It’s time to redefine what a megafire is in the climate change era
“The modern era of megafires is often defined based on wildfire size,” wrote Jennifer Balch, associate professor of geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and her colleagues in the new study, “but it should be defined based on how fast fires grow and their consequent societal impacts.” While large fires have a major effect on air quality, ecosystems, and the release of planet-warming carbon, it is fast fires that have the greatest impact on infrastructure damage, evacuation efforts and, ultimately, death tolls.
Wildfires in the West Aren’t Just Getting Bigger. They’re Faster, Too.
When it comes to wildfire threats, “we’ve been so focused on size,” said Jennifer Balch, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. “But what we really need to focus on is speed.”
Many of today’s deadliest fires burn so ferociously that firefighters cannot do much in the moment but get out of the way, Dr. Coop said. “If we’re not prepared for them, they hit us and they hit us hard.”
Forest Service halts prescribed burns in California. Is it worth the risk?
“They’re backed into a corner, but they’ve backed themselves into a corner,” Quinn-Davidson said. “They’re not leading, and it seems like they’re not capable of leading on prescribed fire, given the nature of politics and how they do business — always choosing short-term risk over long-term vision and strategy.”
She calls for a rethinking of how prescribed burns can be applied on federal lands.
“If the Forest Service is consistently not able to do the work, how can we lean on local resources — tribes and prescribed burn associations, for example — to get that work done?”
This data shows just how much faster California wildfires are getting — and why that's so dangerous
Fires are moving quicker in California versus other regions in the West, the scientists found. Between 2001 and 2020, wildfire growth rates increased by 249% across the Western U.S. — defined as a group of 11 Western states — but 398% in California alone. Mountainous regions of Southern California were found to have the largest increase in daily wildfire growth rates in the two decade span.
“This is the California foothills,” Kolden said. “The Coast Range, the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, all through the Central Valley. This is the region where you really have fires being carried by that grass understory.”
Sharp divide in Oregon over bill to step up logging to prevent wildfires
Republicans are backing a proposal to scale back environmental regulations to “thin” forests while Democrats and environmentalists want to fund community preparedness
We are running out of firefighters at a perilous time
In the era of climate change and forest mismanagement, it’s tempting to shrug one’s shoulders and presume that firefighter shortages are inevitable. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Unlike urban firefighters, wildland firefighters are specially trained to take on the wildfires that plague the West. For years, those employed by the federal government have complained about profound levels of attrition driven by poor pay, increasingly exhausting working conditions and a lack of mental-health support. And unless Congress gets it together, a government shutdown on Oct. 1 will cut their wages across the board.
Extreme heat means more wildfires. It’s taking a toll on firefighters.
Extreme heat increases the chances that firefighters can suffer heat exhaustion or heat stroke — which can be deadly.
And as wildland firefighters face longer seasons, they may also face additional health risks down the line.
‘Weather whiplash’ helped drive this year’s California wildfires
“Fire just is. Fire is inevitable,” said Bloemers. “The problem is the vulnerability of the communities that we’ve built in the fire plain, not the fire, because we aren’t going to eliminate the fire from a Western fire-prone, fire-adapted landscape. It is a natural reality.”
A study Bloemers co-authored emphasizes improving resilience in at-risk communities. Modifying structures and landscaping around communities can make them less likely to burn in a wildfire, and can reduce the potential for ignitions in conditions in which a fire could be difficult to control.
Oregon House Republicans target forests for wildfire reform as grass and shrubland burns
About 1,650 wildfires this season have burned a record of more than 1.5 million acres in Oregon. But about 75% were not in forests but across grass and shrubland in eastern Oregon, according to the Wildland Mapping Institute.
“It’s true that better forest management is one piece of the puzzle. At the same time, it’s vital to base wildfire strategies on careful thinking and good science. Broad-brushed claims that more commercial logging will reduce our risk don’t clear that bar,” Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, and chair of the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire, said.
The wildfire risk in America’s front yards
A 10-year
from the Forest Service calls for removing much more of this combustible kindling, reducing flammable fuels on up to 50 million acres of land. But communities will continue burning if leaders don’t also find the money and political will to retrofit older homes, and rethink where and with what new homes are built. “We assume that we can place our house in an area of high risk, and that firefighters will come in and risk their own life to protect our home,” Barrett said. “You would never assume that level of home protection from any other hazard, particularly from earthquakes or floods or hurricanes.”
The electric grid is a wildfire hazard. It doesn’t have to be.
Shareholder pressure on electric utilities has prioritized profits over maintenance that can help reduce wildfire risk. This deferred maintenance over the decades means old frail utility poles are more likely to fall and outdated, weakened wires are more apt to snap during storms.
As millions of acres burn, firefighters say the U.S. Forest Service has left them with critical shortages
The agency recently said that it had reached 101% of its firefighter hiring goal for 2024, but those on the front lines say the agency is understating how badly depleted their ranks are, especially for experienced firefighters.
Watch how a father’s risky plan to save his house from the Park Fire paid off
As Amy and their 19- and 22 year-old sons wrangled the family pets and packed two cars with go-bags and supplies, Mike put into action a plan he had developed for just this situation: an extensive fire defense system he created to protect his home from a wildfire’s destructive blaze.
A wildfire is bearing down on a tiny town. And hardly anyone is leaving.
The Pioneer Fire started nearly two months ago and at that time it was 10 miles from Stehekin. Now it’s only a mile and a half away, after burning through more than 33,000 acres. A week ago, authorities issued a Level 3 evacuation order for the roughly 100 people who live in Stehekin, instructing them to “go now.” Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee (D) urged residents to leave in a video message this week, saying that “their presence make it much more difficult for our firefighters to fight the fire.”
But Davis and many of his neighbors have chosen to stay, and some intend to fight the fire themselves.
Forest Service, environmentalists fight over how to save sequoias from wildfire
A battle is brewing between several groups over how best to protect giant sequoias from wildfires and climate change, even leading to a lawsuit.
As wildfires rage, forecasters test new way to warn people near flames
Improved warnings are important but could also create a false sense of security among emergency responders, said Sarah McCaffrey, a retired research social scientist with the U.S. Forest Service.“ Most of the fires that are deadly — they’re deadly because from the moment of ignition to when they affect a lot of people is a very short time period,” she said. “There can be an underlying assumption that time will be on the side of the people making the warnings.”
There is also no guarantee people will receive a warning, even if one is issued quickly.
Millions of Californians live near oil and gas wells that are in the path of wildfires
“Wildfires are increasingly burning in oil fields over the past four decades, and it’s a trend that’s very likely to continue throughout the rest of the century, including near some densely populated parts of California,” González said.
The researchers also found that exposure to oil wells in the path of wildfires was unevenly distributed. Black, Latino and Native American people faced disproportionate risk.
Artificial intelligence can be our first line of defense in limiting the effects of wildfires
“The AI platform is a new tool in the toolbox and allows data to drive firefighting decisions, which saves lives, protects habitats, and infrastructure. In its first season, the AI platform was utilized in all 21 CAL FIRE Dispatch Centers and detected over 1,200 fires across California, beating 911 call reporting over 30% of the time.”
By burning down buildings, insurers want to change how they’re built
The message to homebuilders is stark: Homes in certain parts of the United States must now be constructed with wildfires in mind, or they most likely will not be insured, which would mean they couldn’t be bought with a mortgage.
As wildfires rage in Oregon, tree-sitters continue protests to protect old growth trees
Timothy Ingalsbee, the executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology said sensational media coverage of wildfires creates and instills fears of a natural process. Activists said the timber industry and politicians bank on these worries.
“Scientists call it a natural disturbance but I prefer to call it an ecological stimulus,” Ingalsbee said. “Fire is nature’s recycler. It helps create a diversity of habitats.”
Ingalsbee said fires burn down small trees while larger and older ones are able to resist the same type of damage. Timber companies, on the other hand, cut down the larger trees to maximize profits, leaving behind younger and highly flammable forest.