California Wildfires 2020

Oh boy is it bad.

I thought it was the end of the world in 2018 when I packed my house into a storage unit that I hope is fireproof, and fled the state. I now live in a desert to avoid forests. They scare me in these times of climate change.

In the past I worked as a Fire Information Officer on the huge Yellowstone fires of 1988. Based in a fire camp northeast of Cody, Wyoming, we had five thousand fire fighters and support staff working the Clover-Mist fire complex. The total burned area from the 42 days I spent there was over one million acres of wilderness and national park. It was a grueling tough haul, but we saved a lot of homes in the area.

Now the fires in Northern California make that look like a campfire. Just this week one complex blew up in four days to over 300,000 acres. A far faster and more explosive growth than ever seen there before. The moisture levels in the trees is less than 5% leading to lots of dead wood and undergrowth providing the tinder needed for violent fire behaviors. Fire tornadoes. Scary stuff.

I hope our site members in that area are safe, and prepared to flee at a moments notice. I spent several fire seasons in a row with Armageddon bags packed and in a car ready to escape quickly.



And the thing is, it's not just NorCal - but the entire western United States that is at risk.

Wake up people!

 

And now after just 9 days 1.1 million acres is gone. That is bigger than the states of Rhode Island.


Hope the people in this truck escaped the flames...

Hurricane Genevieve which ran up the coast of Baja California last week has now spawned thousands of lightning strikes into Northern California. This has sparked hundreds of small fires which have a nasty habit of merging into bigger fires.

 

From the Washington Post:

In a typical entire wildfire season, California sees a little more than 300,000 acres burned.

• The LNU Complex Fire had burned 341,243 acres, mainly in Sonoma, Napa and Lake counties, destroying 845 structures and killing 4. The fire was just 17 percent contained, and ranks as the second-largest blaze in state history.
• As of Sunday morning, the SCU Complex Fire was 339,968 acres, having destroyed five structures and threatening 20,000 others. It was just 10 percent contained. The fire is the third-largest in California history and is burning in Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Joaquin and Stanislaus counties.
• Nine of the 10 largest California wildfires have occurred since 2003, but many of them reached their size more gradually than the current blazes, which spread with a speed and ferocity that even veteran firefighters had not witnessed.

 

I met a lot of very interesting people working in firecamp that year. Many from Missoula and California. We had a female hot shot team from Hawaii. Amazon heroes. People from all over the country, literally. It took an amazing team to pull it all together.

My task daily was to interface with the news and prepare the maps and press releases for the Incident Commander. All the major news services were there rooting around for dramatic fire footage.

But seriously, these fires are getting way worse every year.

For a reality check we need to pull back and look at the entire globe.

Someone was right... our house is on fire, the world is burning up right now... it may be too late.

 

I have moved to a safe place, thanks. I feel badly for all the people that can not just up and move easily.