One way to stop fueling the fires
Arecent spate of spring blazes announced an alarmingly early start to California’s wildfire season, which is fast occupying too much of the year to fit any conventional understanding of the word “season.” With historically low moisture measurements suggesting vegetation is particularly primed to burn, too many Californians are about to find themselves in wildfires’ way.
As evidenced by fires that have toppled records for size and destruction in recent years, the state is struggling to protect the people and homes that have migrated to combustible exurbs over decades. The development patterns that have put more and more people up against fireprone forest and chaparral can’t be easily undone. But we can and should stop adding housing, and fuel, to the fires.
The state’s fire crews in recent days have contended with early blazes in Southern California, the Sierra Nevada foothills, Solano County and the Santa Cruz Mountains. The latter ignited within the burn scar of August’s CZU Lightning Complex fires, which consumed 86,000 acres and nearly 1,500 structures in a year that saw five of the six largest wildfires in state history. The past five seasons have been responsible for six of the state’s 10 most destructive fires and three of the five deadliest. It’s no stretch to tie this carnage to the increased number of people and homes in fireprone areas.
The prospects for a respite aren’t hopeful. Following California’s third driest rain season on record, Gov. Gavin Newsom is tiptoeing toward acknowledging a statewide drought. Last month, researchers found the moisture content of vegetation in the Santa Cruz Mountains to be at an unprecedented low and noted an unusual dearth of new growth.
Anyone wondering why Californians keep moving into such areas need look no further than the likes of Palo Alto. Even as Berkeley and a few other cities have begun to retreat from longstanding hostility to multifamily housing, the Silicon Valley suburb recently doubled down on exclusionary zoning. One of its City Council members even convened a sort of antihousing summit asking “How much housing does California REALLY need?” Such sentiments remain strong throughout the Bay Area, pushing people and homes outward.
The pandemic reinforced the pattern as city residents traded potential COVID hot spots for places likelier to become literal hot spots. San Franciscans took their remote working arrangements, along with their skyhigh housing prices, to places like Truckee.
This is not a felicitous trend. The old NIMBYism and the new normal are conspiring to send more Californians into a wilderness that is destined to burn.