I was reading an article in today's NYT about the wildfire in Arizona, and it reminded me of another story from last fall about a home fire in Tennessee. What is essentially a rather pedestrian account in the Times of the fire in Arizona could have been made much more illuminating if the writer had made the same connection. The dateline of the story is Greer, Arizona, an unincorporated area in Apache County, nestled in the White Mountains and surrounded by the scenic Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest. At an elevation of 8,600 ft, it boasts an average summer temp of just 74 degrees, 20 to 30 degrees cooler than Phoenix or Tucson some 4 hours to the west.
The article describes the efforts of the army of 2,500 firefighters fighting the blaze to save the homes there. Immediately, I thought of the story from last October about the family in Obion County, Tennessee whose house burned to the ground while firemen ignored it. The family, it seems, had failed to pay the city's $75 annual fee for fire protection. Fortunately, their neighbor did send in his check, and so the fire department arrived promptly when the fire spread and threatened his house.
In Greer, nobody is asking homeowners if they are up to date on their payment for fire protection. That's because there is no such fee.
This is a story about about our policies regarding fighting fires in our national forests, about development on land bordering those forests, and yes...about class in America, and the perks that go along with affluence.
Out of curiosity, I googled "Greer AZ real estate" just to see what type of homes were being threatened there. As expected, I came up with several hits for real estate offerings. Typical was one that listed a four bedroom log home, nicely appointed, on 1 1/2 acres with a panoramic view of the mountains. Yours for only $650,000. For $1.5 million you get a somewhat smaller home, but with more acreage and a stream. (You can fish off of your deck!!)
In Southwestern Colorado, homes near the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and Rio Grande National Forest are much the same, but perhaps a little pricier. One listing that caught my eye was for a modern "log cabin" on 35 acres. Amenities include vaulted tongue and groove ceilings, a log stairway to the second floor, granite counter tops and a six burner stove in the spacious kitchen, and a wrap around deck, of course. All this, and more, is offered for $1,250.000.
In contrast, the homes in Obion Co., Tennessee sell, on average, for about $65,000. Sorry, no granite countertops. The ceilings aren't tongue and groove alder, either. They were sprayed with "popcorn" 40 years ago when they were probably built. In Obion, many struggle to keep up with the Joneses. The upscale homes located next to national forests in the Mountain West are largely owned by those who long ago surpassed the Joneses, and who prefer to live as far away from them as possible. And have a view.
There's nothing new about wildfires in the West. We've always had them. As long as there are forests, we always will. What has changed is their frequency and the cost of fighting them. Also, the number of homes in areas prone to wildfires has grown dramatically over the past few decades. The frequency of fires is due largely to the long drought in much of the West. The cost of fighting them, however, has exploded over the years, and that has a lot to due with the growth of home development in these urban-wild land interfaces. One could argue that it also has much to do with our changing attitudes about forest fires in general, and a consensus that they must always be put out if possible. While I don't disagree with that, I see a connection between that attitude and the growing number of homes in these areas.
To paraphrase an old philosophical saw, if a tree catches fire in the forest and nobody sees it, did it burn? People pay a lot of money for these homes, and they are understandably fond of the views that they afford. Nobody wants to have coffee on the deck and look out upon several thousand acres of charred trees. I can understand that as well. But who pays to put these fires out when they happen, and at what cost? In Obion County, Tennessee, as we know, the homeowner pays for it, and it costs $75. In most communities the cost fire protection is born at the local level and paid for with local taxes. In the Mountain West many homes are in unincorporated areas. Fires there are not the responsibility of county government, and so the land develop decisions made locally don't factor that into account.
Fires in these areas literally costs billions of dollars, and every taxpayer in the country foots the bill. Even though a significant number of forest ecologists argue that letting many of these fires burn will actually improve the overall health of our forests, the political obstacles to doing so are such that the Forest Service extinguishes over 99% of these fires. And the Forest Services is almost unique in that Congress gives it a blank check to do so. Officials in the agency have long complained that the costs of fighting fires are being driven up by the need for more equipment and personnel to save structures, and that they often they must allocate so many resources to save those structures that they cannot fight fire fronts in more wild areas. Contrary to common belief, most forest fires are not started by lightening...close to 80% are caused by humans.
Only a relative handful of people live in these fire prone wildland-urban interface, but they enjoy fire protection at taxpayer expense with all the resources that the federal government can bring to bear. On average, it costs about $8,000 to save one house from wildfire. Since there is no fiscal accountability nor real financial incentives at the local level with regards to factoring these costs into their land use decisions, look for more ranchettes, toney log homes and upscale second properties to spring up in the future.
Just don't ask the owners to show their cancelled check as proof they've paid for fire protection. Like the gorgeous views, that comes with the property.
4:15 PM PT: update Here's a link to the original news story about Gene Cranick, the man in TN who lost his home. He has since filed a lawsuit against the city.
http://abcnews.go.com/...