1) for >70 years, wildfire management has centred on the dream of "control." It operates through "command and control" + is increasingly militarised. The dream is a modernist one: that flammable lands might be made predictable + benign. Probabilities cornered, consequences known, risks neutralised. - ThreadSky

tdneale.bsky.social • 63 days ago

1) for >70 years, wildfire management has centred on the dream of "control." It operates through "command and control" + is increasingly militarised. The dream is a modernist one: that flammable lands might be made predictable + benign. Probabilities cornered, consequences known, risks neutralised.

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tdneale.bsky.social•63 days ago

2) when our attempts at control fail - which is inevitable - we tend to blame rogue actors + double down on this dream. Someone “failed,” we say, and government agencies need to do better. But then we either give those agencies more money, responsibilities, and resources or try to outsource it.

tdneale.bsky.social•63 days ago

So, we just need more control next time? More surveillance, more fuel treatments, more firefighters, more planes. More (of the same). In Aus, this refrain has built a multibillion dollar sector that can prevent + mitigate a lot of fires. But it cannot stop them all. It cannot change the weather.

tdneale.bsky.social•63 days ago

3) but there are no solutions. Fire is an elemental process - chaotic, wilful, necessary - and we can mitigate its risks but not eliminate them. There's a lot of money to be made selling us fixes. Try my drone or AI. Buy my satellites - they’re magical! They’ll stop the next one. But they won’t.

tdneale.bsky.social•63 days ago

Some people may remember that after the 2019-20 Black Summer season Twiggy Forrest promised >$70M to stop dangerous fires with tech by 2025 (the effort was closed down in 2023). Yeah.

tdneale.bsky.social•63 days ago

4) of course there might be some guilty party, in any given case. A power line coupling may fail. Or there was an arsonist. Or, more often, dry lightning. But trying to blame (or control) these things can be a distraction from all the other things that create the conditions for disastrous wildfires.

tdneale.bsky.social•63 days ago

Other things like zoning and land planning, road infrastructures, building codes, public warning systems, utilities funding, climate change, invasive species, privatisation, insurance, and on and on. This is another reason why there are no fixes. There are too many causes, each adding to the risk.

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