How should California deal with wildfires?
California is burning. In recent weeks, dispatches from across the state have shown the impact of hundreds of fires that have destroyed structures, torched thousands of acres and blackened the sky with smoke. Fear of the blazes has also led to strategic blackouts that have left millions without power.
Fire has always been a part of life in California. But a series of factors have combined to make recent blazes more devastating. Ten of the most destructive fires in the state’s history have happened in the past decade. Things hit new extremes last year with the Camp Fire, which caused 85 deaths and burned more than 150,000 acres.
The forces working in concert to spark and spread wildfires pose an incredible challenge for California. Climate change is bringing higher temperatures and more powerful winds that spread the flames. The state’s electrical grid is aging, and equipment has been linked to sparking some of the wildfires. There are more than 100 million dead trees in the state’s forests that act as tinder for the blazes.
There’s some evidence that the state’s efforts are already working. Roughly 200,000 acres have burned in 2019. The previous two years saw an average of about 1.6 million acres lost. A lot of that drop-off can be attributed to favorable weather conditions, but experts say the state’s strategies, like utilizing new technology, staging firefighters in high-risk areas, and clearing firebreaks in the forests, are having an impact.
One of the more popular long-term remedies proposed is making the state’s electrical grid safer by fortifying Pacific Gas & Electric’s power lines, creating local “microgrids” fueled by alternative energy sources and even having the state government take control.
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