California residents didn't want controlled burns near their homes. Some of those homes then burned in a wildfire.
SALINAS, Calif. – The Carmel Fire rolled up to the vineyards Jack Galante owned up until a month ago.
It burned the edges, sent enough smoke in the air to potentially taint the grapes, then backed off and kept moving, eventually destroying 73 structures and damaging seven, many were million-dollar Sky Ranch homes.
In California, the future is now. It’s grim
We knew this compounded misery could happen in California, but an apocalyptic August filled with rolling blackouts, triple-digit heat, epic lightning storms and coronavirus surge, stirs disbelief. Now the state is on fire. At this point, all we need is an earthquake.
Opal Creek to remain closed as Beachie Creek Fire is 0 percent contained, frustrating some
“People can coexist with fire, and I’m really bothered by these massive closures on public lands,” he said. “It’s an overreaction that further separates people from a totally natural and very beneficial part of the forest. These closures make people scared of all wildfires and fuels this ‘all or nothing’ approach that says, ‘we have to put this fire out or we’ll keep you out.’”
Walbridge fire tests resolve of Mill Creek residents, provides vision of future in forests parched by climate change
Stepping cautiously around the rubble that was his family’s home on Mill Creek Road before it was leveled by wildfire, Dan Grout carried a tub of alfalfa and started calling out for his sheep in a coaxing singsong voice, “Here sheep, here sheep.”
'Cadillac insurance'? Hunt for private firefighters as California burns
Ingalsbee said he is alarmed by the rise of “Cadillac” insurance plans for wealthy people which include bespoke fire emergency response. “It’s for wealthy homes – the insurance company doesn’t want to pay for loss – so it’s cheaper for them to hire a crew and an engine,” he explained. “But they don’t defend the whole neighborhood or city block, that’s not their mission.” Ingalsbee is concerned about a future where access to firefighting resources is increasingly determined by income, or insurance policies. “It comes at the expenses of the public sphere,” he said. “And I don’t think it’s good for our communities.”
The West is burning, so California struggles to find help fighting its wildfires
A June memo from the U.S. Forest Service Chief stressed the policy and put it in the pandemic context, as a strategy to put fires out quickly to limit crews’ exposure to COVID-19 while in the field. That has meant crews are busy on almost every fire, even those that might be observed and allowed to burn. To Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the Oregon-based group Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, it’s a misguided approach. “It’s not humanly possible to put out all fires,” he said. “We need to focus on the fires that really matter, to save lives and homes, and shift resources to them. The future is to safely manage wildfires, to steer them. You don’t need hundreds of firefighters to do that.”
They Know How to Prevent Megafires. Why Won’t Anybody Listen?
“The fire community, the progressives, are almost in a state of panic,” Ingalsbee said. There’s only one solution, the one we know yet still avoid. “We need to get good fire on the ground and whittle down some of that fuel load. You won’t find any climate deniers on the fire line.”
When Disaster Strikes
Oregon is battling several wildfires at the moment caused by a heatwave, none of which are a threat to citizens yet, says Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology (FUSEE). He adds that the status of fires changes daily, so it’s difficult to keep up with them and give an overview.
“Many of these fires that are burning are not ecological disasters. They are in very remote country,” he says. He adds that Gov. Kate Brown declared a state of emergency recently, which allows firefighters to access more funding in fighting the fires.
Is it the Apocalypse? No, but it feels like it.
It’s been challenging for me to think about how to start this newsletter, because things are changing every day, and this is a humble newsletter and not a news organization, and I have a whole job and also am painting my room and things have been so busy. But whenever I glance at the news, my heart breaks for California.
To Manage Wildfire, California Looks To What Tribes Have Known All Along
On a cool February morning, around 60 people gathered in the Sierra Nevada foothills to take part in a ceremony that, for many decades, was banned.
Men and women from Native American tribes in Northern California stood in a circle, alongside university students and locals from around the town of Mariposa. Several wore bright yellow shirts made of flame-resistant fabric. For the next two days, the group would be carefully lighting fires in the surrounding hills.
Hey, California: With wildfires, blackouts, bloody protests, pandemic, could 2020 get any worse?
Historic wildfires. Frantic evacuations. Punishing heat waves. The first rolling blackouts in two decades. And that was just this past week.
In just a week, wildfires burn 1 million acres in California
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Weary firefighters in California raced Saturday to slow the spread of wildfires that burned nearly one million acres statewide in a week and destroyed hundreds of homes ahead an expected weather change that could bring more lightning strikes like the ones that sparked many of the blazes.
Trump on California wildfires: ‘You got to get rid of the leaves’
President Trump renewed his criticism of California’s forestry practices Thursday as wildfires burned up and down the state, saying “many years of leaves and broken trees” are contributing to the disasters.
Northern California ‘drastically short’ of firefighters while an onslaught of blazes rages
SCOTTS VALLEY, Santa Cruz County — By Thursday afternoon, the command post in Scotts Valley remained eerily quiet. Socially distanced folding chairs sat empty in the yellow grass. The grounds, normally bustling with firefighters resting between shifts, were quiet. Everyone was already on the front lines of an uncontrollable wildfire.
In lightning-struck California, the smoke is now scarier than the pandemic
Oakland, California — A wildfire pollution sky is the color of dirty porcelain and it glares, so your eyes hurt even before you look up. It’s the smell that really gets you, though. That and the sour scrape in your throat. From my house in Oakland we can’t quite see the nearest fires—we scan the horizon for them, obsessively, but so far this week we see fire only in the photos and videos coming at us nonstop. Fat black plumes. Burning fields. House walls, county roads, children’s play structures, all engulfed in flames.
'Severe inhumanity': California prisons overwhelmed by Covid outbreaks and approaching fires
California’s raging wildfires have created a crisis at multiple state prisons, where there are reports of heavy smoke and ash making it hard to breathe, unanswered pleas for evacuation, and concerns that the fire response could lead to further Covid-19 spread.