THE SKY’S THE LIMIT: THE SOBERANES FIRE SUPPRESSION SIEGE OF 2016
The Most Expensive Wildfire Suppression Incident In U.S. History Demonstrates the Need for Fiscal Restraint and Accountability in Forest Service Firefighting
The Soberanes Fire burned its way into the record books, costing $262 million as the most expensive wildland firefight in U.S. history in what a new report calls an “extreme example of excessive, unaccountable, budget-busting suppression spending.”
- The Associated Press, 2018
On July 22, 2016, in Garrapata State Park near Big Sur, California, an illegal campfire ignited the Soberanes Fire. Over the next three months, it would spread onto the Los Padres National Forest and burn into the Ventana Wilderness area where it became the largest wildfire in the country that year.
“WFDSS” stands for “Wildland Fire Decision Support System”. To learn more, check out the full report.
The Soberanes Fire Suppression Siege also earned the distinction of being the most expensive wildfire suppression incident in U.S. history: the suppression siege totaled over $262,000,000, with costs averaging $2 million per day.
At its peak, suppression costs were almost $5 million per day. Data sourced from USFS.
The Soberanes Fire Suppression Siege offers an extreme example of excessive, unaccountable, budgetbusting suppression spending that is causing a fiscal crisis in the U.S. Forest Service. It demonstrates the chronic failure of Congress to perform critical oversight of wildfire suppression spending by federal agencies. It also alludes to what some critics have called the “Fire Industrial Complex” whereby a nexus of government agencies and private companies wage an endless and escalating war on wildfire in defiance of economic rationality and ecological sustainability.