When Does It End?

As I write this, my brother’s neighborhood has been evacuated because of the Caldor Fire. A blaze that started over the weekend and, according to reports had burned around 2,000 acres yesterday. It blew up over night and had consumed more than 6,000 by this morning. And now, it has burned more than 30,000 acres.

Earlier reports today explained that where the fire started was in terrain that made fighting it very difficult. Plus, because of all the other fires burning in California and other western states, the resources to respond to this fire immediately simply weren’t there. It burned through the small town of Grizzly Flat, and today it marched towards other populated areas.

Among those areas is the neighborhood my brother lives in. They were ordered to evacuate earlier today. Fortunately, he is on vacation and has his dogs with him. So, he is safe as are the two creatures he cares about most. It also appears that, at least for now, his neighborhood has been spared. My niece lives a few miles down the road from him and, although her area has not been ordered to evacuate, she has left with her three small children. If the wind were to shift, there’s no telling how far the fire might move in her direction and she didn’t want to have to evacuate in the middle of the night. Her husband will leave later, bringing the dog and the goats. The chickens will have to fend for themselves.

Elsewhere in California, the Dixie Fire burns on, 34 days after being ignited. So far it has burned more than 600,000 acres. 600,000 acres is equal to more than 937 square miles. So, imagine if you will, an area that stretches more than 30 miles on each side and you have an idea of how big the Dixie Fire is. It has destroyed small towns and caused the evacuation of many others.

Meanwhile there are also more than 1,000 fires currently burning in the Western United States. When we drove home from our Oregon trip, we left the coast at Arcata and took 299 towards Redding. Within a few miles of getting onto 299, we saw a fire in the hills nearby. It looked small, like it had just started. That fire, called the Monument Fire, has now burned 120,000 acres.

It feels these days as though the world is on fire, both literally and figuratively. Every summer now brings these fires on. A couple of years ago, the Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise. This year, a new fire cropped up nearby and, if the wind had been moving in the wrong direction, that fire would have destroyed Paradise again. The name of that fire? Dixie. See above.

The Dixie Fire has surrounded Lake Almanor and threatened the town of Chester. I’ve been to Chester and to Lake Almanor. Friends have a vacation home on the lake. Even 34 days after it started, the fire is only 31% contained. Meaning it has plenty more room to grow, plenty more homes and towns to threaten.

Before the Camp Fire, there was the fire that destroyed neighborhoods in Santa Rosa, and a fire that destroyed homes near Santa Barbara. Every year now, these fires come. They destroy vast swaths of California and Oregon and Washington and Idaho and Montana and Colorado and, this year, even Utah. They come and people die. Survivors cry over what they have lost.

And nothing is done about it. Democrats talk about climate change, but that’s not an answer or a solution. Saying climate change is basically the same as throwing up your hands at trying to find a solution. I’ve got to the point that when a politician says “climate change” I consider there to be no solution. Because, here’s the deal. If we really are dealing with climate change, if we really are dealing with a natural cycle of earth’s environment (whether human aided or not), there may not be anything we can do about it.

Awhile back, when Trump was talking about sweeping the forest floors, I asked a neighbor about that. The neighbor worked for CalFire for decades and had recently retired. I said something along the lines of “okay, calling it sweeping the forest floors is nonsense, but there’s actually something to what he is saying, isn’t there?” My neighbor readily agreed. Years ago, our forest management practices included efforts to clear the underbrush. Some of those efforts included controlled burns in the spring months — when the soil and vegetation was still damp and green. Those controlled burns helped clear out some of the kindling and also created fire breaks that could slow down the spread of wildfires.

Why don’t we do them anymore?

Easy … because the environmentalists and elites didn’t like what those controlled burns did to their air quality for those few weeks when the burns occurred. So now, instead of having controlled burns, we have out of control wildfires burning millions of acres each year, killing people, destroying towns, and destroying people’s lives.

And nothing is done about it. Our leaders propose no solutions. Nothing has changed in the last 5-10 years of these ever increasing wildfires. More people die, more people suffer. And our leaders do absolutely nothing about it.

If I was Governor, I would call a special session of the Legislature to address this issue. And I would attend the session each and every day, demanding that both Democrats and Republicans set aside politics, set aside party, set aside partisan warfare, and work together to find some solutions, some way that our government can help change this dynamic.

And by this dynamic, I don’t mean reversing climate change. We may not be able to do anything about that. What we can do though is figure out how to live in a world that is changing and becoming more dangerous. It would require some really difficult choices, and some major expenses, but as they say, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Our leaders seem to have forgotten that simple principle. Instead of spending today to save tomorrow, they simply allow us to keep marching into the abyss. Summers filled with smokes and fires, death and destruction. I just don’t understand how we have arrived at a point where our political class seems powerless and bereft of any ideas to protect the people. We seem to have reached a place where big ideas and solutions are no longer possible. Yet the world continues to grow more complex and more dangerous. When and where will a leader, or leaders, stand up and take action? When will this end?