California Fires, Climate Change, and Poor Building Practices
There are now over 500 fires in California, covering over 1,000,000 acres since July, or about 1,600 square miles, which is a 40 mile square. All of California’s firefighting equipment is involved, with 12,000 firefighters working 72 hour shifts. The two largest fires are second and third in the all time fire area list. More lightning is expected on Sunday, tomorrow.
I am not a fire expert, but there are some obvious physics of global and land warming, and urban encroachment, which exacerbate the fire risks before and during the fires.
While the global average warming is 1 degree C or 1.8 degrees F, that includes 70% of the surface as slower to heat ocean. Land warming has been 2.0 degrees C since 1880, or 3.8 degrees F. The US has warmed 2.3 degrees F.
California is in a three week heat wave, and Northern California has moderate drought in the Eastern Sierra Nevada, and severe drought in the Western ranges.
The warming has also allowed pine bark beetles to prosper, since it takes several nights of freezing to kill them under the bark. The beetles kill the trees in areas, leaving large tinder patches.
To the heating, the heat wave, the drought and the beetle destruction, add the unusual 11,000 lightening strikes last weekend for ignition.
The urban encroachment makes very difficult work for firefighting and firefighters. Their main goals are to evacuate people and protect property. But forest and hillside building has narrow two or even one lane roads, and towns with minimal one road exits. This is made worse by the Obstinates, who don’t evacuate when required, and can draw down water resources as well as requiring extra rescue trips that clog roads.
Any house on a hillside has a view. But with Superegos, that it not good enough. You have to level and build on the cliffs and the ridges, and the richest estates level hilltops. Fires, of course, burn uphill. In a lighting storm, the tallest pointed pine trees on hilltops, cliffs and ridges are the natural lightening rods. Even if they catch fire, they are already on top, and do not go up hill. For fire fighters, instead of just blocking fires from burning downhill, they have to wind up to the cliffs, ridges, and hilltops to protect the properties there. Even if communities can not prevent such building (they can’t), the insurance companies can stop insuring such hazardous building. Investors (pension funds), and the common insured paying higher rates to cover such hazardous buildings, are the voting masses of our society.
The town of Paradise was a tragedy that just grew over decades. It was in the wrong place: the side of a canyon which was a Santa Ana wind tunnel. It had narrow roads, and the town had restricted travel to single lanes each way. It would have taken 5 hours to evacuate it. Unmanaged growth, and despite effective evaluations, no imposed modifications.
57% of the forests in California are National Forests, not under State management. They are seriously underfunded, and the President was totally unaware that these were under his management. The forest urbanization has prevented natural burnings to periodically naturally clean up the combustible parts of the forest. After burning, the forests naturally reproduce. In older areas, the houses are romantically buried within the surrounding trees, with no clearance.
While the fires have attacked some redwoods, they have thick bark, and have managed to survive for thousands of years.
In trying to consider fire safety first, you have to actually fight the people who are already grandfathered in, very wealthy and influential homeowners and developers, environmentalists who put fire safety last, and every few years, administrations who simply want to exploit forest resources. Oddly enough, about 1,300 of our firefighters are inmates who are sent to defend these valuable properties.
