, then the Miracle of miracles! Those very fires had now UNBURNED
36,562 acres. That is close to every new fire unburning 10 acres. What
Arizona and Wyoming had started, other states were to continue. Between
California, Nevada, Oregon and Missouri, they successfully reduced the
accumulated number of acres burned from 6.939 Million acres down to
6.902 million acres. Nevada has mastered this miracle, whereby each of
its 29 new fires unburned 416 acres. A total unburn of 12,062
acres!

Now the good news is I have carefully calculated that all that is
needed to unburn all of the devastated areas across the US is 720,000
fires. The bad news, however, is that at the rate of acres unburning
the past three weeks, unless Nevada can improve on and encourage all
the other states to match its unburning rate, it will take 566 weeks to
unburn all 6.902 million acres, taking us well into the year
2011.

Copyright, David Taub, October 2000

If you enjoyed reading this piece and/or have any comments, you are
welcome to email me at UKpoet@aol.comand May 2001

David Taub is a member of
The British organisation 'National Union of Journalists' (NUJ);
Columnist for the UK magazine 'Poetry Now';
Freelance writer for various UK and USA magazines;
Co-author of Language of Souls (listed on amazon.com)
Website: www.ukpoet.cjb.net