As California continues to burn, hold politicians’ feet to the fire

Wildfires have always menaced California and that will never stop, especially with climate warming. What we can do is make them more controllable and less catastrophic.

That’s what Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature are attempting to achieve by pouring unprecedented amounts of money into fire prevention.

Don’t look for dramatic progress by the next fire season, although there should be incremental improvements. Given how far behind California is in addressing the wildfire challenge, and the natural snail’s pace of government — an agonizing trait of virtually any government — this will take many years of consistent effort and tanker loads of tax dollars.

There’s a sense in Sacramento of inevitability about major wildfires. Brush fires such as the Alisal blaze in Santa Barbara County have raged forever along the Southern California coast.

But there’s also optimism that the fires can be made less horrific than the blazes that have destroyed tens of thousands of homes and entire towns in recent years.

“The good news is we actually know how to make California’s ecology climate-resistant. We’re not just sitting back and saying, ‘Good luck,’ ” says Jessica Morse, deputy secretary for Forest and Wildland Resilience at the state Natural Resources Agency.

Morse is a fifth-generation Californian whose family helped settle the tiny, historic, pine-forested mining town of Gold Run in the Sierra east of Sacramento. She grew up there. For her, wildfires are “personal, emotional and serious,” she says.

Personally, I’m sick of hearing politicians immediately blame climate change for our wildfire devastation. It comes across as: “Not my fault. Didn’t happen on my shift.”

Well, it is their shift now. What are they doing about it?

But, as Morse told me, “The climate crisis is not going to reverse overnight.”

We must cope with the wildfire threat that exists today, not just use it as a talking point to whip up public support for slowing climate change.

That said, 2021 has been a banner year for legislative and gubernatorial action on preventing and fighting wildfires.

“We’ve finally put our money where our mouth is,” says state Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, whose wine country district north of San Francisco has been hit hard by wildfires.

“Last year, we spent $3 billion on fire suppression and $100 million on fire prevention. That just doesn’t do it,” Dodd says. “This year we’re going to spend $3 billion on suppression and $1.5 billion on prevention.”

One sorely needed project is thinning dense forests by removing highly flammable dead trees and thick underbrush.

Much of this thinning is carried out by so-called prescribed burning — what Indigenous Californians did to keep the forests healthy until Europeans shoved them aside and began dousing every small blaze to protect settlements and marketable timber.

“California’s ecology was managed beautifully for a millennia,” Morse says. “Then the West was colonized. … As a result of multigeneration decisions and climate change, we’re now seeing catastrophic megafires.” California forests became overgrown with people, pines and undergrowth. The dense trees became susceptible to disease — bark beetles in a drought — and nearly 170 million now are dead, creating hot-burning fire fuel.

Both the state and federal governments have been slow to respond to the modern reality that forests need to be periodically cleaned.

“We had a goal last year of treating 500,000 acres, but only did about 60,000” Dodd says.

Newsom signed a Dodd bill that will protect landowners from liability if prescribed burns on their forested property get out of control.

The record state spending also will be used to create cleared-out spaces — called “fuel breaks” — around forested communities where firefighters can safely place their equipment and battle blazes. Fuel breaks are credited with helping to save South Lake Tahoe in August.

The money also will provide grants for homeowners to create vegetation-light buffers next to their vulnerable houses.

As of Friday, roughly 2.5 million acres had been burned in California this year by more than 8,000 fires, dooming 3,600 structures. Last year, 4.3 million acres were burned and nearly 10,500 structures destroyed.

Reducing the wildfire threat should be state government’s top priority. These last few years cannot become the status quo. The public needs to hold the politicians’ feet to the fire.

George Skelton is a Los Angeles Times columnist. © 2021 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.