Why Is California Burning?: And What Can Be Done

Why is California Burning?In the past 5 years alone, California has suffered thirteen of its 20 most destructive wildland fires, destroying nearly 38,000 homes and killing 143 people. The destruction extends to whole neighborhoods and even entire communities. In Oakland, Santa Rosa, and Paradise, wildland fires have rapidly destroyed thousands of homes in a matter of hours—often with very little or no advance warning—killing scores of residents.What’s causing the increased size and catastrophic destruction of California’s most recent wildfires? Is there anything we can do about it?To answer these critical questions, we must unravel a complex knot of climate change, fire chemistry, electromagnetic physics, fluid dynamics, meteorology, State-mandated housing and fire policies, building practices, economic greed and behavioral norms—all of which entangle us in ever-growing fire danger.Our Climate is ChangingMuch like a persistent fever, California’s increasing average temperatures reflect a troubling imbalance in the climate’s ability to regulate the release and control of heat energy. As more and more heat energy is accumulated and retained in the atmosphere, California's coastal climate becomes increasingly arid. This dries the moisture content of plants and structures alike, increases their combustibility, and creates extreme weather conditions that promote rapid wildfire expansion and spread.Our Changing Climate is Only Part of the CauseWhile extreme weather plays an important role in California’s ever-larger, more frequent fires, such conditions alone do not cause the nearly instantaneous combustion of hundreds and thousands of homes as fire spreads into and through residential neighborhoods in coastal and central California. In Paradise, California the Camp fire destroyed over 18,000 homes and structures in less than 24 hours. Outside Santa Rosa, the Tubbs fire destroyed nearly 5,000 homes in less than 12 hours. And in the Oakland Hills nearly 3,000 homes were destroyed in less than 6 hours.What’s causing this sudden, near total destruction of residential neighborhoods?Our Development Policies and Building Practices Cause Much of the Most Severe DestructionCalifornia’s most recent catastrophic fires leave no room for denial. Homes and neighborhoods built in and among the wildlands are not just “vulnerable” or “exposed” to wildfire; they are in fact an important cause of their own destruction. By placing more and more man-made fuels on hazardous lands in hazardous locations in hazardous ways, we are exacerbating—indeed creating—the very fire hazards that should concern us most.Understanding how and why this is happening, and what combination of factors is causing intense fire to spread rapidly from structure-to-structure and neighborhood-to-neighborhood, are among the most important lessons we can learn from California’s most destructive recent fires.We Need to Recalibrate and Fast A changing climate and a changing fire regime mean we must assess future hazard and risk based on the extreme weather conditions and severe fire behavior now driving the wildfires we are experiencing. Our assumptions and estimates of wildfire hazard and risk are simply no longer valid or applicable.We must acknowledge the rapidly changing reality we now confront, identify what’s causing this change and quickly determine what we can and cannot do about it. We must acknowledge the consequences of policies and practices that are stoking our explosive growth in wildfires and find the public and private resolve to change those policies and practices before they cause even greater ruin in the years to come. Read more