Thousands Displaced by Threats of Climate Change in California Wildfires

As thousands of acres burn in the western United States, the immediate and intensifying threat of global warming manifests in the California wildfires. 

This October, over 100,000 people were forced to flee their Orange County homes after quickly spreading fires engulfed Southern California this October. Most recently, the Silverton and Blue Ridge fires have left millions without power and tens of thousands of acres burned to the ground.  Fueled by low winds and high humidity, the twin fires fused together, aggregating to 30,000 acres in less than 48 hours. The latest development in a series of devastating natural disasters, the blazes have confirmed California’s record-breaking year. As of October, the state surpassed 4.1 million acres of scorched land. 

A wildfire’s strength and capacity depend on many factors: weather, terrain, soil, vegetation, and potential fuel.  Moreover, increasingly arid conditions presented by global warming have been fanning the flames. Climate change increases the abundance of fire fuels: dry branches, shrubbery, and pine trees. These flammable materials provide a steady diet during demolition. 

"Climate change ultimately means that those forests, whatever state they're in, are becoming warmer and drier more frequently," Dr. Mathew Jones, a scientist from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, said. Jones established a review in 2013, which analyzed over 100 studies on wildfires and the climate. 

The review concluded, “climate change is bringing hotter, drier weather to the western US, and the region is fundamentally more exposed to fire risks than it was before humans began to alter the global climate." 

Noah Diffenbaugh, a climatologist from Stanford University, likened the change to a baseball game: “If there’s a three-run home run in baseball, it’s the home run that definitely caused the runners to round the bases and score. The home run is the proximal cause of the event. But people being on base matters." Climate change puts players on the bases. The increased temperatures and drier air provide for longer fire seasons and easy fuel. When a fire starts, what would be a single turns into a triple. 

Climate change exacerbates the issue further by fire control measures. Since 1979, the annual fire-friendly seasons have increased by about eight days per year, decreasing the ability to carry out fire management procedures. At the University of Exeter, Professor Richard Betts, another member of Jones’ review team, explained, ”When you do prescribe burns, you can only do it when the conditions aren't too hot and dry, because you need to be able to control the fire.” Inability to proceed with controlled burnings—which reduce the amount of available fuel—reduces the human ability to control major wildfires, allowing for them to grow both in size and number.  “Once you've passed the point where you've got hot, dry conditions for much of the year, you've lost your opportunity to do lots of prescribed burnings. So that makes matters worse and makes the land management challenge even greater,” Betts said.

As the days get warmer, drier, and more polluted, the window to fight fires is disappearing. Homes are burning the ground and people have been forced from their daily lives due to human error. Unless communities like ours start taking the climate seriously, thousands of people displaced will turn into millions, and turtles won’t be the end of our problems. 

by LAASYA CHIDURUPPA

Lex Perspectives