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[Draft] Wildfire Containment

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Fort Chaffee
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[Draft] Wildfire Containment

Postby Fort Chaffee » Sat Jan 25, 2025 7:39 pm

The World Assembly,

Understanding that wildfires are a natural disaster that if left unchecked can go on indefinitely;

Concerned that no measures have been taken to prevent wildfires from damaging property or infrastructure;

Wildfires are a common occurrence in many warm and dry climates, and as the amount of destruction one wildfire can cause, it is pertinent that the World Assembly addresses this issue. Countless property and lives can be saved by controlling the spread of the wildfire to ensure that there are minimized effects felt from it;

Hereby enacts as follows,

  1. All member nations will be required to have volunteer firefighters send to the WAFC to be ready in case of a wildfire. Member nations must also construct fire watch towers to ensure that a wildfire is spotted at first notice;
  2. These firefighters will be trained by the World Assembly Fire Corps to be best prepared to handle the fire, for example fire lines, fire retardant drops, and proper water usage. The WAFC’s goal will be to let the wildfire burn without damaging property or infrastructure;
  3. The WAFC will maintain the equipment necessary to fight the fires. This being the water bombers and the fire retardant;
  4. In the event a wildfire breaks out the WAFC will send out the equipment to the affected nation and a specified amount of volunteer firefighters will be required to go to minimize the damage that occurs.
Last edited by Fort Chaffee on Tue Jan 28, 2025 4:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Nshi
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Postby Nshi » Sat Jan 25, 2025 8:05 pm

Fort Chaffee wrote:The World Assembly,

Understanding that wildfires are a natural disaster that if left unchecked can go on indefinitely;

Concerned that no measures have been taken to prevent wildfires from spreading or being contained;

Wildfires are a common occurrence in many warm and dry climates, and as the amount of destruction one wildfire can cause it is pertinent that the World Assembly addresses this issue. Countless property and lives can be saved by preventing these wildfires from spreading by having a plan implemented before they start;

Hereby enacts as follows,

  1. All member nations with a climate that can start a wildfire, will be required to maintain a capable firefighting force to ensure a rapid response time to prevent the fire from spreading;
  2. Fire lines must be implemented in forests every 50 acre squares to help to contain the fire and keep it from spreading to more of the forest, these fire lines will be 20 meters wide to keep the fire from jumping across the gap. If a forest is protected as a national park, it will be deemed an fire response location to ensure that firefighting capabilities are readily available;
  3. Water must be readily available at all fire hydrants and at designated fire response locations to ensure proper capabilities to fight the wildfires;
  4. All residential and commercial areas near forests will implement sprinkler systems to protect the life and property if the other measures fail.


I like the idea so far, but maybe explain how a capable firefighting force would look like. Thanks.

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Untecna
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Postby Untecna » Sat Jan 25, 2025 8:34 pm

Nshi wrote:
Fort Chaffee wrote:The World Assembly,

Understanding that wildfires are a natural disaster that if left unchecked can go on indefinitely;

Concerned that no measures have been taken to prevent wildfires from spreading or being contained;

Wildfires are a common occurrence in many warm and dry climates, and as the amount of destruction one wildfire can cause it is pertinent that the World Assembly addresses this issue. Countless property and lives can be saved by preventing these wildfires from spreading by having a plan implemented before they start;

Hereby enacts as follows,

  1. All member nations with a climate that can start a wildfire, will be required to maintain a capable firefighting force to ensure a rapid response time to prevent the fire from spreading;
  2. Fire lines must be implemented in forests every 50 acre squares to help to contain the fire and keep it from spreading to more of the forest, these fire lines will be 20 meters wide to keep the fire from jumping across the gap. If a forest is protected as a national park, it will be deemed an fire response location to ensure that firefighting capabilities are readily available;
  3. Water must be readily available at all fire hydrants and at designated fire response locations to ensure proper capabilities to fight the wildfires;
  4. All residential and commercial areas near forests will implement sprinkler systems to protect the life and property if the other measures fail.


I like the idea so far, but maybe explain how a capable firefighting force would look like. Thanks.

I don't see a need for the author to explain that, given that "capable firefighting force" just means a functional firefighting organization that can handle wildfires. Or, in other words, it explains itself.
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Reploid Productions
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Postby Reploid Productions » Sat Jan 25, 2025 8:38 pm

Well-intentioned, but definitely lacking in definitions and some understanding of wildfires. Off the cuff:
  • Ecosystems in which wildfires are a routine occurrence have evolved to make the best of them, such as seed pods needing the heat of a fire to open. Preventing all fires will have unforeseen ecological consequences including making fires worse when they do still invariably happen owing to much higher fuel loads.
  • Forests are not the only place wildfires are a problem. For instance, the recent Palisades fire in California was not really in forest terrain, but in scrubby brushland. Plains regions can get incredibly fast-moving grass fires that rip through grasslands.
  • A "capable" firefighting force is literally an undertaking on par with making a capable military force (also why it's not unusual to have national guard or reservists working the fire lines.) You have your ground forces cutting containment lines with handheld equipment, you have 'armor' forces using heavy machinery to cut lines, you have aerial (and in locations permitting, naval) forces complete with aerial reconnaissance resources, you even have highly-trained special forces in hot shot crews and smokejumpers that get sent into the most inaccessible/dangerous terrain. And of course all the same logistics to feed those forces, maintain their equipment, and so on that a military deployment requires.
  • Pre-built containment lines would be an unimaginable expense as described. They aren't something you just cut once and never again, they would require constant maintenance. There's also a lot of fire-prone terrain where it is simply too inaccessible or too steep to make cutting such lines possible. They would also disrupt and break up local ecosystems. Additionally, 20 meters is useful, but large fires generate their own wind and weather systems that can readily propel embers much further than that. In places that get high winds that contribute to fire spread (again, thinking California and the Santa Ana winds,) we're talking embers lighting spot fires over 1600 meters out ahead of the fire front.
  • Hydrants still require power to keep the water pressurized enough to be of use; and too much demand on that system too quickly will still wreck the water pressure even before factoring in the potential for power outages taking the water pumps that keep it pressurized offline.
The sprinkler system requirement is the most plausible and practical, though in a firestorm such as what leveled the Palisades and Altadena IRL, they are in no way foolproof either; high winds can dry the water quickly or spray it too thinly to be useful, if the power goes out (a common occurrence in these situations) the sprinklers probably won't work unless it's a gravity-fed dispensing system but once that supply is gone those would be out of action too.

I think if you want to get a proposal through regarding wildfire mitigation, your best areas to focus on would be more aimed at building codes to reduce how flammable buildings are, electrical infrastructure as SO many fires are started due to stuff like downed power lines, and perhaps creating a joint WA firefighting resource not unlike how IRL states and even countries share firefighting resources so as to break up the cost burden. (For example, California does not own any of the Super Scooper firefighting planes; because Canada and California's fire seasons are usually not at the same time, the state leases them for a few months from the Canadian government. California gets use of those amazingly handy aircraft for a fraction of the cost to buy and maintain some, while Canada gets to defray some of the costs of owning and operating them.)
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The Otaku Shire
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Postby The Otaku Shire » Sat Jan 25, 2025 9:43 pm

A few things of note;

While many nations prone to wildfires establish organizations such as "park rangers" and in extreme cases of wild fire incidence frequency, "fire jumpers" there are a few organizations which by defacto enact firefighting capabilities. The most common of such would of course be that nation's Armed Forces and/or National Guard. So long as nations have a type of military and or police force, they have an emergency first responder group which can enact these duties.

Next up, water issue. In many cases, water is actually infeasible of a resource to use to fight wildfires. This is usually due to scarcity of fresh water in non costal/island nations. In these cases, sand which has been treated to be loosely packed and "fluffed" with filler agrigate, is dumped on the flames. The "fluff" aggrigate is added so that when dropped the weight does not cause unwanted death of animals or potential hikers or campers which may be beneath the drop. More wildfire prone nations often develop their own chemical flock fire suppressant to drop in this manner, which is usually similar to hollywood fake snow in appearance and largely propelyne glycol based. Depending the fire type (chemical, electrical etc...) water or certain suppressants may not be an option to utilize. Dropping material over wide swaths of forest is usually the more extreme and last option since this will permanently alter the soil over the wide area of effect and could pose wash out or chemical pollution hazards.

Fire breaks in principal are not a bad idea, but trenching all of your forrests in grid patterns is a very poor idea. The reason being is that this creates an agricultural irrigation run-off system. Which will cause artificially induced erosion to wide swaths of the landscape. This will alter the paths of all rivers and streams within the region and could adversely effect lakes and resevoirs within the area. As such, firebreaks should only be utilized in cases of an active fire. After the fire has been delt with, they are usually filled in to prevent alteration to the aquatic systems in region.

For fire management, one can change their forests to a planned agricultural system. Clearing the forest or portions which are undesired in either area or flora type, then replanted in structured grid systems, taking into account rainfall and water run off. Supplamenting the soil with desired mixtures and nutrients. Choosing what types of trees and shrubs to grow. Implamentation of self cleaning underbrush (such as shrubs who's deciduous leaves quickly biodegrade, or utilizing horticulture to have grazing animals eliminate the plant waste). Lastly, using staff to regularly clear out waste plant materials from the forssts.

The options for planned agriculture are tough to implament as it requires clear cutting of gigantic areas and utilizing large organizations to manage their recultivation. It is in principle, akin to terraforming operations. However, it is an option to utilize. Such options have been taken before by many nations in varrying scale. For instance USA's Army corps of engineers in a comprable project, took to preventing erosion of the Mississippi river by lining the entire bottom of the river with 4 foot thick concrete slabs. This project was taken from the 1940s and took until the mid 1990s to complete. However, it had unforseen consequences. By sealing the river bed soil under concrete, the river stopped providing sedimentary nutrients to the Florida everglades and has been the single most significant manmade effort which fueled the collapse of the everglades biome environment.

The point being, with artificial large scale agricultural projects, you need to take into account all the side effects of such effort. Both in short term and long term, regarding both large scale effects and micro effects which cummulatively add up.

The real challenge in fighting wildfires however is not the fighting of them but rather, the prevention of them. This requires having 'ranger watch stations' at regular intervals through out all possoble areas. The USA innitiated wildfire watch efforts in the 1800s with the push west from the Lousiana Purchase. This was due to bit that every summer when the massive thunderstorms we now call hurricanes took place, would always ignite massive fires. Lightning strikes would create immense infernos which could swallow and extinguish entire settler towns in the span of a few hours. So, by the 1870s, efforts were taken to create watch tower stations so that when fires broke out, the miners and lumberjacks could be mobilized to fight them and prevent towns from becoming engulfed.

Point being, in modern times, you want to utilize a combination of watch tower stations and regular areal surveillance, to keep watch over wildfire prone areas. That way when a fire does break out, needed teams can be scrambled to intercept before it becomes too widespread to stop. Today with massive advancements in drone technology such as the Reaper drones which cam stay aloft at low earth orbit for years at a time, 24/7/365 drone surveillance with a single drone camera surveying 15 mile radous area to resolution of a dinner plate from 10-15 miles in altitude, we can enact permanent watch status. Having the drone feeds being monitored ny AI trained on object recognition to notice fire outbreaks, can alert authorities to presence of any fire ranging from campfire to hectacres wide wild fires instantly. There is the challenge of course with cloud cover and storms that require more nuanced systems but point being, today we have the potential luxury of permanent real time forest safety surveying and can fully survey all wilds of any given nation, if we so wished. Yet, no nation as of yet irl, has taken such measures though it is currently possible.

I will end this here, but here above are somethings to consider regarding the topic. Also, as veteran of US Army, I was trained on fighting wildfires and environmental management as well as conservation. If you seek further advice on this topic in addition to the above, just hit me up in this thread or by telegram. As an army trained engineer, boyscout and emergency fire first responder, I can tell you most anything you might want to know. While in army we were not "fire jumpers" we were the "back up" emergency callup for fighting fires when staff to do so was streched thin. I was also a boyscout prior to army, so again conservation, leave no trace camping and wildfire safety management on parks and trailhead maintenance.

Hope all of this helps, enjoy
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Elyreia
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Postby Elyreia » Sat Jan 25, 2025 11:14 pm

To add a small addition; places like Washington State not only have their ranger service, fire fighters, volunteer fire fighters, and national guard, but they also have a smaller State Guard that is a volunteer partly self-funded paramilitary force specifically for coordinating assistance in natural disasters. Organizing so much is a massive chore and tax on resources.

There's also issues where forest maintenance (clear cutting undergrowth) created situations of worst wildfires. In some locations of denser forest growth in areas not historically very dry, forest management has cleared undergrowth and brush vegetations to "limit kindling" as it were. What this actually can do is mean a fire can't quickly sweep through and burn their kindling out, but can linger long enough to set trees aflame (which can be notoriously harder to catch flame in wetter climes).

Worst still is invasive species. Massive amounts of dogwood in the PNW have added tons of kindling, choking out hardier vegetation. Tumbleweeds in the Great Plains can carry embers (or themselves aflame) quite long distances, spreading the fires to places they wouldn't normally.

Were I you, I'd focus this draft more in line with a sort of international fire fighting cooperation force - perhaps volunteers and equipment from nations which can be made readily available in cases where nations suffering wildfires need an extra hand, much as elucidated earlier about the super scoop planes.
Last edited by Elyreia on Sat Jan 25, 2025 11:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Fort Chaffee
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Postby Fort Chaffee » Sun Jan 26, 2025 6:37 am

Reploid Productions wrote:Well-intentioned, but definitely lacking in definitions and some understanding of wildfires. Off the cuff:
  • Ecosystems in which wildfires are a routine occurrence have evolved to make the best of them, such as seed pods needing the heat of a fire to open. Preventing all fires will have unforeseen ecological consequences including making fires worse when they do still invariably happen owing to much higher fuel loads.
  • Forests are not the only place wildfires are a problem. For instance, the recent Palisades fire in California was not really in forest terrain, but in scrubby brushland. Plains regions can get incredibly fast-moving grass fires that rip through grasslands.
  • Pre-built containment lines would be an unimaginable expense as described. They aren't something you just cut once and never again, they would require constant maintenance. There's also a lot of fire-prone terrain where it is simply too inaccessible or too steep to make cutting such lines possible. They would also disrupt and break up local ecosystems. Additionally, 20 meters is useful, but large fires generate their own wind and weather systems that can readily propel embers much further than that. In places that get high winds that contribute to fire spread (again, thinking California and the Santa Ana winds,) we're talking embers lighting spot fires over 1600 meters out ahead of the fire front.
  • Hydrants still require power to keep the water pressurized enough to be of use; and too much demand on that system too quickly will still wreck the water pressure even before factoring in the potential for power outages taking the water pumps that keep it pressurized offline.
The sprinkler system requirement is the most plausible and practical, though in a firestorm such as what leveled the Palisades and Altadena IRL, they are in no way foolproof either; high winds can dry the water quickly or spray it too thinly to be useful, if the power goes out (a common occurrence in these situations) the sprinklers probably won't work unless it's a gravity-fed dispensing system but once that supply is gone those would be out of action too.

I think if you want to get a proposal through regarding wildfire mitigation, your best areas to focus on would be more aimed at building codes to reduce how flammable buildings are, electrical infrastructure as SO many fires are started due to stuff like downed power lines, and perhaps creating a joint WA firefighting resource not unlike how IRL states and even countries share firefighting resources so as to break up the cost burden. (For example, California does not own any of the Super Scooper firefighting planes; because Canada and California's fire seasons are usually not at the same time, the state leases them for a few months from the Canadian government. California gets use of those amazingly handy aircraft for a fraction of the cost to buy and maintain some, while Canada gets to defray some of the costs of owning and operating them.)


One of the things I was thinking of adding in was some sort of WA firefighting force that oversees the general equipment and maintains it to give out whenever a wildfire starts, mainly the super scoopers like you mentioned to be able to deploy those. With the fire lines, ideally I know they don’t 100% prevent the fire from spreading but what basically all they are there for is to help to slow down the fire, that’s what most of these measures would be used for. With the ecological damage, I was thinking that along with the wildfire measures, that I could also implement some sort of ecological team that can help to minimize damage that would be caused from the fire lines

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Fort Chaffee
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Postby Fort Chaffee » Tue Jan 28, 2025 4:14 pm

/bump updated from previous feedback

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Reploid Productions
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Postby Reploid Productions » Wed Jan 29, 2025 12:05 am

Fort Chaffee wrote:/bump updated from previous feedback

Sorry if I sound like a bit of a negative Nancy, but given I live with this stuff IRL, hoping to help with some of the logistical stuff that folks who don't might not readily know or consider. ^^;

Fire watch towers are incredibly antiquated relics of wildland firefighting history at this point and only really good for spotting at a range of up to 20 miles. The vast majority of them in the US are no longer manned (US Forest Service notes that only 250 were still in use by 1964); the role that they used to serve has been almost entirely replaced by modern satellite technology, aircraft (for example, California's FIRIS program), remote cameras (UC San Diego operates a metric fuckton of live fire watch cameras), and just modern day communications tech. Towers may still get some limited use in really rugged terrain where reliable cellular or data connections are impractical and a satellite connection is just overly expensive for the benefit, or in nations that lack the sort of resources that the US Forest Service has got; but these days a lot of towers are abandoned, preserved as historical landmarks, used as scenic vistas or educational sites, or even rented out as camp cabins.

Maybe focus the act entirely on creating your WA Fire Corps, and defining the functions and responsibilities of that organization rather than your current piecemeal list of fire mitigation tasks. Broader policies regarding things such as providing training for crews in member nations, mandating things such as off-season wages (hot shot crews are seasonal workers and don't get paid in the off-season and there's plenty of articles about how underpaid they are), regulations regarding the use of low-risk incarcerated individuals as firefighters, early warning systems (we've already got some stories starting to blow up how folks in Altadena didn't get evac alerts on their phones until hours after the blaze had already ripped through their neighborhoods), funding contributions to maintain a satisfactory number of the more highly-trained specialist crews, and so on. Less specific about minor details and more broad strokes of overall policy sort of thing.
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Postby Bears Armed » Wed Jan 29, 2025 10:40 am

See the existing resolution #295 'Prevention of Wildifres', and take into account the rules against both 'Duplication and 'House of Cards'.
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