Dbq Essay On Wildfires

The severity of wildfires has risen with wildfires growing larger and causing more damage. These fires can be caused by, natural causes such as lightning strikes or human activities like campfires, discarded cigarettes, intentional arson, or climate change which causes rising temperatures, lack of precipitation, droughts, low humidity, wind gusts, and wind speeds. As wildfires become larger and more destructive it is becoming increasingly difficult to contain our population as we began to have urbanization in rural areas which is a red zone for wildfires hence, preventing controlled fires, causing more fuel to be near Colorado homes which, consequently makes wildfires even more dangerous. To prevent damage and tragedy from Wildfires in Colorado,

Due to the amount of fuel (dry grass, etc.) increasing in the United States, the, “six worst fire seasons since 1960 have occurred since 2000” with it getting worse yearly. Due to the wildfires rising, so does the cost of wildfire protection. The average cost for wildfire protection services has risen from 1960, where the average was, “less than $1 billion annually” to the year 2002, where the average cost was, “more than $3 billion per year.” (Document 2). The result of the amounts of wildfires increasing in power, size, and amount yearly has also increased its budget to more than $3 billion yearly. The government needs to pay this much and more to the wildfire services because they are the ones keeping the fire away from homes as well as going into the fire to save people and animals from it. If we were to not fund these people, the fires would spread uncontrollably with no one to stop them, making them increasingly more dangerous without the wildfire protection group. Subsequently, another organization is helping control wildfires. They do, “Proper wildfire investigation can require crawling on the ground through ash to sift for clues.” which in reality, helps decrease the amount by holding people accountable for their actions. However, due to low funding for this process, “the reports are often initially filled out by volunteer firefighters who have no investigative training and little time to examine why a field burned in the absence of lightning.”(Document 7). The inability o have a real team of professionals look at fires and see what caused them, will result in more fires in the future with no research on how to prevent them. The government should give funding to these people so they can hire professional investigators. In this manner, to be able to find the cause of the fires and create laws