"This is more extreme than any other year in living memory."
-Noah Diffenbaugh, Stanford University Climate Scientist
I knew the fires plaguing California were bad but it was easy to push those thoughts to the back on my mind. It wasn’t until the morning of September 9th that I was struck with just how dire the situation truly was. I walked outside, midmorning, to find everything dusted in a thin layer of light grey ash. I could still see it drifting down from the sky, like snow. The air smelled like a late summer night campfire, but none of those happy memories found their way into my mind. Instead, the smell just stung my eyes and clung to my hair.
It was uncharacteristically dark for this hour. The smoke hung so low it covered the sun like storm clouds, but sky wasn’t dark with rain. It was orange. Not a soft creamsicle sunrise, but a bright blood-orange that made it difficult to look away. It was both terrifying and breathtaking at the same time, ominous yet beautiful.
Marley Short was living in Boulder Creek off a winding road in the Santa Cruz Mountains during the CZU Lightning Complex fire in 2020.
How did you first find out about the fires?
I first heard about it on social media, but because I never watch the news or anything I had no idea how bad they were or how close they had gotten to our home.
Can you remember what you were doing when you first found out there was a fire in your area?
I had just gone to bed and was falling asleep when there was a loud aggressive knocking at my door. A police officer had come to our street and were going door to door telling people the fires had gotten close and we needed to evacuate.
Can you walk me through the evacuation process? What emotions or thoughts were running through your head?
I woke up in a total panic from the police officer banging on my door at 2am. He told us we had about an hour to evacuate because we were in a potential path of the fire. We were told if we were not out within the hour, he would be back and we would be fined because it was a “State of Emergency.” I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been so frantic in my life. It was one of the most stressful situations I’ve been in and that whole hour of throwing things into bags is a blur. I think my body just went on autopilot.
Do you know how close the fires actually got to your house?
The fire line was being held four houses down from mine for over a week. Most of my neighbors lost their homes. We were really lucky.
How long was it before you could go back home?
I stayed with family and friends for six and a half weeks. We were eventually contacted by CAL FIRE saying that we could return home, but there was still an advisory evacuation warning in place.
Did your house suffer any damages?
We had massive holes in our carport and our entire waterline was destroyed. Once we were back home, we still didn’t have running water for several more weeks.
How has this experience affected you overall?
This experience has made me extremely cautions when it comes to being aware – keeping my eyes and ears open and staying up to date. These things can happen at anytime and they happen so fast. It’s also made me think about whether or not I want to live somewhere rural forever.
Do you have plans in place in case of another fire?
Honestly, there not much you can prepare for other than having all your important papers in one place and making sure you have a place to visit. I think if this were ever to happen to us again, I would be calmer than I was the first time, but it would still be just as scary. I just hope we don’t have to go through this again anytime soon.
This graph represents the number of acres burned in the twenty largest fires in California’s recorded history. Fourteen of these fires have occurred in the last ten years, while nine have happened since 2020. This points to a worrisome trend of increasingly large and destructive fires occurring in the last several years.
Source: CAL FIRE, 2020 Statistics and Events
The 2020 California fire season was the largest wildfire season recorded in modern history. According to Cal Fire, nearly 10,000 fires had burned over 4.2 million acres. That is more than 4% of the state’s 100 million acres of land. At one point, it was estimated that the state was battling 367 fires at once, including the August Complex fire, which would soon grow to be California’s largest recorded wildfire. The August Complex fire was deemed California’s first “gigafire” and burned over 1 million acres – an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.
This fire season burned groves of redwoods, giant sequoias, and an estimated one million Joshua trees. In addition to this massive destruction, Stanford researchers estimate that smoke and the resulting air quality led to hundreds of illnesses and deaths. These fires leave a devastating impact on the environment and the communities around them.
According to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, California’s fires are worsening at a rate that is outpacing human solutions. Approximately 20,000 firefighters, from all over the world, were called to action to help quell this disastrous fire season. Even with this amount of support, these fires still raged out of control.
"It's not just more firefighters," Cal Fire Director Thom Porter said. "It's not just more aircraft. It's not just fuel reduction project work. It's not just defensible space or home hardening. It's absolutely every one of those things. We need every piece of the system to be raised to meet the challenge that the changing climate is giving us." He believes it will take several decades before we are adequately prepared to tackle the increasingly worse wildfire seasons. However, experts suggest forest thinning during wetter months, using controlled fires, could help reduce the risks.
What makes California the perfect landscape for disaster?
Years of drought, coupled with rising temperatures, have led to extremely dry, arid conditions prone to combustion. In addition to these flammable environments, years of fire suppression policy have led to increasingly dense forests.
Before European colonization, Indigenous people used to set purposeful fires to help thin the underbrush. Once more and more people settled in California, however, these controlled burned were ended and small natural fires were suppressed. This allowed forests to grow denser and brushier, which creates fires that burn more severely. “They burn so hot that they consume the majority of the biomass and essentially sterilize the soil,” said Swain. These are known as “crown” fires, because they are able to reach the tops of trees – instead of just burning the brush. They are the hottest and most destructive types of fires and are becoming increasingly more common.
Works Cited
Anguiano, Dani. “California's Wildfire Hell: How 2020 Became the State's Worst Ever Fire Season.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 30 Dec. 2020, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/30/california-wildfires-north-complex-record.
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE). “2020 Incident Archive.” Cal Fire Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, 2021, www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2020/.
Pierre-louis, Kendra, and John Schwartz. “Why Does California Have so Many Wildfires?” The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 Aug. 2020, www.nytimes.com/article/why-does-california-have-wildfires.html.
Rexroat, Kelsey. “The Day the San Francisco Sky Turned Orange.” The New Yorker, The New Yorker, 20 Apr. 2021, www.newyorker.com/culture/video-dept/the-day-the-san-francisco-sky-turned-orange.
Rust, Susanne, and Tony Barboza. “How Climate Change Is Fueling Record-Breaking California Wildfires, Heat and Smog.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 13 Sept. 2020, www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-13/climate-change-wildfires-california-west-coast.
Stelloh, Tim. “California Exceeds 4 Million Acres Burned by Wildfires in 2020.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 5 Oct. 2020, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-exceeds-4-million-acres-burned-wildfires-2020-n1242078.
Voiland, Adam. “A Multi-Dimensional Fire Challenge.” NASA, NASA, 21 Sept. 2021, earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148913/a-multi-dimensional-fire-challenge.
Photographs (in order of appearance): Stevepb/Pixabay. Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images. Eric Ananmalay. Eric Ananmalay. Josh Edelson/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.
Credits:
Created with an image by stevepb - "firefighter wildfire grass fire"