Above: CCC men battling a wildfire. From the CCC brochure, Forests Protected by the CCC (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1938).
America's massive firefighting precedent
Reporting on the recent fires around Los Angeles, a Guardian journalist writes: "And building the infrastructure to sustain the firefighting efforts necessary to respond to megafires would be a massive and unprecedented financial and structural undertaking. But walking through the ash-covered sidewalks in Altadena, past the donation centers that residents have created to help their neighbors, I kept wondering why we haven't seen meaningful progress in how we respond to these fires. It seems as if after each blaze, the strategy is instead to simply hope it doesn't happen again." ("I've covered deadly wildfires for seven years. It doesn't have to be this way." January 18, 2025)
But actually, there is precedent for a massive build-up of firefighting infrastructure in the United States.
From 1933-1942, the CCC employed millions of young men in thousands of camps across the U.S. In August 1935, a high point of enrollment, the Corps had 520,000 young men serving in 2,514 camps (Final Report of the Director of the CCC, 1942, p. 24). If we were to scale that up, proportionate to the U.S. population today, we would have about 1.3 million young Americans (men and women) stationed in about 6,500 camps. (The average number of CCC camps at any given time, though, was about 1,000.)
The CCC constructed 126,000 miles of truck roads to, among other things, allow for better firefighting in remote areas. It built over 3,000 fire lookout towers that helped spot fires more quickly. It built 116 new radio stations (that could work with portable radiophones) and strung 88,000 miles of telephone line to speed up communication (and thus fire response time). The Triple C's carved out 68,000 miles of firebreaks, including the massive 800-mile-long Ponderosa Way firebreak in California. They reduced wildfire fuel on millions of acres of land--"actual removal and clearance of dead and down trees, slash, and other highly inflammable material, which, during the dry season, will burn like tinder" (Forests Protected by the CCC, p. 7). They created over 30,000 wells, reservoirs, springs, and similar water sources and containments areas, many of which could be used as firefighting resources. And of course, they fought fires directly. (Most statistics from the Final Report of the Director of the CCC, 1942, pp. 104-107).
The key point to all of the above is: speed. With camps all over, increased manpower, good training, truck roads, improved spotting, better communication, better removal of wildfire fuel, more water sources, etc, the CCC was able to prevent many potential "megafires" from actually becoming megafires. And with respect to the fires that did become very large, it never hurt to have hundreds of CCC men helping to contain and extinguish it.
Above: U.S. Forest Service photo, from: C.C. Averill, "The Civilian Conservation Corps As a Fire Suppression Organization," in "Civilian Conservation Corps Number," The Black Hills Engineer (The South Dakota State School of Mines), December 1937, pp. 38-47.
Forgotten Success
Did all the CCC work and government expense reduce damage caused by wildfire? Unequivocally, yes! Consider the following examples:
--"The San Francisco headquarters of the National Forest Service said [the Ponderosa Way] firebreak stopped nine out of eleven large fires from spreading into the timbered regions..." ("Ponderosa Way Is Lauded By Officials," The Sacramento Bee, December 28, 1934, p. 7)
--"Late in October 1935, the United States Forest Service announced that forest fires had totaled 9,512 for the preceding nine months, as compared to the yearly average from 1929 to 1934 of 7,601. However, the total area burned was only 192,040 acres, as against a 5-year average of 417,603 acres - or a decrease of more than fifty percent. And this decrease was attributed by the forest service 'largely to the fact that the woods were full of CCC boys'" ("Fires and the CCC," The Minneapolis Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota), December 31, 1935, p. 6).
--"In 1937 the [U.S. Forest] service was able to report that, while the average number of fires were started, the acreage burned totalled less than any recorded year... Because of the large-scale instruction and training in forest-fire fighting, the C.C.C. is able to provide service that a less well-organised group would find impossible" ("Fighting the Forest Demon: Elaborate Organisation in the U.S.A.," 'The Age' Literary Supplement (Melbourne, Australia), May 27, 1939, p. 11).
--"Largely through the fire control improvements and facilities constructed by the CCC it has been possible for the state foresters in the southern region to provide fire control for millions of acres of privately owned timber lands that otherwise would have continued to suffer severe damage annually. At the beginning of the CCC program in 1933, there were 47 million acres in the south receiving forest fire protection. By January 1, 1942, this area had increased to 75 million acres" (Perry H. Merrill, Roosevelt's Forest Army: A History of the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942, Montpelier, VT: 1981, p. 51).
Note: Some New Deal programs worked on private property when there was a heightened public interest, for example, areas threatended by wildfires, dams, and farms suffering from soil erosion.
Above: Other New Deal agencies, especially the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the National Youth Administration (NYA) also contributed to firefighting activities. For example, the WPA had 2,700 projects to build, repair, or improve fire stations. They also built water reservoirs and installed fire hydrants in cities and towns all across the country. The above fire station, in San Diego, was constructed by the WPA between 1935 and 1943. Photo from the National Archives.
A media blackout of New Deal history and information
I watched and read the news about the recent Los Angeles wildfires very closely. Not once did I see or hear the words "Civilian Conservation Corps." It's as if the CCC never existed. And this is par for the course in today's mainstream media, and par for the course for most of the media outside the mainstream as well. And it's not just the CCC that is blacked-out; most other parts of the New Deal are erased as well. For example, when was the last time you heard a host on CNN or MSNBC promote the idea of a new WPA for America's ailing infrastructure? I'm going to go out on a limb here, and assume your answer is: "I've never heard that." And this, despite the fact that the WPA's infrastructure work, alongside other New Deal infrastructure work, is perhaps the largest public works initiative in human history. Indeed, not mentioning the WPA alongside infrastructure needs, or the CCC alongside wildfire solutions, is like failing to mention Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth in a discussion about home runs.
This media blackout is probably due to inadequate teaching of the New Deal in our school systems; but sometimes I do wonder if the rich who control the media are purposefully blacking out New Deal history so there won't be public demand for another New Deal - because another New Deal would require much higher taxes on the rich.
Whatever the case may be, our continued lack of awareness of New Deal history, and the media's continued omission, will ensure further catastrophes, further death and destruction, further loss of natural areas, further loss of affordable and adequate home insurance policies, and further toxic air. If we're ever going to get wildfires (and a multitude of other problems) under control, we're going to need the following: History remembrance, public policy imagination, citizen energy, and a journalism that fosters all three.
