California’s Wildfires Are the Doom of Our Own Making

Matt Simon

Every generation claims an event that defines it more than any other—winning a World War, or landing humans on the moon, or tearing down the Berlin Wall. But at this very moment, we have the dubious honor of living through an event whose impact will span generations: climate change. Never before has our kind faced such omnipresent peril, from supercharged storms to rising seas to drought to crop failure to biodiversity crises. In California, the consequences of this species-defining peril are playing out with unprecedented drama before a populace in a state of downright disbelief. North of San Francisco, 100 mph wind gusts doubled the size of the Kincade Fire to 54,000 acres over the course of a single Sunday afternoon, and the blaze now stands at 66,000 acres. The conflagration has destroyed nearly 100 structures and threatens 80,000 more, forcing 200,000 people to evacuate. Firefighters’ efforts at containment slipped over the weekend from 10 percent to 5 percent, with full containment not expected until November 7—it could well burn all the way to the coast, 25 miles from the source of ignition last Wednesday. Just to the south, a fast-moving wildfire spewed an ominous cloud of smoke that enveloped the Carquinez Bridge. And down in Southern California, the Getty Fire broke out early Monday morning, rapidly consuming 500 acres and threatening thousands of homes. Not far away, the Tick Fire has seared thousands of acres, resulting in devastating scenes of families fleeing for their lives. All told, over a dozen simultaneous fires are turning paradisiacal California into a surreal kind of underworld, threatening hundreds of thousands of lives directly, and indirectly compromising the respiratory health of still more in metropolises downwind, like the San Francisco Bay Area...It never had to come to this. Native peoples in California maintained a healthy relationship with fire—they, of course, didn’t have a capacity to fight natural fires, whereas today we quickly extinguish those blazes to save lives, leading to a buildup of brush that forms one giant tinder box. They also intentionally set fires, harnessing the restorative power of flames to reset ecosystems to feed themselves. Today California isn’t doing nearly as many controlled burns as it should: In 2017, the southeastern US burned 100 times the amount of land as California, even though the region is only five times bigger than the state. The consequence is a state built to burn, and burn explosively...MORE

 While written from a primarily "climate change caused this" viewpoint, the article provides example after example of how current enviro-progressive policy damages the lower income folks the most.

California’s wildfire problem is also laced with injustice. Skyrocketing home prices along the coast have pushed lower-income residents eastward, expanding the urban-wildland interface that is most prone to burning. So it is the poor who end up inhabiting the most fire-prone regions of the state. The 30,000-person town of Paradise was such a place, largely populated by retirees living on fixed incomes. Last year’s wind-driven Camp Fire moved with such speed that many didn’t have the chance to escape, and 86 people perished.
 Income inequality also hampers what is perhaps the most effective solution to California’s wildfire crisis. Scientists know full well how to prevent the next Paradise. People need to invest in non-wood roofs and regularly clear brush around their homes, the former being expensive and the latter being impossible for the elderly without the help of expensive landscapers. For the rich, this is no problem, and indeed it’s been done before: The affluent town of Montecito has steeled itself against wildfire by clearing brush and implementing an exhaustive firefighting plan. Accordingly, while models suggested a worst-case-scenario wildfire could destroy 500 homes in Montecito when the Thomas Fire reached the edge of town in 2017, only seven homes were lost.
...These kinds of power outages further expose inequity in the state. For the poor, food spoiling in fridges comes at an enormous cost. For the sick and elderly, losing electricity sometimes means losing medical devices. Small businesses close and lose income. Gas stations can’t pump gas. Meanwhile, the rich can head west to wait out the flames and smoke.