Organized fire service in the United States started in New Amsterdam in 1648, which was necessary since fire incidences increased at an alarming rate. The convolution of modern and industrialized life has brought about the increase and improvement of the skills needed in firefighting technology. The firefighting department is one of the three primary emergency services which has proven to be vital within the society.
A contemporary fire scene is as a result of some narratives which include; burning of living biomass and burning of fossil biomass (Pyne, 2010). In most cases, the developed world like America is within the industrial regime where individuals have become brokers of burning by first controlling ignition in competition with lightning. Industrialization happened within the last century, but before then, fire incidences still took place, especially in the Southeast parts of America. Almost all these fires come up due to agricultural usage such as land clearing. When people interfere with original dimensions and then later create easy means to start fires, then every often will there be fire outbreaks in every area since human beings are not responsible enough for the nature around us.
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Apart from individuals becoming careless with nature and fire, there are other reasons which may make an area fire-prone. For example, American West had an experience called the imperial narrative where state-sponsored conservation policies experienced a landscape and fire that became emptied since the indigenous people had left their homes due to war, diseases and forced relocations. The federal government wanted to establish public lands which excluded agricultural activities, and as a result, they created a habitat for free-burning fire.
Fires in America have happened over centuries and resettling of these fire zones, and later industrialization has not stopped the fires. The government has come up with improved technologies to prevent the fires or a better way to deal with the flames when they happen, yet they remain a menace to the country. The people who understood how to manage the fires in traditional ways are no longer involved in the conversation, but if included, they would probably come up with better ideas to keep the fire away since they survived in the early days even without the modern technology.
Burning houses have also grabbed the public and political attention, and they mainly occur in abandoned agricultural lands as well as open preserves. The hazards posed by these fires reoccur as a result of unmanaged or unsupervised growth of natural vegetation and the uncontained increased growth of far-flung suburbs (Pyne, 2010). The wild and the urban have become a threat to each other which is an alarm to the American landscape; when they happen to collide, they people should not be surprised by the occasional explosion they tend to cause.
Seen in a firefighter’s perspective, America seems to be recolonizing its former rural landscape. In the initial colonization, the fires since the wholesale clearing of farmers, homesteaders, ranchers, and gardeners littered the lands with combustibles. The matter is such a contrast now since people fail to clear the combustibles and then go ahead to construct wooden houses. The new colonists are exurban individuals who have urban values which are most likely funded by an urban economy.
In conclusion, instead of living off the land, people are living on the land, and this makes Americans remain ignorant and confused about the human-made fire ecology. We need to understand what happens in one part of an area affects fire in a different region in America. Human beings should start looking at themselves as active agents of fire; then we might be in a position to decrease or stop fire outbreaks altogether.
References
Pyne, S. J. (2010). America's fires: a historical context for policy and practice . Forest History Society.
