How Bad Is This Fire Season In California Really Going To Be?

Jul. 11—It's not quite noon, but it's already getting hot as Alan Huston pushes his way through thickets of dry, prickly brush on a parched hillside overlooking the town of Los Gatos.

"If a fire broke out here, all this stuff is going to burn," said Huston, a researcher in San Jose State University's Fire Weather Research Lab. "There are some healthier-looking big trees over there. But a lot of this?" his voice trailed off as he waved his hand over the water-starved landscape dotted with multimillion-dollar homes. "Not looking good."

It's a refrain being heard increasingly this summer from Silicon Valley to the Sierra, Southern California to Shasta County. California is on edge. Two consecutive record-dry winters, followed by early heat waves that have sent temperatures in some places soaring above 110 degrees, have left vegetation dangerously dry and primed to burn heading into the hottest summer months.

Memories of last year's destructive fires are still fresh.

In 2020, a record 4.3 million acres burned statewide — 1 out of every 24 acres in California. Those fires, some of which began during freak dry lightning storms in August, killed 33 people, destroyed more than 10,000 homes and incinerated the visitor center, campgrounds and other facilities at Big Basin Redwoods State Park, California's oldest, in the Santa Cruz Mountains. In the Southern Sierra, fires wiped out an estimated 10 percent of all the giant sequoias left in the world. They blanketed cities with choking smoke and turned skies over San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose an apocalyptic bright orange.

This year, conditions are drier.

Moisture in chamise, a chaparral plant found across the state, are at the lowest levels recorded for early July since San Jose State's Fire Lab began regular measurements in 2009. Much of the vegetation on Bay Area hillsides, the lab's scientists say, is as dry now as it normally is in September. That means peak fire danger will be around for two months longer this year than in average years.

Across the state, the pace of wildfires already is running ahead of last year. From Jan. 1 to July 6, California had 4,902 wildfires start on state, federal and private land — 720 more than the same time period a year ago, according to records at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. Those fires have burned 83,237 acres statewide — more than double the 35,623 acres that had burned in California this time a year ago.

From the Willow Fire in Big Sur to the Lava Fire near Mount Shasta, fire crews have attacked fast-moving blazes so far this year with huge numbers of firefighters, helicopters, engines and planes dropping red fire retardant.

"We're seeing fire activity that we would normally be seeing in September and October already," said Chief Thom Porter, director of Cal Fire, the state's primary firefighting agency. "And we have a very long rest of the peak season to go. It's concerning."

A lot of factors affect fire risk, experts say. Fire is a natural part of western forests, clearing out dead brush and trees. But a century of fire suppression has led to millions of acres of overgrown forests across California and the West. Climate change is making temperatures hotter, drying out vegetation and soils, and melting the Sierra Nevada's snowpack earlier. Utility companies like Pacific Gas & Electric have caused multiple fatal fires in recent years when power lines have fallen during dry, windy days.

But this year, an overriding issue is drought.

In the Northern Sierra, California's most important watershed because it normally fills the state's major reservoirs, the past two years have been the second driest two-year period since records began in 1921, delivering only 52% of normal precipitation. The only time in the past 100 years when it was drier was during the famous drought of 1975-77.

Meanwhile, San Jose experienced its driest year in 128 years of record-keeping, receiving only 5.33 inches of rain from July 1 to June 30. That's about the same amount of rain as Las Vegas or Palm Springs gets in a typical year.

San Francisco saw its third-driest year since the Gold Rush in 1849. Southern California fared somewhat better. The past two years in Los Angeles have brought 73% of normal rainfall. And San Diego saw 93% of its historic average over the last two years.

As a result, 85% of California now is in extreme drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, a weekly report issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, NOAA and the University of Nebraska.

"We have forests that are already in bad shape," said Jan Null, a meteorologist with Golden Gate Weather Services in Half Moon Bay. "They have been exacerbated by this dry period now. We are in about as bad a position as I have ever seen. Things are only going to get worse between now and when the rains start in the fall. People should be especially careful this summer."

Typically, California's winter rains begin in mid-November. That means the state has about 130 days to hold its breath.

Victims of last year's fires are urging others to be prepared, particularly if they live near rural or wooded areas.

Julie Wuest remembers rushing through her house on Fern Rock Way near Boulder Creek last August as flames from the CZU Lightning Complex Fire grew closer. Smoke filling the air, she grabbed jewelry, clothes, her late father's wedding ring, and other belongings, gripped by a sense that the three-bedroom house where she had lived for the past 17 years was about to burn.

"We've all seen photos of people going through the ashes of their homes and crying," she said. "I never thought I'd be one of those people. But here I am."

Wuest, 66, who has worked at tech companies like LSI Logic, Genentech and Infosys, rented an apartment in Tiburon after the fire destroyed her home and all but two of the 27 others on her street. She is dealing with her insurance company and county planners, trying to rebuild.

As a volunteer with Santa Cruz County's Community Emergency Response Team, she recommends people take photos and video now of everything they own and store it online, review insurance coverage, clear brush, pack a to-go bag and leave it in their vehicle trunk, scan important documents and put a list on the refrigerator of what they would take if they had to suddenly evacuate.

"The adrenaline cuts off the logical part of your brain," she said. "In an emergency situation you don't know where your keys are, you don't know what to grab."

At particular risk are the East Bay Hills, communities around Lake Tahoe, Mill Valley and other areas along Mount Tamalpais in Marin, the Santa Cruz Mountains, and the Sierra, fire experts say.

In many of those communities, forests and other wildlands historically burned regularly due to lightning fires or burning from Native American tribes. But they haven't burned in generations due to firefighting. In some parts of the Sierra, forests that had 40 trees per acre before the Gold Rush now have 400, said Scott Stephens, a professor of fire science at UC Berkeley.

Roughly 20 million acres need to be thinned or cleared with prescribed fires to restore forest health, he said. Last year, the U.S. Forest Service treated 213,842 acres in California, about 75% by mechanical thinning, according to Jon Groveman, a Forest Service spokesman. Cal Fire treated 105,000 acres in the year ending June 30, 2020, Porter said.

That pace needs to increase to at least 1 million acres a year — the amount Florida is now doing — Stephens said, even though prescribed burns sometimes get out of control and mechanical thinning is expensive and at times controversial.

"We've got to do better or we are going to be chasing our tails forever," Stephens said.

The Newsom administration has increased its budget for firefighting and fire prevention work by $2 billion over the next two years. Currently, Cal Fire has 3,020 seasonal firefighters, up from 2,710 last year, to boost its permanent staff of about 5,000. A big drop in the number of inmate crews due to early release programs and COVID-19 has been made up with crews from the National Guard, California Conservation Corps and additional Cal Fire hires, Porter said.

The state also has 12 new firefighting helicopters, and a new system of 842 remote cameras to detect fire.

But the trends are clear as the climate warms and more people move into rural areas. Since the 1970s, fire season in the Sierra Nevada has increased by 75 days, according to scientists at UC Merced.

Since 1932, when modern recordkeeping began, the six largest fires in California all have occurred in the last three years. The state and federal governments will have to spend billions thinning forests, toughening building codes, enforcing "defensible space" and taking other steps to adapt to the new reality, Porter said.

"It's going to continue to get worse in the near term," Porter said, "while we commit to the long-term solutions that we're on a path to do."

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