Amid COVID and Wildfires, Farmworkers Have Been Pushed to the Brink

We’ve seen this before — in 2018, when farmworkers in California labored as fires raged in the background, contaminating the air and creating inhospitable work conditions.

Dylan Plummer (op-ed): Industrial forest management and the Holiday Farm Fire

While we all want an easy answer, there is no single cause for the recent mega-fires. We do know that the conditions were ripe to burn: high temperatures, low humidity, severe east winds and a surrounding landscape made up largely of cutover, flammable tree plantations. We also know that runaway climate change is going to exacerbate these types of cataclysmic events into the future.

California braces for power shutoffs and warm, windy weekend

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Firefighters and officials at California’s largest utility company braced for hot, dry and windy weather in northern and central areas of the state this weekend that may fan the flames of several major wildfires or ignite new ones.

The Forest Service Not Only Loses Money Logging, It Makes Fires Worse

In the middle of yet another big wildfire seasons, some reporters finally listened to fire scientists when they quoted people like Dr. Higuera, an associate professor of fire ecology at the University of Montana, stating that climate change is resulting in making big wildfire seasons the new normal.

Global warming driving California wildfire trends - study

Climate change is driving the scale and impact of recent wildfires that have raged in California, say scientists.

Their analysis finds an "unequivocal and pervasive" role for global heating in boosting the conditions for fire.

California now has greater exposure to fire risks than before humans started altering the climate, the authors say.

West Coast Wildfires Underscore Ominous Global Trend: Forests Are Dying

Behind the apocalyptic wildfires in California and Oregon, another ominous trend is creeping across the globe: Everywhere in the world, trees are dying, with the biggest trees going first. Entire forests are threatened worldwide.

Fanning the Flames

“It’s the legacy of forest mismanagement that is fueling the wildfires, along with climate change, which is the ultimate driver,” says Tim Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology (FUSEE).

Fires Turn Brazil’s Tropical Wetlands Into Wildlife Death Traps

Oregon on fire

On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Allie Rosenbluth, with Rogue Climate in Phoenix, Oregon and Dominick DellaSala, with Wild Heritage in Talent, who were both forced to evacuate from their homes in Talent last week. Later we’ll also talk with former wildfire fighter and founder of Fire Fighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, Tim Ingalsbee in Eugene and Eric de Place, with Sightline Institute in Seattle. These conversations are taking place as smoke chokes the Pacific Northwest and massive fires are still burning across the region.

La Californie dans le pie'ge infernal des me’ga-incendies

C'est par un coup de fil de son propriétaire que Delyth Kitch a été réveillée, dimanche 27 septembre, à 6 heures du matin. L'infirmière a enfilé un pantalon à fleurs et un tee-shirt taché, attrapé deux bacs de linge sale, son ordinateur et ses deux chats avant de grimper dans sa voiture. Depuis deux heures, un feu se propageait rapidement dans la forêt à l'ouest d'Angwin, un village de près de 4.000 habitants dans la Napa Valley, la région viticole au nord de San Francisco, déjà ravagée par les incendies en 2017. La sexagénaire a rejoint l'hôtel où elle avait séjourné un mois plus tôt à cause d'un autre incendie avant de se présenter à CrossWalk Church, une église transformée en refuge. « J'en suis à mon quatrième incendie en deux ans », raconte cette ancienne militaire qui garde le sourire « grâce à [sa] foi en Dieu ». En novembre 2018, elle a survécu au feu de Paradise, le plus meurtrier de l'histoire de la Californie , mais a perdu « [sa] maison, [sa] voiture, [son] camping-car et [son] job en un jour ».

Catastrophic wildfires, corporate air pollution, and COVID-19: A collision of crises

Devastating wildfires that have broken out across the western United States, particularly in California, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, which at latest count have claimed 33 lives and 4.6 million acres of land, are increasingly creating the potential for three major crises to collide: wildfires, air pollution and the coronavirus pandemic.

Diary of a Smoke Refugee

It’s been quite a week here in Oregon. I know there are plenty of other horrors happening in the world. The invisible ones are the worst. Like tens of millions of children in the US going to bed hungry every night in recent weeks, or the tap water in Flint and Gaza continuing to be undrinkable, or the many people every night in Yemen and India dying alone at home of disease, knowing it’s pointless to go to a hospital that has no medicine and no equipment. The visible horrors are more dramatic, more newsworthy, and also deadly for some, devastating for many – Sudan and Alabama underwater. Siberia, California, and Oregon on fire.

What the Photos of Wildfires and Smoke Don’t Show You

Over the past few weeks, the West erupted in flames. The lucky among us know this from the news: 3.2 million acres burned in California, 1 million acres burned in Oregon, more than 900,000 acres burned in Washington. Words often fail as those words just failed — to communicate what these fires are actually like up close. Photographs often do better at capturing the drama and emotion. But the pictures that run in news outlets represent a tiny subset of what happens during a wildfire. What we see, and don’t see, shapes what we think about fire. And what we think about fire shapes fire policy. And as the West Coast learned these past few weeks, our fire management policy has left us in a very dangerous place.

How an Oregon Wildfire Became One of the Most Destructive

The Almeda fire left a path of destruction as it tore through the Rogue Valley in southern Oregon. About 24 hours after it started, an estimated 2,350 homes had been left in ashes. We used satellite images, videos and social media posts to track what happened.

Senators Wyden, Manchin, Cantwell introduce legislation to help prevent catastrophic wildfires

U.S. Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., today introduced legislation to help prevent the blistering and destructive infernos destroying homes, businesses and livelihoods and becoming all too common as the climate crisis grows.

Amid Record-Breaking Fires, Debate Over Blame

Between 2001 and 2010, wildfires burned a total of 7.03 million acres in California, according to a recent analysis published in The Los Angeles Times.

In 2020 alone, fires have already burned 3.2 million acres, destroying buildings, breaking records, and killing at least 25 people in the state. The largest of these fires, the August Complex, has already consumed an area bigger than the state of Rhode Island. And the blazes aren’t done yet: Twenty-six major wildfires are currently burning in California.

Fighting fire with fire

"More people means more pressure to suppress wildfires early and often to protect homes, and more barriers to the kind of regular prescribed burning that many parts of California needs," says Timothy Ingalsbee, the executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology.

What factors contribute to deadly wildfires and how should they be managed?

According to the Los Angeles Times, fires are burning more populated areas and damage is increasing. Fire officials blame everything from lightning storms, development in fire prone areas, land management, fire suppression, and climate change. Prior to the colonization of the West, Indigenous tribes burned more than four million acres a year. What will it take to change the way fires are managed in the coming years?

Paper maps, two-way radios: how firefighting tech is stuck in the past.

The scale of the fires and the rate at which they burn make them more dangerous than ever, said Ingalsbee, who has been working with wildfires since the 1980s. “The scale of activity and the incredible speed at which these fires are spreading is beyond what anyone alive today has ever experienced,” he said. “It is clear that this is climate change. The future is now.”

Climate change focus obscures complexities of wildfires

Timothy Ingalsbee, a wildland firefighter and executive director of the Eugene, Oregon-based Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, said “the science is pretty clear there’s no single cause of what’s going on,” though he sees climate change as the primary driver. “It’s why we’ve seen so many big fires on land simultaneously,” he said. “But it’s also an issue of forest management. Not the lack of forest management, but the legacy of forest management.”