Wildfire resources run thin as firefighters struggle to ‘contain one before another erupts’
Justin Silvera came off the fire lines in Northern California after a grueling 36 straight days battling wildfires and evacuating residents ahead of the flames. Before that, he and his crew had worked for 20 days, followed by a three-day break.
Oregon’s historic wildfires: unusual but not unprecedented
The most common word being used to describe Oregon’s ongoing wildfire cataclysm is “unprecedented.”
That’s certainly the case in modern recorded history when it comes to the sheer number of conflagrations and megafires that erupted starting Labor Day. A powerful windstorm caused fires to race through Oregon’s typically more fire-resistant forests on the west side of the Cascades for 72 hours.
California’s wildfire smoke plumes are unlike anything previously seen
More than 3.1 million acres have burned in California this year, part of a record fire season that still has four months to go. A suffocating cloud of smoke has veiled the West Coast for days, extending more than a thousand miles above the Pacific. And the extreme fire behavior that’s been witnessed this year hasn’t just been wild — it’s virtually unprecedented in scope and scale.
Mastering fire with fire
This is the reality now while there's increasing wildfire activity, and we've done and tried our best to change nature to our liking. It's time that we start getting a grip on our own behavior and the way we live our lives, you know with these flammable buildings fueled by all this fossil fuel burning, and that's something that we can control. We can solve for those issues and those problems. Once we do that, once we protect communities from fire, then we can start talking about how to manage and restore ecosystems with fire.
Will today's conflagrations change US wildfire policy?
As vast and fast wildfires continue to spread almost unprecedented destruction across America’s three Pacific states, fire scientists, meteorologists and journalists have begun comparing the conflagrations to one firestorm 110 years ago.
A climate reckoning in fire-stricken California
SAN FRANCISCO — Multiple mega fires burning more than three million acres. Millions of residents smothered in toxic air. Rolling blackouts and triple-digit heat waves. Climate change, in the words of one scientist, is smacking California in the face.
‘Unprecedented’ Pacific Northwest fires burn hundreds of homes
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Winds gusting as high as 50 mph (80 kph) fanned dozens of catastrophic fires wildfires Wednesday across a large swath of Washington state and Oregon that rarely experiences such intense fire activity because of the Pacific Northwest's cool and wet climate. Oregon's governor said hundreds of homes were destroyed.