As normal as California wildfires might be for late summer,
their extent and devastation feel particularly dramatic this year.
We've seen endless areas of uncontrolled fires on the news,
reports of orange skies and polluted air in the cities,
or people losing everything before their very eyes.
And it's true, with more than a month of fire weather still ahead,
the 2020 fire season has broken almost every record.
The amount of cumulative fires have been increasing almost every year
for the last decades.
2020 shows there's no sign of slowing down.
On the contrary, we're seeing a disastrous rise,
by far surpassing all records.
But what's the reason for this trend?
Who is responsible?
The answer:
we are.
Now, our first step should actually be to stop calling them wildfires.
Why?
Well, many people would initially come to the conclusion
that the climate crisis is behind all of this.
But that's only true to an extent.
Yes, global warming is causing temperatures on our planet to rise,
drawing more water out of the soil to evaporate,
and so making trees and other plants more susceptible to catching fire.
As the climate has warmed,
the fire season, which traditionally peaks in late summer,
has been extending,
sometimes starting as early as spring and lasting into late fall.
But two other major factors come into play as well.
When you take a look at the map of this year's wildfires in California,
comparing them to previous years, you'll see they seem to follow a pattern.
This is no surprise if you compare this map to the state zones,
assessed as high fire hazards.
All the recent wildfires lie pretty much in this area.
The problem comes in, when we involve a third map.
This shows the projected change in housing density
for California until 2050.
Up to 1.2 million new homes are expected to be built
in the highest wildfire risk areas.
Most construction occurs on the outskirts of cities,
on the southern coast.
This includes Los Angeles or the Bay Area,
but also the elevations to the east of the cental valley.
Like greater Sacramento.
California's housing crisis, and extremely high cost of living,
is driving people away from the cities and into fire-prone areas.
People are literally moving into harm's way.
This practice is known as the wildland-urban interface.
Between 1990 and 2015,
32 million new homes were built in these areas.
And estimates forecasts that California's exurban land classes
will replace nearly 12 million acres
of wild and agricultural land before 2050.
Although it might sound a bit counterintuitive at first glance,
this is where the second main issue comes in.
In order to protect populations from wildfires,
the U.S. has developed an overly-effective firefighting infrastructure
over the last century.
Professionals, working hard to extinguish wildfires as fast as possible,
left forests with plenty of fuel for incredibly destructive blazes.
Small fires are part of a natural cycle,
that helps the environment regenerate itself,
by killing sick plants or harmful insects,
and removing dead plant matter from the forest floor.
The ashes left behind by a fire are rich in nutrients,
that then help the new plants to grow.
Small, controlled fires
can play a vital part in helping an ecosystem renew itself.
Fire itself can limit the spread of other fires.
In the wilderness areas, fire will burn up to an old fire scar and go out.
So we create what looks like a big quilt,
a big giant mosaic across the landscape.
Small fires, big fires, all create barriers to larger fire spread.
So, it actually creates a healthier system,
by having smaller, more frequent fires
than larger high intensity fires we see on the news.
Forest fires can also create habitats for life,
that has adapted to the harsh environment
of a post wildfire ecosystem.
Several types of Pines in the American West
have developed serotinous seeds,
which require an environmental trigger to open.
These seeds only open when they're exposed to very high temperatures,
such as those from a forest fire.
When the pinecones open,
the seeds are released and fall into the carbon-rich soil.
It's not just plants that have adapted to forest fires.
The black-backed woodpecker mainly chooses
to live in areas recently swept through by wildfires.
They make their nests by drilling holes in the trees, burned in the fire,
eat insects left exposed on the branches,
and spread leftover seeds from the trees they're nesting in.
And as soon as this woodpecker leaves its nest for good,
animals like chipmunks take it over as a ready built home.
However, with recent urban development,
it's becoming harder to implement controlled burns,
mostly due to smoke and concerns about fire ignition,
through drifting embers near residential areas.
A century of federal policy to aggressively extinguish all wildfires,
urban expansion into fire-prone areas and changing climate conditions
have created the perfect storm.
The situation isn't expected to end anytime soon,
meaning that the United States needs to rethink its wildfire policies.
Tighter restrictions on future housing development,
more prescribed burns and managed blazes
would allow healthy fires and the creation of fire-adapted communities.
California has no choice but to learn to better co-exist
with wildfires in an increasingly flammable world.