Editor's note: This story was produced as part of a coalition of nonprofit newsrooms in six Western states: CalMatters, The Colorado Sun, Montana Free Press, the Mountain Journal, The Nevada Independent, The Salt Lake Tribune and WyoFile.

Wildfires once ran on deadlines.

After a series of catastrophic blazes in the early 20th century, the U.S. Forest Service made a public effort to show it was able to control and protect the trees under its supervision. In 1933, the agency mandated the "10 a.m. rule," declaring that any wildland fire should be extinguished by 10 a.m. the day after it was reported. Snuffing all fires quickly, the agency reasoned, would prevent disasters such as the Big Burn of 1910. That incident scorched more than 3 million acres along the Montana-Idaho border during a 36-hour rampage, killing at least 85 people and destroying five towns.

Unlike earthquakes or tornadoes, which have no defenses other than to be somewhere else when they happen, wildfires do have weaknesses. Flames can be suppressed with water or retardant chemicals. Wildland fire crews can remove fuels with hand tools and bulldozers. Sometimes they use tactical burn-outs — literally fighting fire with fire.

Unfortunately, these tools tend to obscure some crucial facts about wildfire and sustain strategies that tend to backfire, pun intended.

Tales of heroism following the Big Burn established the Forest Service as a necessary government service. In the analysis of New York Times reporter and author Tim Egan, "To this day, I think that agency owes its existence to this fire." 

But Egan also spotlighted the consequences of that successful "control" of wildfire: "Actively trying to put out every fire left a lot of standing dead timber. So some of the big fires we had in the latter 20th century, including the Yellowstone fires of 1988 and some of the Idaho fires of the late 1990s, and fires still to come, are the result of having timber that probably should have burned every now and then during the seasonal fires."

This became known as the Wildfire Paradox, which Rocky Mountain Research Station scientist David Calkin described in his 2013 article published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

"Using wildfire suppression to eliminate large and damaging wildfires ensures the inevitable occurrence of these fires," Calkin wrote. "Wildfire suppression, effective 95% to 98% of the time, inevitably leads to ecologically significant wildfires with higher intensities and rapid growth that are unable to be suppressed."

Fire researchers were starting to notice the paradox in the 1960s and began implementing "let burn" strategies in remote forests to reduce those fuel loads. By 1971, the "10 a.m. rule" was officially dismissed.

Subsequent decades saw wildfire managers adapting to a range of climate changes, public opinion shifts and funding challenges. A midcentury moist period began drying out toward the tail of the 20th century. The 1988 fires in and around Yellowstone National Park burned 1.4 million acres in one of America's best-known landscapes. Colorado's South Canyon fire in 1994 killed 14 wildland firefighters and prompted major federal fire policy reviews. One of the most far-reaching was the concept of the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, which recognized the problem of increasing private homes in places prone to wildfire.

Several record-breaking fire seasons in the early 2000s made federal budget watchers aware that the Forest Service was spending more to fight fire than almost anything else in its mission, and frequently didn't have enough funding for that. By 2017, federal wildfire suppression costs totaled more than $2 billion a year — six times as much as was spent in the 1990s. The year 2018 produced one of the worst wildfire seasons in history, including the Camp Fire, which killed more than 80 people in and around Paradise, California.

Growing public demand for an effective response to wildfire pushed the Forest Service and Interior fire managers to increasingly firm commitments to full fire suppression. Last June, President Donald Trump issued an executive order Empowering Commonsense Wildfire Prevention and Response, which in its first sentence declared, "The devastation of the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires shocked the American people and highlighted the catastrophic consequences when State and local governments are unable to quickly respond to such disasters." Draft versions of the policy included a return to the 10 a.m. Rule, according to numerous sources in the wildfire community.

"No one was dumb enough to use 10 a.m. policy language, but there was fear of a fire getting away," said Bobbie Scopa, a 45-year firefighting veteran who worked at the local, state and federal levels and now is vice president of the advocacy group Grassroots Wildland Firefighters. "Anytime you light a fire or purposefully don't put out a fire, you own it and you own every bad thing that can happen. You're taking a risk when you do that."

A call for full suppression of all wildfires was also inserted in draft versions of the Fix Our Forests Act, a wide-ranging congressional measure to overhaul timber and wildfire policy. Advocacy group Megafire Action CEO Matt Weiner said putting that into law would have had dangerous consequences.

"We were able to get that out of it," Weiner said. "And long term, we will push aggressively against the 10 a.m. rule being included in statute anywhere. We don't want to just create a suppression super-agency. We want a system that recognizes the need for a lot more beneficial fire on the landscape."

Nevertheless, at a July 22 hearing before the House Subcommittee on Forestry and Horticulture, Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz told congressmembers his agency remained committed to prioritizing aggressive initial attack on wildfire this year.

"Keeping fire small protects firefighters, communities and also saves funding," Schultz said. "I assure you every fire has a full-suppression strategy."