Fire and People

People can and must find ways to adapt to and live with some fires and smoke. In this chapter of our book, Fire Science: From Chemistry to Landscape Management, we illustrate how the fire science learned in earlier chapters, along with economics and other social sciences, can be applied to fire fighter safety, and to protect people, their homes, and the communities they live in from both fire and smoke. We discuss the costs of suppression and the values of ecosystem services affected by fires positively and negatively, and vulnerability and resilience to the changes wrought by fires. We emphasize the effects of smoke on human health and link this to what we learned in earlier chapters about fire chemistry and fire behavior. Globally, fires and their smoke have affected nearly 6 million people, caused more than 1900 deaths, and cost more than US$52 million from 1984 to 2013, with indirect effects such as smoke and social disruption costing 2–30 times more than direct fire suppression. We urge people in local communities, regions, and nations to find ways to become fire-adapted. Learning together through collaboration is useful, as is gaining from experience, traditional knowledge, and western science to decrease vulnerability and increase the resilience of social-ecological systems to fires.