Urban fire prevention with biochar

This is from Kelpie Wilson, who has a blog based on biochar. She sells biochar kilns and teaches about biochar.  She cites some of the people who have figured out how not to have giant urban conflagrations like the one in Los Angeles right now:
John S
PDX OR


Forwarded from her blog
Is It Time to Rake the Forests Yet?
Prepping our forests for fire
Kelpie Wilson
Jan 12



Making biochar on site, in the woods, we use rakes to quench our burn piles and produce water-holding biochar for the soil. We see this as part of prepping our forests for fire. Increasing soil moisture increases moisture in vegetation, reducing the risk of extreme fire.

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Making biochar in burn piles: we rake the coals thin to quench and leave behind biochar. Takes about 5-20 gallons of water per pile to leave behind water-soaked biochar that will continue to hold moisture in soil.

There is no better example of a complete lack of preparation than the current fires raging in Los Angeles. There is no excuse for this disaster. The risks have been well-know for decades. The fact that insurance companies have been pulling out of the state for years now should have been enough warning to homeowners and governments that the situation is out of control.

However, assigning blame will not solve the problem. The first step is to identify and begin to act on the solutions. So what are those exactly? I won’t pretend to have all of the answers, but I can offer some strategies that could help.

First of all, we need to recognize the realities of the situation and the limits that constrain us. The general public knows very little about fire ecology or water cycles and as a consequence, they cannot accept sensible limits on development. It’s time to listen to the voices of reality found in our fire communities.

I love and appreciate my many friends working in fire, from the boots on the ground to the managers, ecologists, and others who are concerned with preventing, mitigating and managing fires. This is a reality-based community that cannot afford to buy into myths and rumors. As the fires continue to burn in the LA Basin, rumors rise like smoke, obscuring our view of the truth. So to start with, let me recommend a couple of fire community voices that I have been following this week that seem to have a grip on reality:

I have found good information from Mann Made Cinema (Gabriel Kirkpatrick
Mann) on Twitter/X. He is a filmmaker who produced the movie Hotshot, about wildland firefighters. Here’s a recent comment that rings true:

   “Elon isn’t gonna fix wildfires. Nerds will not fix wildfires. You know who can fix wildfires? A bunch of Paisas and bearded mountain men with chainsaws and drip torches and a lip full of Copenhagen.”

On Substack, The Hotshot Wakeup covers fire issues and advocates for expanding the wildland firefighter work force and making sure these heroes are compensated well for their courageous work.

Another great fire monitor is Zeke Lunder of The Lookout website and on Youtube. Zeke has provided daily and sometimes hourly updates on many of the large fire incidents in my region with well-informed commentary and maps. He is following the LA fires now and had this important comment today:

   The Impossibility of Urban Wildfire Mitigation, January 11, 2025 by Zeke Lunder

   When homes are densely packed in alignment with the direction of strong fire-season winds, it is nearly almost impossible to cut enough brush to make the homes defensible. Fire burns from house to house, no longer a ‘brush fire’, rather it is referred to as an ‘urban conflagration’ or simply a ‘conflagration’. Wind-driven brush fires cast burning embers long distances, so it can be difficult to define the ‘edge’ of a neighborhood, as spot fires can leap from the wildland far into adjacent neighborhoods, starting many houses on fire at once.

Zeke says the LA situation is very different from many areas considered as WUI (Wildland Urban Interface) where people live on larger, one-acre lots with space between houses, like where I live. We can do a lot to harden our landscapes by clearing vegetation from around our homes and using tools like thinning followed by prescribed burning to remove fuel ladders from the nearby forest understory. Strategically placed and maintained ridge line fire breaks are also essential to provide control points when a major conflagration takes place.

Houses are extremely flammable, which is why you sometimes see a torched neighborhood with trees still standing. Trees contain water and do not ignite or sustain fire as easily as most houses. One solution is to pay a lot more attention to building materials and design because there are ways to greatly reduce vulnerability to fire. Here is a picture that was posted on X of a house that survived - mostly likely because of its Passive House design and sensible landscaping, including a brick wall around the perimeter.

Image

A Passive House design that survived the fire. Posted at https://x.com/FuturistArtDeco/status/1878110586040697309

I built a house like this in 2018, where I live now. It uses double walled construction to eliminate thermal bridging, and controlled ventilation which helps keep embers from entering though ventilation systems. I also have a metal roof and fire-resistant cement board siding. And, it cost no more than standard construction. I paid around $150 a square foot in 2018 which is on the low end of construction costs. This kind of house is affordable, durable and energy efficient. What did I give up? Some architectural fripperies that might look pretty but are not very practical. It is the most comfortable house I have ever lived in, and it feels safe. When I had to evacuate in 2020 during the Slater Fire (another horrendous, wind-driven fire), I was confident that my house would survive. Luckily the fire never reached the valley, so my theory has not been tested - yet.

Fire in the West is inevitable, but we can learn to live with fire, not only by building more appropriate houses, but by managing the vegetation around them. There has been a lot of talk about prescribed burning and how it is an important but neglected tool for managing fire-prone vegetation. There are many reasons for why we have not been able to do enough prescribed burning, including lack of funding and the fact that it is a somewhat risky practice that we cannot always control. More effort needs to go into risk management and issues like insurance for when something goes wrong.

But the big elephant in the room blocking the appropriate deployment of prescribed fire is the US EPA. US Forest Service Chief Randy Moore told the US Senate last April that recently tightened air quality standards will make it difficult to permit prescribed fire. Combined with risk management and liability concerns, the agency has reduced its prescribed fire efforts this year.

I have heard many stories like this one from Nate K on X:

   You are 100% correct, it is an ongoing problem. I remember when I fought wildfires back in the '80s, we wanted to come in and do a prescribed burn, this burn had been planned a year in advance, but we were never allowed to come in and do the burn. CA cited concerns over air quality, as if an uncontrolled wildfire was somehow not going to have an effect on air quality. What I recall from the grey beards on the crew, is this was business as usual for CA. It is way past time to get some sane leadership in CA.

Aggressive air quality regulation is shooting ourselves in the foot. Would you rather endure a day or two of smoke from burning natural vegetation or weeks of extremely toxic smoke from burning buildings? This law journal article recommends that air regulators be made responsible for wildfire smoke emissions. This would incentivize them to allow more prescribed burning to prevent greater emissions from megafires.

States are responsible for implementing US EPA clean air rules, and some states are much more aggressive than others. We have had a few problems getting agencies to permit the Ring of Fire biochar kiln, a simple steel container used to convert brush piles into water-holding biochar.

Air Districts in California were initially inclined to outlaw the kilns because they thought they looked like trash burning barrels, but after some meetings with regulators to explain their purpose and functions, they are now permitted. We had more trouble in Washington and had to resort to passing legislation in the state to specifically permit flame cap kilns. Even so, some local air districts in Washington are still reluctant to issue permits for flame cap kilns.

Prescribed burning is an essential tool for fire management, but it also needs to be used judiciously. Not all ecosystems are adapted to frequent fire, and the California Chaparral biome in Southern California is one of them.

Chaparral is a semi-arid woody shrubland with diverse species that is found throughout California, with large concentrations along the south coast. Chaparral burns, but it has evolved to withstand a fire return interval of 30 to 150 years rather than the 10-20 year fire return interval you find in the Sierras and Klamath Mountain Region. In recent decades, fires have burned chaparral so frequently that the natural ecosystem is being converted to non-native grasses and weeds. This denuded landscape is drier and more fire-prone than the chaparral it replaces. According to the California Chaparral Institute, the problem in the chaparral is not fire exclusion. Fire suppression actually saves the chaparral ecosystem because, although chaparral may burn severely every 30 years or so, if it burns more often than than, the new growth cannot reach enough maturity in that time to provide seeds for regeneration, and the native plants go extinct.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I believe that more tending and care of the vegetation is crucial. Well-maintained, strategic fire breaks are also vital for fire suppression. In some places prescribed fire will be the right tool. In others, the best thing will be to remove non-native fire-prone vegetation, convert it to biochar on site in conservation burn piles and kilns, and then replant with more resilient natives.

I believe that biochar could be an excellent tool for regenerating a resilient, drought-resistant chaparral landscape. Starting from the ridge lines down and throughout neighborhoods, crews of workers could be cutting down the eucalyptus, cedars, palms, Pampas grass and other flammable, non-native plants and burning them safely and cleanly in the Ring of Fire Kiln. The resulting biochar is then used to plant more resilient native species. Biochar holds water in soils, ensuring the success of the replanting work. Vegetation is removed and transformed by fire into healthy soil, without the severe impact of intense fire on the ground.


The Ring of Fire Biochar Kiln burns safely and cleanly. The kiln is designed to pull smoke back into the fire for low emissions and efficient production of biochar.

Some communities have already gotten a start. Michael Wittman of Blue Sky Biochar told me that about ten years ago, the city of Thousand Oaks, California planted 6000 tree seedlings with biochar and all of them survived the next several drought years. This is a remarkable result that other communities in the area ought to take note of.

Managing vegetation can no longer be an afterthought for Southern California. Healthy ecosystems hold water in soils, cool the environment and provide countless benefits. But managing vegetation takes a lot of people, everyone from individual homeowners to cities and institutions to land managing agencies. And the actual work takes boots on the ground.

Of all the criticisms flying around, one that really sticks is the recent decision by the city of Los Angeles to cut 17 million dollars from the fire fighting budget. That money could have funded 340 workers at $50,000 a year to clear excess vegetation and turn it into water-holding biochar using conservation burn piles and kilns.

What a waste. We can and must do better

Interesting info, thanks for sharing!

I've been thinking about biochar as forest cleanup tool. Here in the Northeast, the suburban forests aren't in good shape, with lots of dead trees and dead wood. If they could be cleaned up and all that dead wood made into biochar, it'd sequester a LOT of carbon, feed the soil, and allow more space for the remaining trees to grow, allowing them to sequester more carbon. A clean, healthy forest is also a fire-resistant forest.

Of course, it'd take labor. Someone would need to decide this is important enough to pay people to do the work. But it'd employ people, help fight climate change, make people safer, and help forests. Makes too much sense to happen in the current world.

Good point, Mike.  I think one difference is that Eastern forests have rain and humidity in the summer, which would limit fire danger but creates difficulties in avoiding fungus, especially in fruit trees.  Western forests receive very little rain in the summer and have low humidity all summer long, which is why our fire season is primarily in the summer.  This LA fire is an exception to the general rule.  

Many people seem to view  as nature as only real without humans. This reductive dualism is unhealthy.  Humans have been in nature for all of our existence.  Many people are able to act in harmony with nature, only taking what they need.  In East Asia, many fields have been cultivated with fertile soil for thousands of year, to the benefit of mankind and wildlife alike.  In my opinion, the problem is that some people act as if humans live in a sterile vacuum, and nothing we do affects our future or that of other beings where we live. The repercussions of us acting that way lead to lots of cancer, poor general health, auto immune disease, and human and other life misery.  He who dies with the most toys doesn't win.  He just sets up horrible karma for himself and dies miserable and alone.

John S
PDX OR

I'm in Rhode Island, and our summers are usually lush and humid, but we have been having more drought conditions of late, leading to wildfires where there haven't been any in decades. As you can imagine, a somewhat unhealthy forest full of 50 years worth of dead wood burns like crazy.

It's a good point about people being disconnected from nature. I don't often get sick because I'm always turning compost or hanging out in a chicken coop. I wonder if involving high school kids as a summer job creating biochar in the woods would be a way to get them closer to nature. Obviously don't want them working chainsaws or felling trees, but they certainly could be collecting up wood that someone else cut.

That's a good idea, Mike. When I was in high school, I thought I didn't like science.  It was all taught as if it existed only in a textbook.  Later, I realized that nearly all of my hobbies were about science: Growing food, hang gliding, white water kayaking and rafting, bicycling, riding motorcycles, sailing, skateboarding, even baseball.  I know my students listen a lot more if the class sounds like it's about the actual world out there instead of a lesson from a book.  Your idea would get kids to see themselves as practitioners of science rather than people who sit in a chair and listen to someone talk about something called science.  They could even have careers with science.

John S
PDX OR

Yes, lots of really great "stacking functions" to the idea. Now I just need a wealthy benefactor to sponsor it...the one thing it won't do is make money.

one of my pet peeves is asphalt roofing.   I dunno if the fires spread roof to roof or not, but have you ever tasted a glass of rainwater collected off an asphalt roof?   ...don't

if the city is gonna pay for the "vegetation control" tho ... wood chips make really nice compost.    I like the biochar idea too.   I always worry about the wood chip pile catching fire.   that happened on a big pile I heard about ... big mess, EPA fines, yuck.  

At the scale of the Cali situation tho, it seems like excavators digging trenches might be needed.   then there is the smoke issue.   wood burns pretty clean as long as its getting enough Oxygen.   Some sort of forced ventilation might be nice for large scale operation.

...just got weird idea ...maybe orient the burn trenches to harness those Santa Ana winds.   ...or maybe orient the trenches to catch the normal airflow off the Pacific, and burn all year.