You cannot prevent fires. You can only prevent small ones becoming big ones (Taylor 1989). I think what Taylor (1989) meant to say was that 'You cannot necessarily prevent all fires from occurring. You can only possibly prevent some small initiating fires from becoming big fires'. While every human-caused wildfire should technically be regarded as a fire prevention failure, it's unlikely that wildland fire management agencies will ever completely eliminate both the sources and resultant ignitions associated which such fire occurrences. Complete and total fire exclusion is thus not a realistic goal, especially when we throw lightning (i.e., natural causes) into the mix. Wildland fire prevention has traditionally focused on the three E's-education, enforcement and engineering (Riebold 1957) with most of the effort being devoted to the first one (Doolittle et al. 1976).