McLean, VA – “Firefighters encountering walls of flames backed by 80 mph winds in densely populated
areas of Southern California are facing the new wildfire reality,” said Chief Brian Fennessy of the Orange
County Fire Authority. Chief Fennessy represents the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) on the
National Wildfire Coordinating Group, National Interagency Aviation Committee. After visiting the Eaton
Fire earlier today, he added, “This is destruction on a level I have not witnessed in my fire service career.”
The risk of wildfire is increasing in both significance and prevalence in the United States. Reasons for these devastating megafires include growing urban populations; the decreasing health of our forests; a hotter and drier climate; and an increase in the number and density of homes built in the wildland-urban
interface (WUI). Statistics show a general increase in the size of wildland fires, the number of homes
destroyed by them, and a rise in both the suppression costs and financial losses associated with fires in
the WUI.
“As fire chiefs command some of the largest and most demanding wildfire incidents in our lifetime, and
firefighters face extreme danger while fighting these fires, the IAFC continues to attack wildfire challenges
head-on. The IAFC’s primary focus is to reduce wildfire risk, promote fire-adapted community policies,
and to develop a national, single platform mutual aid system that identifies where fire resources are and
where they need to go to improve response time using real-time decision-making tools,” added IAFC
President Chief Josh Waldo, Bozeman (MT) Fire Chief.