California on Fire

California is currently on fire, with over 900 lightning caused fires burning! Lightning is a normal part of things, it frequently strikes in the mountains, and a good chunk of this state is mountainous. During the summer, lightning storms frequent the higher elevations, and in any given storm thousands of strikes often happen, with just a few fires resulting. This particular lightning storm did not include rain, just lightning (well, the rain was there but evaporated while still aloft). The state of California is quite dry this year, with less than normal precipitation this past winter, and all that electrical energy found kindling ready to ignite. And ignite it did. Satellite images of the state tell the story beautifully.


The northern half of the state, fires are all over, from the coast mountains to inland mountains. Smoke is dense in the lowlands around Sacramento. At the bottom of the image you can see Monterey Bay, and it looks to be socked in with fog.

The southern half of the state shows additional smoke, from the coast to the deserts. I live in the area approximately in the middle of the southern map, and it has been hazy with smoke here, too. Not enough to smell smoke, but definitely enough to make it so the mountains which are directly across the canyon from me, just one mile away, are hazy. The skies overhead, instead of being clear blue (yes, my skies typically are quite blue), are whitish-yellow.

Fire in California and other western states is a normal part of the cycle of things. The plants here go 6 months with almost ZERO precipitation! Summer dryness is normal, and the terrain becomes very dry every summer. Some of the plant species here are so adapted to fire, they need fire to thin things out and give them room to grow and reproduce. There are even plants which lie dormant, as seeds, and don't sprout until after a fire rolls through! Fire is part of the cycle of plant life in this area.

Back when I was a college student, I recall studying about early California life, back a few hundred years, and read accounts of how smoky it often was in this state. Valleys would be hazy with smoke for many months, and it was just a part of things. If you think about it, back then there were fewer people, and why would they even consider putting out a fire that was burning in the forest? If folks were smart, they set up camp near water, in a clearing, probably where the terrain was flat and open. Experience would have taught folks to not camp amidst dense brush, or in an area covered with flammable debris. Heck, the native folks even set fires to improve hunting, and to open up clearings.

But that was then, and this is now, and people seem to build homes right amidst the flammable plants and right on the steep hillsides with trees or brush all around. People let the trees remain very close to their homes, then when fires rage through, the trees catch fire, and then the buildings do too. And even in areas where there aren't so many buildings, but there are roads, people get upset at the idea of black on the bottoms of trees, or heck, dead trees that got burned. Once upon a time I worked in a national park, and a lot of folks who visited would complain about black fire scars on the bottoms of the trees, and the trees were of a type that lived thousands of years and benefitted from fire. Yet folks hated the idea of seeing black on a tree, even though the trees were alive, and healthy, and needed fire.

Where does this dislike of fire stem from? Why is it there is such a political outcry against fire? Why is it people can not accept fire as a part of the cycle of things? Why is it people are allowed to build homes in the midst of an area that nature designed to burn, and then they get so angry when a fire comes through and burns up their community? And what is with the rage against government agencies trying to put prescribed burning back into the cycle, where people manage the fires, and the terrain is allowed to have some fire, with controls in place, to try to mitigate the effects of an out of control, super large fire?

For those who aren't savvy about prescribed fires, these are efforts where a fire is set on purpose, or a natural fire (ie. lightning caused) is allowed to continue burning, to do what fires are supposed to do in nature, and that is clear out brush and dense growth, to thin the forest, and to make it so there are areas with less to burn when the next fire comes through. Sort of a jigsaw puzzle effect on the terrain, where little plots of land have less to burn, and as fires come through, they slow down and die out when they reach a previously burned place.

Yes, even prescribed fires can become a hazard, as we people cannot control the weather, and in hilly/mountainous terrain, little swirly winds happen, thunderheads build, and the winds can pick up rapidly. But, fire is going to happen, on a massive scale, or a small scale, over and over, forever. We can try to slow down the effects of huge fires by having thousands of small fires. We can allow many lightning caused fires to burn and clear out overgrowth and make it so the cycle of fire is allowed to return. We can STOP building up into the flammable hills and mountains, and require building materials to be fire resistant. We can put fire education into the hands of more citizens. And somehow, folks have to learn to live with some smoke, as it is part of the cycle of things.