Learning to Live With Fire

Over the course of three days alone, San Francisco has already faced down 600 wildfires. Emergency workers in California hurried to evacuate rural areas of Northern California on Thursday. They warned residents that the high winds that propel the out-of-control blaze could become stronger in the coming days.

The Kincade fire, the largest fire to ignite this week, raged through the steep canyons of northern Sonoma county, racing through 10,000 acres within hours of igniting. The wind gusts made it worse, as it propelled the fire through forests like blowtorches, which left firefighters with little opportunity to stop, or at least slow down, the fires.

Aerial footage showed homes engulfed in flames. But beyond the destruction, which appeared limited on Thursday to a relatively small number of buildings, hundreds of thousands of people were affected, both by the fires and a deliberate blackout meant to prevent them. Schools and businesses closed and thousands of people evacuated their homes.

It has been three consecutive years of record-breaking fires, and researchers say that these are to continue as the world warms. In light of all this, how, then, should we live in an ecosystem that is primed to burn?

More of this over at The New York Times.

What are your thoughts on this one?

(Image Credit: Noah Berger/ Associated Press)


As a Northern California (Sacramento) resident, my first thought on reading the story here was "Ummm...there is no way that San Francisco has faced 600 wildfires - perhaps the 'greater San Fransicso Bay Area', but even that would take a pretty generous definition. Then I clicked through to the actual NY Times article, which reads:
SAN FRANCISCO — Facing down 600 wildfires in the past three days alone, emergency workers rushed to evacuate tens of thousands of people in Southern California on Thursday..." (italics mine).
So...'San Fransicso' is part of the dateline, and the sentence that was mis-quoted refers to fires in Southern California.
The story itself is an interesting read, but Neatorama needs to do a much better job of actually reading the content of news stories before reposting them.
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I've lived for over 50 years in an ecosystem primed to burn. It's not been an issue until recently, and the blame goes squarely to PG&E. With the power shutoffs, PG&E has admitted the lines and infrastructure are faulty. Now, they're telling is it will take 10 years to fix this issue.
In the meantime investors were paid out 2.5 billion dollars, and the CEO Bill Johnson made $8.1 million. How the State of California can claim to care about its citizens and allow this farce to continue is nothing short of greed and hypocrisy.
There is hope, San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo has proposed leaving PG&E and turning operations over to a "customer owned" utility. No more profits, no more investor and CEO payoffs, this would concentrate on repairing the failed infrastructure, wiring, and put emphasis back on safety where it should have been all along.
BTW -- we're hearing preliminary reports that the Kincade Fire was caused by PG&E lines...again. This time they shut down the business and residential low voltage lines, but left the high power transmission lines running.
Time for the California Public Utilities Commission to step up...are you part of the problem or the solution? So far, it seems you're part of the problem -- greed.

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I can't imagine living with the fear of such fires destroying your home. When working as a surveyor I fought in a large forest fire in Washington state back in 1959. That was one scary experience.
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