LOOKING2020 BACK ON
Flames largely spared the Mother Lode
Five of the top six largest wildfires in California since the Great Depression occurred in August and September this year, according to Cal Fire, and those fires combined with others made it the most recent record-breaking fire season in state history.
Residents of the Mother Lode came through the worst statewide fire season on record without any megablazes that wiped out entire towns or forests. The Moc Fire in August prompted mandatory evacuation orders for thousands of residents along the Highway 120 corridor and cost $5.3 million to fight and extinguish.
Property damage from the Moc Fire was minimal compared to other disastrous conflagrations that spewed ash across multiple counties
and blanketed much of the Mother Lode and the rest of Central California in smoke in August and September.
Wildfires throughout the state this year killed more than 30 people, destroyed or damaged more than 10,000 structures, and burned an estimated 4.1 million acres. Local, state and federal agencies estimate there were more than 9,600 fires in California in 2020.
For perspective, that 4.1 million acres burned this year works out to more than 6,400 square miles, an area that would cover all of Tuolumne, Calaveras, and Alpine counties combined.
Coinciding and overlapping with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, smoke from fires burning near Tuolumne County in August and September kept many residents indoors for days on end.
Most residents of Tuolumne County will recall this most recent fire season for the many weeks of smoke and unhealthy air due to fires burning elsewhere. The 10-day Moc Fire, which started Aug. 20 and was declared extinguished Aug. 30, burned more than 2,850 acres near Moccasin and was the county’s biggest blaze of the year.
Flames from the Moc Fire caused $890,000 in damage and costs in the company town of Moccasin, while fire-related road closures cost businesses in Big Oak Flat and Groveland tens of thousands of dollars.
Cal Fire investigators eventually determined the cause of the Moc Fire was unspecified equipment.
Some Sierra Nevada watersheds that burned in the most recent fire season could now see snow retention impacts this winter due to burned soils and loss of tree canopy, Sean de Guzman, chief of the state Department of Water Resources snow surveys and water supply forecasting section, said Wednesday at a manual survey about 90 miles northeast of Sonora.
Climatologists earlier this year said recent dry years and human-caused climate change were clear factors in yet another record-breaking fire season in the state.
The 2019-2020 water year ended Oct. 1 with 24.6 inches of precipitation measured in a five-station region that includes Calaveras Big Trees, Hetch Hetchy, and the Stanislaus and Tuolumne watersheds, well below the 49-year average of 40.2 inches. The bone-dry season this past summer covered six months in the Mother Lode, from mid-may to mid-november.
Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist who worked 35 years with the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in La Cañada, has warned for decades of far-reaching consequences posed by drought in the Golden State.
“Essentially, right now firefighters, water managers and residents, we’re all suffering from fire and climate fatigue,” Patzert said in late October.
The whole state has had below normal rainfall and snowpack on average the last 20 to 30 years. Last winter and coming into this winter, the situation in the High Sierra has been pretty firm in terms of water tables — not enough water.
“What we see is almost 200 million dried-out dead trees,” Patzert told The Union Democrat in October. “Not only that, the rainfall and snow season has started later and it ends earlier. Going into this winter, we have a lot of history here.
“Climate change is already having a big impact. California is drier and it’s definitely hotter, and the wildlands and the Sierra forests are definitely stressed out. So, it’s more than just a La Niña winter. Firefighters, water managers, and forestry people can tell you that we’re going into this winter with a lot of history.”
In the last 60 years, the population of California has quadrupled and more people have moved into fire danger areas, into the wildlands, and into the forests, Patzert said. Climate change has essentially turned the heat up, so that there’s not only more people in fire country, it’s more incendiary.
“To get out of this situation there’s no quick fix,” he said. “We have to learn how to live more carefully in the wildlands, we have to learn how to change the building code so homes are more fire resistant, and we have to learn how to manage the wildlands and forests differently than we have the last 70 years.”