Leadership void forcing South Dakota counties into reacting to wildfires instead of prescribing burns

If you live in the wildland-urban interface government can't always protect you from your own stupidity. Volunteer fire departments are irreplaceable as first responders to unexpected blazes and policy makers should convince Congress to make sure the resources are there to sustain rural firefighters. 

Today and tomorrow are perfect days for emergency managers and well-funded local VFDs in South Dakota to be burning road ditches creating buffers for later in the developing wildfire season. But that won't happen because South Dakota has no effective leadership and it’s cheaper to bill the feds after a wildfire than it is to conduct fuel treatments and more expeditious to litigate forgiveness than to ask for permission. Just a hundred and fifty years ago bison and cervids would be clearing the grasses that drive prairie fires.

91% of fire departments in the chemical toilet are staffed by volunteers in a state where old Republicans are giving up the ghost yet Governor Kristi Noem is boasting she has recruited some 600 white supremacists to be cops but won't commit to prescribing burns or bolstering fire departments.

The cause has yet to be determined for the Schoeder Fire outside of Rapid City but local departments are already pleading for the tools to react to an impending outbreak of wildfires.

Learn more about red state failure at KEVN teevee.

Wannabe queen of the know-nothings. https://t.co/yWsMbTOAFW

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) April 14, 2021