A glimpse into California's wildfire future + All eyes on Kamala's Converse + Our new reporter

Sep. 9--Good morning and happy Wednesday! Hurray for a short work week!

CONSEQUENCES OF DROUGHT

Via Dale Kasler and Phillip Reese...

California's mega-drought officially ended three years ago but may have turned the Creek Fire into a monster.

By killing millions of trees in the Sierra National Forest, the historic drought that ended in 2017 left an incendiary supply of dry fuel that appears to have intensified the fire that's ravaged more than 140,000 acres in the southern Sierra Nevada, wildfire scientists and forestry experts said Tuesday.

"The energy produced off that is extraordinary," said Scott Stephens, a wildfire scientist at UC Berkeley. "Large amounts of woody material burning simultaneously."

What's more, the Creek Fire is shaping up as a grim proxy of other wildfires that could occur in heavily forested areas that suffered extensive tree loss.

"This might provide this first glimpse into the future we're in for," said LeRoy Westerling, a climate and wildfire scientist at UC Merced.

Brittany Covich of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, a state agency that funds projects aimed at reducing wildfire risks in forests, said what's happening in Fresno County could easily take place in the Tahoe National Forest and other areas with lots of dead trees.

"That's the fear we have across the Sierra Nevada," Covich said.

An estimated 140 million trees perished during the five-year drought, which was officially declared over in 2017 by former Gov. Jerry Brown. California and the U.S. government, which controls a majority of the forestland in the state, have barely begun the process of removing the carcasses, leaving fuel loads waiting to be ignited.

"The scale of the problem is enormous," said Steve Lohr, acting deputy regional forester at the U.S. Forest Service. "We're doing the best that we can. Is that good enough? Probably not."

And nowhere is the problem more severe, it seems, than the Sierra National Forest.

Over the last five years, a period extending beyond the end of the drought, the Sierra National Forest lost 36.1 million trees to drought, bark-beetle infestations and other woes. That's more than any other national forest in California, and nearly a quarter of the total. The toll translates to about 26 trees killed per acre.

KAMALA'S KICKS GET PRESS

Democratic vice presidential nominee, and California's junior senator, Kamala Harris may have her eyes on the second highest office in the land, but on Monday, millions of people had their eyes on her feet -- specifically, the Chuck Taylors she sported as she stepped off the plane in Milwaukee.

According to the Washington Post, a pair of videos showing Harris de-planing in her classic Converse shoes had 8 million views between them, "more than four times the attention the campaign's biggest planned video event, a conversation between Joe Biden and Barack Obama, had received on both Twitter and YouTube combined."

Harris seemed to have fun with the attention, tweeting Monday that she is "laced up and ready to win" along with a video of her stepping off the plane.

Harris' choice of footwear has garnered coverage from outlets ranging from HuffPost, The Guardian and Yahoo News to more specialty sites, like Footwear News.

WELCOME JEONG PARK

The Sacramento Bee Capitol Bureau welcomes reporter Jeong Park, who will focus on wages, unions and inequality with an eye toward how state policies affect working people.

Park is joining The Bee through its community-funded Equity Lab, a new effort comprised of journalists covering culture and community.

Park joins The Bee after two years at the Orange County Register, where he reported on various cities in Orange County, as well as the area's Asian American community. He wrote about issues ranging from the lack of affordable housing in Orange County to how the area's immigrant organizations are helping their community during the coronavirus pandemic.

Before working at the Register, Park was a reporter at the Journal and Courier in Lafayette, Ind. He also interned at the Register, covering the area's Asian American community as part of a program sponsored by the Asian American Journalists Association.

Park is a first-generation immigrant from South Korea, coming to the United States when he was 11. He has called California home since then, except for a few months he spent in the Midwest. He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and he still has hope that Chip Kelly will make Bruins' football good again.

Park will be moving to Sacramento in the coming months. But for now, he will be working from his home in Long Beach.

Send him tips, ideas and recommendation for good Asian food at [email protected] or on Twitter at @jeongpark52.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"California fires in 2019:- 4,927 fires- 118k acres burned.

California fires in 2020 (so far):- 7,606 fires- 2.3 million acres burned.

CLIMATE. CHANGE. IS. REAL." -- Gov. Gavin Newsom, via Twitter.

Best of the Bee:

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Part rally, part concert and part worship session, the gathering that brought thousands to the west steps of California's Capitol building over Labor Day weekend flew in the face of pandemic-related mask and social distancing requirements, as seen in photos and video clips circulating online, via Michael McGough.

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A deadly 2017 wildfire on California's Central Coast underscored the vulnerability of the state's undocumented immigrants and migrant workers, according to a new study that assessed who received help first from emergency response organizations, via Kim Bojórquez.

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CalPERS board members will consider forcing the pension system's next chief investment officer to sell personal stocks before taking the job, according to a proposal posted to the board's website, via Wes Venteicher.

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