CALIFORNIA— Despite the recent rainy season, wildfire season is now present and it is predicted to be one of the most hellacious in California’s history, with the worst drought in 12 centuries. The state is investing over $1 billion for more wildfire breaks, vegetation management projects and removal of dead and dying trees, including fixing the CAL Fire firefighter shortage by hiring 1,124 additional firefighters and a modern day staffing plan.
With a long, hot, dry summer on the horizon comes a lot of work. Reflecting on that reality, Senator Mike McGuire; California Office of Emergency Services Director Mark Ghilarducci, CAL Fire Northern Assistant Region Chief Jake Hess and Kristina Dahl, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, met for a public town hall on wildfire preparedness, prevention and response on Wednesday.
“California, as a whole, has warmed by at least one degree Fahrenheit in the last century. Some parts of the state have warmed almost three times that much, by nearly three degrees Fahrenheit. That has implications for other parts of our climate, ecosystems and general ways of life,” said Dhal. “We’ve seen an increase in droughts over the last 60 years. It’s clear from the science that human-caused climate change is playing a role. It is responsible for about half of the drying of the vegetation that we’ve seen in the western US since the 1980s. That then translates into about double the number of acres burned by forest fire. Scientists are calling this a mega drought, which it’s currently 22 years long. It’s considered the deepest, longest drought in over 1000 years.”
Over the longer term though, “we know that climate change is expected to continue to warm the state and it will continue to exacerbate droughts when we have them. To be able to cope with these future wildfire seasons, it’s critical that we are working to cut our emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels in California and contributing to global efforts to do the same. It’s also critical that we are building our resilience to wildfires. We can do things like strengthening our wildfire smoke protection standards for outdoor workers, so we don’t have people working in these toxic air conditions; making sure that there are clean air centers that people in lower income communities can get, even if they can’t afford air purifier in their own home,” Dahl added.
According to Ghilarducci, the state has better equipment than it’s had in the past. “We’ve got surveillance and situational awareness tools. The use of technology today is much greater than we’ve ever done in the past and all of this has been significant in amplifying our ability to respond to the threat as we are facing it, but it is moving fast. The challenges are great, and it takes an all-hands-on-deck approach to be able to stay out in front of this year to make sure that we have the most capable folks, and it’s not just firefighters and emergency managers – it is the public too. It is all of you.”
Ghilarducci said that it takes building a resilient community. “It is home hardening defensible space. It is the ability to have a family plan and be able to know your evacuation routes. These are all part of a team working together, in a very collaborative way, to ensure that we continue to build out capacity and prepare our communities to withstand the challenges we face today to address the new threat. It is what we call ‘the new norm’.”
According to the California Office of Emergency Services Director, since January 1, “we’ve had over 2,300 wildfires in the state with over 11,000 acres that have already burned. We’re in the magnifier era; in the large, damaging or mega fire era. Eight of the last 10 of the largest wildfires in our state history occurred in the last five years. Four of those occurred in the last 24 months. If we look at our expectations for this year, it’s setting up for large damaging fires. We have multiple incidents throughout California simultaneously. We have come to a point where we’re evacuating people more often and earlier because there is zero room for error.”
