Current Issues: Fire in the South's Urbanizing Landscape

Large fires in various parts of the nation during the 1980s to the present, including the 1985 and 1998 fires in Florida, highlighted the complex new requirements for managing wildfire in the nation’s urbanizing landscape.  Lawmakers and land managers try to address the new issues through policy.  The term Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) became widely applied to areas in which home development in particular was juxtaposed or interspersed with flammable wildland vegetation. The Firewise movement emerged, and today the movement engages homeowners and local communities in designing and retrofitting developments to be compatible with the inevitable WUI fires.  Homeowners are encouraged to share the responsibility for structure protection by designing fire-compatible communities, building with appropriate fire-resistant materials and by providing defensible space around valuable structures.

Social factors in the South continue to constrain prescribed burning throughout the region.  Private and public land managers face a landscape of increasing complexity as development continues and as air quality regulations bring additional constraints to broadcast burning.  In the past, natural landscapes swept by frequent, low intensity fires were the norm in southern landscapes.  Today managers face the prospect of disconnected patches of overgrown habitat existing next to areas needing effective and immediate fire protection to save human health and property.

Portions of the South are popular retirement destinations, and as such involve added fire safety concerns.  Elderly citizens may have less mobility and greater sensitivity to smoke, increasing the need for effective fire management in areas where the landscape burns frequently.  Retirees and immigrants to the South from other parts of the nation may be unfamiliar with fire and fire prone vegetation growing near their homes, such as palmetto and gallberry that are native to the region.  They may also be unfamiliar with techniques for driving safely during wildfire events.  The probability of smoke-related accidents and drivers unfamiliar with negotiating smoke-covered roads require special instruction during wildfire events.