“Everything that Can Burn, Will Burn”
A Documentary to Learn From

by Katherine Brenchley
As the wildfires continue to rage in California, it seems the topic is on the minds of many Americans. Glenn Beck recently mentioned a documentary that came out in 2023 that does an amazing job of addressing the $12 BILLION per year (in California alone) “Wildfire Industrial Complex”. It’s called Hotshot and was produced by Gabriel Kirkpatrick Mann.
In the film, Mann follows his wife (a rarity in the firefighter community) and her Texas Canyon Hotshots, along with several other Hotshot teams, for six fire seasons. He captured some remarkable moments during some of the biggest fires in California leading up to 2023 and offers a good education on the lessons he learned and an important warning for states like Colorado.
Delving into the history of fire mitigation and suppression, Mann explains the idea of Fire Debt, which is “the primary driver of fire intensity. And the reason is simple. More fuel, bigger bomb. More carbon grows out of the ground every year. So every year that you’re not burning some of it off, your fire debt increases.” And when that debt comes due, the result is costly.
Mann says, “Global wildfire activity is actually decreasing. It’s only getting worse in the areas that practice aggressive fire suppression, like the American West, but few are eager to tell you the truth. Instead, they tell you the sky is falling like never before and it’s all the faults of our modern…climate.” In fact, Beck pointed out that when Mann presented his documentary to Netflix, they refused to buy it unless he made changes to include a segment about the problem of “climate change”. Mann declined.
The problem isn’t the climate, which is always changing, it is the that we aren’t taking care of our open spaces, something even the Forest Service acknowledges. We’ve likely all seen the smoke and read the notifications about prescribed burns, but I wonder, are we doing enough? Ever walk the Rainbow Trail and notice the standing dead and downed trees and the dead brush too thick to walk through? Consider the Sangres haven’t burned in almost 120 years. It has created watershed issues and a significant decline in the water table. And other areas are much worse than our Sangres, like the beetle kill forests around Steamboat Springs or Wolf Creek Pass.
According to Mann, “Medicinal fire reduces wildfire destruction by 87%. Florida proactively burns more in one year than California has burned in the last fifty years. And guess which state has a wildfire problem?” So called ‘environmentalists’ and politicians have put an essential stop to mitigation and prescribed burns, which directly cause the catastrophic fires like we’re seeing in California.
Check out the documentary and learn about this very real threat: hotshotmovie.com. Then start asking questions – your local Fire Marshall (the Sheriff) might be a good place to start.