Readers React: Deal with wildfires like earthquakes: Accept their inevitability and plan

To the editor: Why do we continue to lose lives and homes during wildfires? We have failed to apply what we have learned about wildfire behavior. As the million-acre, grass-fueled 2006 wildfires in Texas demonstrated, it’s mostly about flammable communities, not overgrown “brush,” overly dense forests or dying trees. (“Treat wildfires like other natural disasters,” Opinion, Feb. 18)

Unfortunately, the focus is continually placed on ways to increase habitat clearance and logging projects. While creating 100 feet of defensible space and thinning forests around communities are important components of fire risk reduction, they fail to address the main reason homes burn: embers landing on flammable materials in, on or around the home and igniting the most dangerous concentration of fuel available, the house itself.

Wildfires need to be addressed in a manner similar to earthquakes — accept their inevitability while planning and retrofitting our communities to survive when they do arrive.

Richard Halsey, Escondido

The writer is director of the Chaparral Institute.

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