Fighting fires with manufacturing ingenuity, resources

In addition to COVID-19, the U.S. is facing an onslaught of natural disasters in 2020. Wildfires are subject to some forms of prevention, and folks in metal fabrication and other manufacturing sectors might be able to help. Getty Images

Dealing with a global pandemic is bad enough, but this past summer natural disasters throughout the U.S. compounded the misery.

On the West Coast, more than 100 fires have burned nearly 5 million acres, generating so much smoke that it can be seen on the East Coast. We’ve had so many hurricanes this season that we’ve gone through most of the alphabet (Hurricane Sally is the 18th of 2020). In the Pensacola, Fla., area, Hurricane Sally dumped 30 in. of rain—in a typical year, this is four months’ worth of rain—in four hours. Almost 60% of the continental U.S. is in some stage of drought. On August 10 and 11, a derecho storm generated 120-mile-per hour winds that knocked down crops and trees in a wide swath of Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois. It spawned more than a few tornadoes and left little undamaged in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where the wind speed was estimated to have reached 140 MPH. The toll is extraordinary, and the full extent of the damage many never be known.

Of these four forces of nature, just one is subject to some measure of prevention, containment, and suppression. The obvious questions pertain to fire prevention: How can it be done, how much can be done, and at what cost? Relying solely on fire suppression can make things worse by extinguishing the flames before much of the old, dead material burns up, allowing it to accumulate. Active forest management programs rely on some combination of pruning and felling trees, clearing brush, and starting controlled fires.

The three main states where these fires are concentrated include 318,500 sq. mi. of land area; of that, the federal government owns about 45%, or 144, 371 sq. mi. It doesn’t take a leap of faith to conclude that the federal government should pay for 45% of the forest management in this vast area.

And there’s the rub. The U.S. government has not been spending money like a drunken sailor (who tend to pay cash and head back to the ship when they’re running low) but it has been spending money like a government. Now at $22.8 trillion, the debt compared to gross domestic product (GDP) stands at 107%.

What to do? First, have a few people in manufacturing take a look at forest management techniques. My guess is that some of the very innovative people in this industry would devise a few new tools to help. We’ve all seen National Guardsmen and volunteers filling sandbags when flooding is eminent, haven’t we? From an efficiency standpoint, using a common shovel to fill sandbags is an unmitigated disaster. A short search on YouTube reveals all sorts of clever sandbag-filling devices, some of which are many times faster than a shovel, some of which came directly from metal fabricators who figured they could build better mousetraps.

Second, enlist the help of AmeriCorps. Never heard of it? Imagine if the Peace Corps worked right here in the U.S., and you understand the role of AmeriCorps. The organization takes on all sorts of roles, many involving emergency mitigation, so AmeriCorps volunteers are well acquainted with long days and hard work. And for young adults carrying some student debt, a two-year stint in AmeriCorps can help with student loan relief.