Two Firefighters Died in Yosemite—For What?

This year, the Trump administration gave federal firefighters a mandate: no more letting fires burn.

Conventional wisdom among firefighters and public-land managers has held that allowing fires in remote areas to run their course can be beneficial.

But now the administration’s new U.S.

Wildland Fire Service was to pursue a policy of “full suppression” on every wildfire, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum instructed his workforce, to avoid the possibility of dangerous spread.

“Accelerate initial attack,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins put it in her own directive to the Forest Service.

“Suppress fires early and limit growth.” And when Yosemite National Park caught on fire last month, that is what firefighters did.

The hazy skies above the park filled with aircraft—planes dropping fire retardant on forested slopes; helicopters ferrying hotshot crews to the blaze.

At one point, at least 17 helicopters were in rotation, along with more than 1,000 firefighters.

“I’ve worked in Yosemite and with Yosemite for almost 40 years,” Tom Nichols, a former head of fire and aviation for the National Park Service (and no relation to the Atlantic writer Tom Nichols), told me.

“I’ve never seen that kind of response.” At the start, attacking the fire aggressively made sense: It had started near a popular hiking trail and was burning on a slope above Wawona, a small community in the park.

It looked to be human caused.

In such situations, federal policy, even before this year, called for firefighters to use “full suppression” to try to put it out as quickly as possible, former Yosemite fire officials told me.

But as it developed, the Dome Fire spread to the north and east, farther up the mountains, away from any homes or communities.

The resources being poured into fighting it began to baffle some fire veterans.