Analysis of 2005 wildfire suppression operations is the first of an annual effort to analyze specific firefighting incidents and to educate the public and policymakers about the risks to firefighters, costs to taxpayers, and damages to ecosystems from current flawed fire management policies. FUSEE received anonymous reports from firefighters last summer voicing concerns about lapses in fireline safety, unethical abuses of taxpayer resources, and damaging ecological impacts occurring during specific firefighting incidents. FUSEE will follow-up these reports from the fireline with analysis of suppression records and field monitoring to provide some case studies of specific wildfires that link these to wider policy issues that often compel firefighters to commit unsafe, unethical, and anti-ecological actions in the course of their duties.

Send us news leads and dispatches from the firelines by clicking the Contact Basecamp button on the FUSEE homepage.

“A Homeowner’s Guide to Fire-Resistant Home Construction” used some of the latest research from the Riverside Fire Science Lab to provide vital information on fire-resistant construction materials and design. Written by FUSEE board member, Rich Fairbanks, the Homeowner’s Guide fills a large gap in homeowner fire education that, together with information on reducing fuel hazards around structures, can greatly reduce the ignitability of homes close to or in fire-prone wildlands, and thereby reduce the risks to wildland firefighters sent to protect those homes.

Check out the Homeowner’s Guide in the Frontline Homeowner Safety of the FUSEE website: www.fusee.org

FUSEE speakers were prominently featured at a dozen public education events last year, beginning with a prime-time panel of FUSEE speakers at the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Eugene. Additionally, FUSEE members gave presentations at the Women in the Fire Services convention in Washington D.C., the Wildland Fire Safety Summit in Missoula, and taught a special seminar on the environmental impacts of firefighting at the Interagency Fire and Rescue Academy in Provo, Utah. FUSEE will continue to offer speakers for conferences and community events, articulating a holistic vision of safe, ethical, fiscally responsible, ecological fire management.

The FUSEE website was redesigned and improved to be a year-round fire camp for anyone (including journalists) interested in wildland fire, firefighting, and fire policy issues. As FUSEE grows, the website has grown to include a large volume of essential fire science and policy papers, critical firefighter essays, our own research reports and publications, and by request we even started a poetry page for those long nights around the hunker fire! Our goal is to provide “news and views members can use” to help reform...