The recent smoky haze reminds me… the smoke this summer will kill some of us

My unused hammock last October when we had unseasonably warm weather but we all had to stay indoors to protect our lungs from wildfire smoke.  On October 18 and 19 Seattle had the worst air quality of any major city in the world due to a fires burning in the Cascades, including a fire in Alpine Lakes Wilderness about 30 miles from Seattle.

This is an update of an essay I wrote and posted on Facebook last October explaining how our Federal  implementation of the Clean Air Act relative to forest fires is harming our summer air quality instead of helping it.  And it’s estimated to be causing hundreds of deaths per year in our area.  While the moderate smoke haze we experienced the last couple days was from Canada, it’s a reminder that Washington State smoke will probably soon come back and start disrupting summer plans.

Stanford University says Washington’s wildfire smoke is killing some of us. The smoke that always seems to come during some of our precious warm summer and autumn days is worse than just a nuisance keeping us cooped up when we would all like to be outside. According to a 2020 study by Stanford University, “wildfire smoke is likely responsible for 5,000 to 15,000 deaths in an average year in the United States. Smokier years like 2018 or 2020 will have a much higher death toll.”

A graph in the study report estimates 292 deaths in the Seattle area for an average year. This number is based on excess deaths of medicare patients (seniors). If one includes long-term risks by people of all age groups, like lung cancers not yet revealed, the health/death toll is much worse. For those of us that remember the horrible air pollution of the 1970s, the study makes another dismal point. All the gains we made over four decades with the Federal Clean Air Act, that cost billions of dollars but were well worth it because they improved our lives, are increasingly being undermined by unchecked wildfire smoke.

The best solution, the report says, is more “prescribed burns”– carefully managed intentional small fires when conditions are right, to prevent runaway wildfires at the wrong times. Prescribed burns can be kept small (in the forest understory, below the tree canopy), and conducted when winds are right to keep smoke away from population centers.

Ironically, we don’t do prescribed burns very much because of the enormous multi-jurisdictional permitting requirements, including the requirement that prescribed burns meet the Clean Air Act. Note that wildfires are obviously exempt from the Clean Air Act, since they are not intentional. Because of the intense permitting requirements, prescribed fires are not employed very often in our Washington forests. Only a few percent of our land has been intentionally burned. It’s not hard to see why the fire service might decide to let an accidental or maliciously set wildfire, like the Bolt Fire, turn into a “consumptive burn” if permits for prescribed fires are nearly impossible to get.

Science and common sense tell us that fires are a natural part of our ecosystem— part of healthy forest management. These fires should happen at a time and scale when it’s safest and healthiest, not when a careless smoker or malicious arsonist sets them. To better equip our fire service, state and federal policy makers including legislators need to update the clean air act and other permitting requirements appropriately. Until they do, we’re all going to continue to miss out on the best days of summer; and tragically some of us will still get killed by the smoke even if we stay indoors.

In October 2021 I witnessed controlled burn in Yosemite Valley, one of the most beautiful and sensitive locations in our nation. Here is what the fire zone looked like.  (This fire was near the base of Bridalveil falls, and temporarily closed the trail to the base of the falls.)

Here is another location in Yosemite Valley, closer to Curry Village, ready for a controlled burn. The fire will not just be kept to the debris piles;   fire will also cover the forest floor, consuming downed branches and dead understory material, but will be kept off of the high tree canopy on living trees.

Here is a photo I took while the burn was going on, a mile or two from the burn site, of Yosemite Falls as seen from across the valley. The smoke was so controlled it was not noticeable more than a few thousand feet from the fire.

For anyone interested in additional information:

Here is a link to the 47-page permitting procedures documents for prescribed burns:
Here is a link to a Washington DNR vide on controlled burns and why they are valuable:

What can you do to help?  Become familiar with this information, share it, and encourage our federal and state officials to work out the issues that make prescribed burns so difficult to permit.  Renton’s U.S. House Representative is Adam Smith, who can be emailed here.  Our U.S. Senators are Patty Murray who can be emailed here, and Maria Cantwell who can be emailed here.