Big news stories almost always contain at least one back story, a telling point that gets little notice at the time but in the long run may be as important as the main story.

This back story is bureaucracy, and the main stories are the evacuation from Afghanistan, wildfires in west and renters facing eviction.

The most dramatic of these stories, if you don’t live up in the mountains in California or Oregon or can’t pay your rent, is the evacuation of about 122,000 people, 5,500 of them American citizens, from Kabul after the Afghan capital city was overrun by the Taliban.

Here’s the statistic that gets me. Of those evacuated, 5,000 left in the first two weeks of August. The other 117,000 fled in the final two weeks. That’s 4% in the first two weeks, 96% in the final two. Why did only 5,000 get out before the Taliban took over? A careful reader of the news probably saw stories about Afghans not having the right documents to be processed, applying for the wrong permit, etc. Bureaucratic sloth.

I heard an Afghan-Canadian describe trying to rescue his cousin, who had helped us in the war. He called the U.S. State Department dozens of times, never got a firm answer. Then, State called at 1 a.m., said to get his cousin to the embassy ASAP. He called his cousin, who went straight to the embassy. It was dark, gates locked. A crowd of others sent by State swelled. Still no one in the embassy. Hours on end. Finally, the Canadian’s cousin gave up, went home and resigned himself to being murdered by the Taliban.

Egads. We knew all along that those who had helped us in 20 years of war had targets on their backs and that the Taliban love target practice. Cut the red tape and get those people outta there. We can stamp their papers later.

When the push came, President Biden sent the Marines and Army, 6,000 strong, to get people onto planes. Our 2021 garrison had been 2,500. The troops, 13 of whom died in the effort, and civilian personnel did much of the work of loading the planes.

Heroic efforts shouldn’t have been needed. From the day the president announced a final pullout, all hands should have been filling in forms and punching tickets, maybe literally.

Other heroes are fighting fires out west that have burned some 7,800 square miles, or nearly twice the combined area of Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties.

A lot of the risks they are taking shouldn’t be necessary. We know how to prevent most wildfires. And the Indigenous people knew how to do it. Difference is, they did it and we don’t, for the most part. Is that hubris leaking from our “superior” European culture?

Fire needs fuel. One way to remove fuel is by setting “controlled burns” to use it up. Example. In 2017, the Rice Ridge fire in the Lolo Valley of Montana burned 250 square miles, four times the area of Fryeburg. This May, The Washington Post showed crews setting small fires along the forest floor, which deprives future flames of fuel, and falling small trees to stop fires from “laddering,” when a small fire climbs a young tree, jumps to a middle-sized tree and then leaps to a mature tree.

Quinn Carver, a district fire ranger there, said controlled burns “reduce the possibility that a wildfire is going to get up in the crowns and run. We want to keep the fires on the ground, where we can directly attack them and put them out.”

Two other ways to remove fuel are to cut and haul away brush and young trees in winter and spring and to harvest the timber, both of which leave less fuel per acre and generate income and fire breaks. Next time I hear a western politician say we should be marketing timber on federal lands, I’ll restrain my environmentalist knee from jerking in reaction.

Here’s another stat that gets me. For a decade, the feds have spent $590 million a year to reduce fuel. But they spent four times more ($2.35 billion) to put out fires. Not to mention that California has appropriated $2.1 billion to put out fires. This year alone.

The only explanation The Post cited for not setting controlled fires in the Lolo Valley was that locals don’t like smoke. The controlled burn in Lolo Valley this spring lasted a day. The Rice Ridge fire lasted a month. Guess which made more smoke.

A single stat tells our final back story. It’s 11%. Congress has appropriated $46.5 billion to help renters who have lost some or all of their income in the pandemic. As of this week, only $5.1 billion has found its way to renters and, thus, to landlords. That’s 11%.

This sloth has pitted landlords against tenants. Landlords have expenses to keep up their properties. And they need enough money to eat and pay for their own lodging.

Biden asked the CDC to extend a ban on evictions, knowing it may be unconstitutional. But he was buying time for the money to get to renters and landlords before the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional. The shame is that states administering rent-relief money by and large did little to disburse it before the court ruled.

Now up to 20 million tenants face life on the streets. And their landlords may, too, if they can’t find paying tenants.

Bob Neal has believed for years that Democrats put too much faith in bureaucracy, which often seems unable to understand when a situation turns from routine to urgent. He can be reached at [email protected].