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.
More than 500,000 People in Oregon Flee Wildfires
Oregon’s wildfire crisis has crept up as a surprise to me. No good reason why, as I’ve been keeping on top of the California armageddon, with three close friends who are affected – two who live in San Jose and one who grew up in Atascadero. He no longer lives there, but his mother and two sisters and their families do.
Video shows Clackamas County deputy fueling 'antifa' arson rumors
PORTLAND, Ore. (PORTLAND TRIBUNE) — A video circulating on Twitter and YouTube shows a pair of Clackamas County sheriff’s deputies engaging with a member of the public and telling them anti-fascist activists have been starting fires in the area.
California burning: Debate rages amid smoke and flames: How do we stay safe?
Smoke-choked air hid the sun in our Mountain Community’s Labor Day week as the massive Creek fire raged across Fresno County 200 miles to the north. It pushed billowing smoke clouds south while trapping hundreds of campers who had to be evacuated by National Guard helicopters. By Monday the U.S. Forest Service took a nearly unprecedented action. They closed eight of California’s nine national parks, effective immediately.
Why firefighting alone won't stop western mega-fires
It's become a near-annual occurrence. A massive wildfire forces thousands of people to flee their homes. Exhausted firefighters warn of its speed and intensity. Smoke smothers cities and states hundreds of miles away.
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.
Pelosi ridiculed from left and right after saying ‘angry Mother Earth’ caused California wildfires
Top US Democrat Nancy Pelosi was bombarded with online mockery after saying that massive ongoing wildfires raging in California were the result of “Mother Earth” and her displeasure with humans.
Roaming Charges: Under Furious Skies
+ I’m writing this late on Thursday afternoon. The sky is the color of rust. Neil Young’s live rust. The sun is a crimson orb that occasionally bores through the enveloping pall, then recedes. We are under evacuation orders. The fires which have steadily gnawed their way toward us since Monday have reached the upper forks of our canyon outside of Oregon City. We’ve done a quick triage of our belongings. Stuffed the cars with clothes, diapers, food, photographs, books, a couple of small paintings by friends. So much stuff, accumulated over 4o years. What was it all for? There’s the smell of burning trees, cars, houses in the air. Even the evacuation center is now under evacuation.
A tale of two fires
Coast Range Radio’s interview with Timothy Ingalsbee, Ph.D. We discuss the new messaging guide - Incendiary Rhetoric: Climate Change, Wildfire, and Ecological Fire Management from Tim’s organization, Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics & Ecology. To find the guide and to learn more visit their website, fusee.org.
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.
As Fires Rage, California Must Stop Building in Burn Zones
These blazes have scorched millions of acres. They’ve destroyed homes, shut down freeways and forced massive evacuations. Californians are dying in these fires while thousands of first responders risk their lives to fight back the flames.
The Bear Fire ‘smoldered for weeks,’ then destroyed a town. Was Forest Service slow to fight it?
But earlier this year federal officials announced that because of the risk of COVID-19 to firefighting crews, the Forest Service would revert back to fighting every fire that ignited to try to keep them small, said Timothy Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter who’s the executive director of Firefighters United for Safety Ethics and Ecology. He said it didn’t matter. This year’s wildfire season left the Forest Service’s firefighting resources stretched so thin that they are having to “triage fires.” “There’s so much wildfire activity across the whole West Coast,” he said
‘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.
Wildfires: Can we adapt to live with them?
This time last year, as Australia emerged from winter to spring, the first flames of the devastating season that has since become known as Black Summer, had already begun burning their way through areas of bushland.
Although at the time long-term drought had rendered the ground and vegetation across much of the country kindling dry, and though scientists were warning that conditions were ripe for danger, the scale of the inferno to come would have been hard to predict.