Scientists: Wind, drought make bad fires
WASHINGTON — Both nature and humans share blame for California’s devastating wildfires, but forest management did not play a major role, despite President Donald Trump’s claims, fire scientists say.
Nature provides the dangerous winds that have whipped the fires, and human-caused climate change over the long haul is killing and drying the shrubs and trees that provide the fuel, experts say.
“Natural factors and human-caused global warming effects fatally collude” in these fires, said wildfire expert Kristen Thornicke of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
Multiple reasons explain the fires’ severity, but “forest management wasn’t one of them,” University of Utah fire scientist Philip Dennison said.
Trump tweeted on Saturday: “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests.”
One reason scientists know that management isn’t to blame is some areas burning had fires in 2005 and 2008, so they aren’t “fuel-choked closed-canopy forests,” Dennison said.
In those earlier fires, Paradise, Calif., was threatened but escaped major damage, he said. In the current blazes, it was virtually destroyed.
The other major fire, in Southern California, burned through shrub land, not forest, Dennison said.
“It’s not about forest management. These aren’t forests,” he said.
As of Monday, more than 13,200 square miles have burned. That’s more than a third higher than the 10year average. From 1983 to 1999, the United States didn’t reach 10,000 square miles burned annually.