California is Poised for a Catastrophic Fire Season, Emergency Funding Not Enough

Bracing for another year of severe, destructive fires, California’s governor on Tuesday approved a half-a-billion dollar emergency funding plan to prepare for the looming wildfire season. The state, which saw its worst fire season on record last year, is descending deep into a drought that portends even more megablazes this year.

Source: The Guardian | Published on April 15, 2021

The Eagle Creek fire on the night of September 3rd 2017.

But experts say that while the huge spending plan is a start, it isn’t nearly enough to avert the crisis ahead.

“We are in a very deep hole that we’re gonna have to dig ourselves out of,” said Chris Field, climate scientist at Stanford University.

Global heating has brought more frequent, extreme droughts and heat waves to California, drying out the landscape and fueling larger, more destructive fires in recent years. Last year, the state saw five of the six largest fires in state history, after a lack of rain and a heat wave dried out fire-fueling vegetation across the region’s wildlands. This year is tied for the third-driest year in state history – and the desiccated landscape is primed to burn. “We’re definitely looking at a serious challenge ahead,” Field said.

As the state heads into its dry, summer season, its reservoirs remain at about half capacity. The region is so dry that the chamise plants that cover the state’s chaparral landscape didn’t sprout or flower this year in some locations. Instead, the highly flammable vegetation has already started to dry out – transforming into kindling that could invite more destructive fires, earlier than usual.

Facing high odds of an intense fire season to come, Governor Gavin Newsom announced last week that state leaders would allocate $536m to hire more firefighters, improve forest management efforts, thin out fire-fueling vegetation and make homes more fire-resistant.

The state would have to adapt quickly to changing climate, and more fire, the governor said when he signed the proposal into law on Tuesday.

“This is a down payment, not the totality of our efforts,” he said at a press conference in Butte county, which has been devasted by recent fires – including 2018’s devastating Camp fire. “We’re investing a historic amount of money in preparation of this year’s fire season.”

Already this year, California has seen more than 1,160 fires burn 3,304 acres across the state. Over the past five years, an average of about 550 acres burned during the same time period.

The plan “is a step in the right direction”, said Don Hankins, a pyrogeographer and Plains Miwok fire expert at California State University, Chico. Hankins, along with other indigenous fire experts and researchers in California, has been pushing state leaders to direct more funds and resources toward prescribed burning – using small controlled burns to clear out fire-fueling vegetation, renew the soil and prevent bigger, runaway wildfires. Hundreds of tribes across California used prescribed burns for thousands of years until European settlers outlawed the practice.

Hankins said he was heartened that the state’s fire plan had earmarked money for prescribed burning – but he said it left out key details. For instance, since the majority of forests in California are managed by the federal government, rather than the state, California’s plans to ramp up prescribed burning will be largely contingent on the US government for funding and staffing. And while the plan promises partnership with “tribal entities”, it’s short on details about how, exactly, the partnership would work.

Moreover, because Californians banned prescribed burning for more than a century, Hankins said it would take a much bigger investment to burn through the backlog. In Western Australia, where the local government has reinstated and adapted Aboriginal burning practices, about half the fire budget is spent on prescribed burning.

An estimated 4.5m to 12m acres used to burn annually in California in pre-colonial times, though much of that fire was less intense and intentionally set, coaxed away from areas where people lived. “That’s a lot more than the 4m acres than burned last year,” Hankins said. The state’s current goal of treating at least 100,000 acres with prescribed fire by 2025 “is good – it’s a start. But it won’t be nearly enough.”

The plan also sets aside $25m to grant food to low-income homeowners to fund the updates and renovations needed to fireproof their homes. “Of course, it’s good – but the question is how far will this money go?” said Stephanie Pincetl, a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability who specializes in the intersection of urban planning and environmental policy.

Although updates to “harden” homes against fires can save lives, such improvements will need to be maintained over time. Since many low-income residents cannot afford fire insurance or even get coverage because the risk of fires in their area is so high, periodic home updates will be untenable for many. Moreover, for many low-income residents, navigating the government paperwork to apply for grants could be inaccessible, she said. “So again, this is a nice start, but how successful it’ll be is all in the details.”

Adapting to a drier, hotter climate and learning how to live with fire will require a lot of time, and a massive financial investment – one that leaders and fire researchers agree will be worth it. “For every dollar we spend on wildfire prevention, our state saves $6 to $7 in damage,” the state senate leader, Toni Atkins, said when the plan was unveiled last week.

But, said Field, “we shouldn’t think that just because the funding has been allocated that the problems have been solved. This is going to be a long-term problem that’s going to take continuing investment.”

 

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