By Brian Melley LOS ANGELES (AP) — When a wildfire burned across Big Sur two years ago and threatened hundreds of homes scattered on the scenic hills, thousands of firefighters responded with overwhelming force, attacking flames from the air and ground. In the first week, the blaze destroyed 57 homes and killed a bulldozer operator, then moved into remote wilderness …
By Janet Eastman It wasn’t luck that saved Ron Crowell’s home from a fast-moving grass fire on Halloween night. It was seasons of hard work. Even though 20-foot-high flames flew up a hill and enshrouded his rural property southeast of Ashland in smoke, his wood-framed house was still standing, his acreage unsinged. Crowell, an emergency room physician who was ready …
By Richard W. Halsey Our current approach to wildfire is killing us. Instead of making communities fire safe, we’re mostly trying to manage habitat to suppress fire, and it’s failing to protect our lives and our property. Bureaucratic inertia and hubris are preventing needed change. Until the public understands the true nature of wildfire and demands the same of government, …
Call with PNW Funders | 11/27/18, 11 am to 12 pm Fire Issues and Advocacy in California: Challenges/opportunities/lessons learned of dealing with fire and forest management needs in California Presenters: Sue Britting, Sierra Forest Legacy (530) 919-9844 (cell) Pamela Flick, Defenders of Wildlife (916) 203-6927 (cell) Paul Mason, Pacific Forest Trust (916) 214-1382 (cell) AGENDA Introductions – Helen Wagenvoord, Wildspaces Overview of setting …
Chad Hanson is a research ecologist with the John Muir Project, a national director of the Sierra Club and the co-author of the book “The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix.” The views expressed in this commentary are the author’s own. (CNN)With the shocking loss of thousands of homes and dozens of lives in the Camp and Woolsey fires …
The death toll from the Camp Fire in Northern California increased by one Sunday to 77, while the number of people unaccounted for has decreased to 993 people. The blaze was two-thirds contained as of Sunday night after consuming some 150,000 acres. In Southern California, just outside Los Angeles, the Woolsey Fire was 91 percent contained after burning 96,949 acres …
Over the last decade, the U.S. has seen an average of 70,512 wildland fires every year, annually burning about 6.8 million acres. With climate change, scientists expect fires to become more frequent and more severe. However, some people are more affected by these events than others. Our work, published on Nov. 2, shows that racial and ethnic minorities are significantly …
Wildfires are not a new phenomenon, but in many regions of the United States, particularly the western states, they have become larger, longer-lasting, more frequent, and more destructive in terms of lives lost and economic costs. In 2017 in California, 9,000 wildfires burned more than one million acres of land. That same year, fire seasons in Washington and Oregon extended …
