Virus Inside, Fires Outside, Schools Reopening As Evacuation Centers - Welcome To California
EDIT
The state has always had a fire season, but this month’s fires are unprecedented. Unprecedented does not mean unanticipated: in recent years, fires have intensified—a consequence of climate change, exurban sprawl, and neglected electrical infrastructure. A certain amount of dry vegetation is natural, but rising temperatures have yielded longer periods of drought, accompanied by insect infestations and disease; these factors have led to weaker, drier, and dead trees, and to parched brush and grasses—in short, abundant kindling. Californian housing policy, and the subsequent housing crisis, has led developers and residents to push outward, and nearly a third of residential buildings in the state are situated where urban and wild lands meet. Meanwhile, in 2019, P. G. & E., the electrical utility that services much of California, declared bankruptcy, after being found liable for the wildfires of 2017 and 2018. That year, Sonoma’s Kincade Fire, the state’s largest that season, was catalyzed when a P. G. & E. transmission line malfunctioned.
Forest mismanagement has contributed to the problem. In the early twentieth century, the United States Forest Service adopted a policy of suppressing all fires, and California followed suit. For decades, the state resisted mitigation strategies such as controlled burns, in which fires are deliberately set to clear out dry brush and overly dense clusters of trees. California began setting controlled burns in the seventies but only addressed a modest fraction of vulnerable territory; in 2018, Cal Fire, the state’s fire-protection agency, made plans to triple the amount of “prescribed fire” on state-controlled land, but the burns were temporarily paused this spring, due to the coronavirus. In recent years, the state has strategically deployed herds of goats, which can be spotted not just in the countryside but in various parts of San Francisco—on hillsides below the mansions of Pacific Heights, and on the shoulder of Highway 1—contentedly clearing the brush. The goats are credited with saving the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library from last year’s fires. But, over all, the state’s parks and forests are still glutted with flammable vegetation.
EDIT
But memes are a distraction, and metaphor fails. Public schools, previously closed as a public-health measure, are reopening as evacuation shelters. It is grape-harvesting season, and the vineyards are on fire. Farmworkers, who have been hit hard by the coronavirus, are still moving methodically through fields of produce, harvesting fruits and vegetables in brutal heat and toxic air. Many are undocumented, without health insurance, and ineligible for government assistance. Then there is the crisis of firefighting resources. In the past, California has bolstered its crews with inmate firefighters, who are paid a dollar an hour to stand at the front lines under showers of retardant. Many were released from prison earlier this year, as a protective measure against the coronavirus; because they have criminal records, it is extremely difficult for them to get jobs with Cal Fire. Others are still incarcerated in facilities where the virus is widespread. The state has had to appeal to out-of-state agencies, which are sending equipment and assistance: fire engines from Arizona, Nevada, and Texas. Everything seems characterized by a sense of wild fragility.
It’s hard not to see all this in terms of a cascading series of national failures: the chaotic, politicized, fabulistic response to the virus; the political influence of oil and gas conglomerates; the fecklessness of private utility companies; cruel immigration policies and weakened labor protections; environmental rollbacks; a weakened social safety net. Some failures, like global warming, are bigger than any one country’s, although the United States has failed here, too. According to meteorologists, last week’s dry lightning was connected to the heat wave, which was generated by winds from Tropical Storm Fausto. Colorado is also experiencing a spate of wildfires, one of which is the second-largest in its history. These are the conditions for secondary environmental and public-health crises. Smoke from the fires in California and Colorado is uncoiling across the country. Plumes have already drifted as far as Kansas.
EDIT
https://www.newyorker.com/news/california-chronicles/an-apocalyptic-august-in-california