‘In the fire sieges of earlier years, we found that other jurisdictions and states were willing to offer mutual-aid help, but we were not able to communicate adequately with them,’ says Kim Zagaris, chief of the state's Office of Emergency Services Fire and Rescue Branch.Īfter a commission examined and revamped communications procedures, the statewide response ‘has become far more professional and responsive,’ he says. McHale of the firefighters’ union.īesides providing money to upgrade the fire engines that must traverse the mammoth state and wind along serpentine canyon roads, the state has invested in better command-and-control facilities as well as in the strategies to run them. ‘We are pleased that the current state administration has been very proactive in its support of us, and come through with budgetary support of the infrastructure needs we have long sought,' says Mr. Firefighters’ unions that in the past complained of dilapidated equipment, old fire engines, and insufficient blueprints for fire safety are now praising the state's commitment, noting that funding for firefighting has increased, despite huge cuts in many other programs. State promises to provide more up-to-date engines, planes, and helicopters to fight fires have been fulfilled. Stung in the past by criticism of bungling that allowed fires to spread when they might have been contained, personnel are meeting the peculiar challenges of neighborhood - and canyon- hopping fires better than previously, observers say. That said, many experts give California high marks for making progress on preparedness in recent years, after some of the largest fires in state history scorched thousands of acres, burned thousands of homes, and killed numerous people. ‘With so much dryness, so many communities to catch fire, so many fronts to fight, it becomes an almost incredible job.' ‘ What once was open space is now residential homes providing fuel to make fires burn with greater intensity,’ says Terry McHale of the California Department of Forestry firefighters' union. In California, where population growth has averaged more than 600,000 a year for at least a decade, more residential housing is being built. ‘Doing that in many of the forests of the western US is like building homes on the side of an active volcano.' ‘We are increasingly building our homes in fire-prone ecosystems,’ says Dominik Kulakowski, adjunct professor of biology at Clark University Graduate School of Geography in Worcester, Massachusetts. Third is increased construction of homes in wooded areas. Second is fire seasons that on average are 78 days longer than they were 20 years ago. First is climate change, marked by a 1-degree Fahrenheit rise in average yearly temperature across the western states. Three other factors contribute to the trend, they add. The unintentional consequence has been to halt the natural eradication of underbrush, now the primary fuel for megafires. Another reason, experts say, is related to the century- long policy of the US Forest Service to stop wildfires as quickly as possible. One explanation for the trend to more superhot fires is that the region, which usually has dry summers, has had significantly below normal precipitation in many recent years. Some recent wildfires are among the biggest ever in California in terms of acreage burned, according to state figures and news reports. Megafires, also called ‘siege fires’, are the increasingly frequent blazes that burn 500,000 acres or more - 10 times the size of the average forest fire of 20 years ago. The wildfires themselves, experts say, are generally hotter, faster, and spread more erratically than in the past. There's a reason fire squads battling more frequent blazes in Southern California are having such difficulty containing the flames, despite better preparedness than ever and decades of experience fighting fires fanned by the ‘Santa Ana Winds’. Wildfires are becoming an increasing menace in the western United States, with Southern California being the hardest hit area. Drought, housing expansion, and oversupply of tinder make for bigger, hotter fires in the western United States
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