Bloody Sunset, Sonoma, October 14, 2017
Photo: Scott Strazzante, SFgate.com
Silhouette of a firefighter in Sonoma on Lovall Valley RoadPhoto: Scott Strazzante, SFgate.com
Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzales, Special to the Chronicle, SFgate.com
The simple formula is fuel-plus-meteorology-plus-ignition equals fire. The catalyst is people
Deadliest Week in California Wildfire History: This false-color image created by combining three of the Suomi NPP satellite's high resolution thermal and visible channels from the VIIRS sensor captures the burn scars from the California wildfires which as of Oct. 15th have claimed 41 lives, making this week the deadliest in state history, according to California state officials. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection have confirmed that the 17 active wildfires have burned over 221,750 acres.
“NOTHING MORE than ash and bones.”
That grim description of how some victims of the Wine Country firestorm were found underscores the horror of the wildfires that swept through and devastated Northern California. At least 41 people were killed, including a 14-year-old boy found dead in the driveway of the home he was trying to flee, a 28-year-woman confined to a wheelchair and a couple who recently had celebrated their 75th anniversary. In addition to the lives lost, approximately 5,700 homes and businesses were destroyed, including entire neighborhoods turned into smoldering ruins.
Some 220,000 acres, including prized vineyards, have been scorched, and the danger is not over, as some fires are still burning and officials fear the return of winds could spread more catastrophe. Fire season is part of life in California, something that residents know and prepare for after the hot, dry summer months. But the events that began last Sunday have been unprecedented, and so the question that must be confronted is what caused the deadliest week of wildfires in the state’s history.
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) pointed the finger at climate change. “With a warming climate, dry weather and reducing moisture, these kinds of catastrophes have happened and will continue to happen and we have to be ready to mitigate, and it’s going to cost a lot of money,” he said last week. Others point to rapid urbanization fed by relentless population growth.
Global Supertanker Services' 747 leased to Cal Fire drops 18,500 gallons of fire retardant at a time on Wine Country fires
As urbanization grows, so does the risk of wildfire
Over time, the edges of cities have encroached on wild spaces. The close proximity between private property and wildlands allows fires to spread more rapidly and damage or destroy more property in the process.
That allows fires during the fall in California to spread more rapidly into urbanized areas.
Many of these at-risk areas are in wildland-urban interface areas, or WUIs — where housing and vegetation intermix or come within close proximity of each other. Volker Radloff, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who works at Silvis Labs, describes some WUI areas as “like a medieval city, with an urban city next to a big dark forest.” Some of the most heavily-damaged areas in Santa Rosa and Napa were in the middle of these areas.
Burned out and collapsed house along Mt Veeder Rd after flames from the Nuns fire moved through the Mt Veeder area in Napa, California, USA 11 Oct 2017.
Photo Peter DaSilva, Special to the Chronicle, SFgate.com
Development in such areas poses a significant problem for firefighters and communities. According to a 2002 report by FEMA, 38% of new home construction in the western United States was adjacent to or intermixed with WUI areas.While the causes of the fires are still under investigation, we do know what helped them spread quickly: abundant dried vegetation and seasonal wind patterns.
“After more than a decade of drought, the fuel levels—dry brush and grasses—across California are exceptionally high,” said William Patzert, a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Last winter’s welcome rains created more vegetation that, over the past six months, created more fuel.”
The fall season also typically brings hot, dry, and gusty winds. These Diablo winds are driven by atmospheric high-pressure systems over the Great Basin (mostly in Nevada). Winds blow from northeast to southwest over California’s mountain ranges and down through the valleys and coastal regions. These downslope winds can quickly whip up a fire and carry burning embers to the next neighborhood or patch of woodland.
People watch the sunset through smoke in the air from a fire on Mount Veeter in Napa, Calif. on Tuesday, October 10, 2017.
Photo: Elijah Nouvelage, Special to the Chronicle, SFgate.com
“The simple formula is fuel-plus-meteorology-plus-ignition equals fire. The catalyst is people,” Patzert added.
“The fires erupted in areas where wildlands meet urban and suburban development. Californians have built in what are historical fire corridors, and these high-density developments are particularly vulnerable to fast-moving, destructive fires.”
No single fire can be specifically linked to climate change, and certainly other factors, such as increased development or logging and grazing activities, are involved. But scientists say there is a clear connection between global warming and the increase in recent years in the severity and frequency of wildfires in the West.
“Climate change is kind of turning up the dial on everything,” expert LeRoy Westerling told CBS News. “Dry periods become more extreme. Wet periods become more extreme.”
While California prepares for what promises to be an arduous rebuilding, Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and other places hit by this year’s unprecedented back-to-back-to-back hurricanes are still mopping up and, in Puerto Rico’s case, just beginning to rebuild. So it would seem to be a natural time to talk about the possible role climate change and population density played in these disasters and about measures the nation should be taking to slow global warming. Instead, we have an administration that refuses even to consider the possibility of a connection, much less talk about solutions. Worse, it is taking steps in the wrong direction: pulling out of the Paris climate accord, reversing rules on power plant emissions, staffing key agencies with climate-change deniers, while simultaneously pursuing a far right Christian militant policies on restrictions to birth control, that will increase the likelihood and frequency of tragedies such as the fires in California’s wine country, floods in Texas, hurricanes around the globe (this week Hurricane Ophelia is set to slam Ireland and the UK), and devastating droughts in places that until the 20th century had been relatively moist.
A red sun sets through a blanket of smoke over the vineyards off of Silverado Trail road Oct. 9, 2017 in Napa, Calif. A fire tore through the area on the evening of Oct. 8, destroying properties and vineyards.
Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle, SFgate.com
Burnt wine tanks at Paradise Ridge Vineyard behind Robert Ellison's sculpture "Frame"
Photo: Noah Berger, Special to the Chronicle, SFgate.com
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Halloween Hurricane?
Current GFS model prediction for October 29th Florida hurricane (above). East coast Florida beaches are already so eroded there's hardly any room to put a towel, much less drive a car (below). Mountains of seaweed are piling up where dunes once resided. The seaweed is a good thing, however, it will help hold what sand there is in place to very slowly replenish the storm-lost dunes.
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Tens of thousands of wilting South Floridians stood hours in the sweltering, soggy heat Sunday at Tropical Park, waiting to apply for special food stamps available only to victims Hurricane Irma, stunning state officials who were expecting just a fraction of that response.
Over the weekend, several food assistance centers in Miami-Dade and Broward were abruptly shut down by local and state officials because of “health and safety concerns,” turning away thousands who lined up for the benefits.
Authorities said the crowd was just too overwhelming, leaving gridlocked streets at a standstill. Medics and police had to respond to many cases of heat exhaustion, as well as fights among “frustrated participants” applying for D-SNAP, the Department of Children and Families’ Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
This should not surprise anyone considering the lame response to Hurricane Maria
This should not surprise anyone considering the lame response to Hurricane Maria
The First Amendment has become the most powerful weapon of social conservatives fighting to limit the separation of church and state and to roll back laws on same-sex marriage and abortion rights.
Few groups have done more to advance this body of legal thinking than the Alliance Defending Freedom (dubbed "Bigots-R-Us" by some in the progressive community) which has more than 3,000 lawyers working on behalf of its causes around the world and brought in $51.5 million in revenue for the 2015-16 tax year, more than the American Civil Liberties Union.
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