CA's 'New Normal': Wildfires Char 3.1M Acres In State

CALIFORNIA — The World Meteorological Organization selects names for hurricanes from a predetermined list.

Wildfires, on the other hand, are typically named for geographic locations.

“Quickly naming the fire provides responding fire resources with an additional locator and allows fire officials to track and prioritize incidents by name," Cal Fire told USA Today.

These days, keeping track of what’s what has become hard work.

As of Friday, the last day of 2021, 8,367 known California wildfires had torn through nearly 3.1 million acres. Three of those blazes are among the 20 largest in state history, according to Cal Fire.

And this year hasn’t been nearly as bad as 2020, when 9,279 reported blazes torched a state record 4.2 million acres.

All but two of the 20 largest wildfires in state history have occurred in the last 18 years. Six of the state’s largest wildfires have occurred in the last two years, and all have burned since 2018, according to Cal Fire.

Scientists say this the "new normal," and that until mankind musters the resolve to adapt to this changing world, we should expect more of the same.

Increasingly hotter and drier weather is a major factor in the explosion of wildfires in recent years, but it’s not the only one, experts say.

Forest overgrowth — the result of decades of overly aggressive fire suppression efforts, in the view of many experts — and the encroachment of development into forests have made the Golden State more susceptible to wildfires.

The hotter and drier weather has exacerbated these conditions, making the occurrence of major fire incidents inevitable, according to the findings of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration study.

“The combination of a warmer, drier climate with fire-control practices over the last century has produced a situation in which we can expect more frequent fires of larger magnitude in the U.S. West and Canada,” the NOAA study said.

Between 1970 and 1980, 3 percent of the state’s surfaced burned. That figure swelled to 11 percent between 2010 and 2020.

"We are essentially living in a mega-fire era," Cal Fire Santa Clara Unit Chief Jake Hess said at a news briefing during the height of 2020’s disastrous fire season.

"These significant events have been outpacing themselves every year."

Wildfires have a devastating impact on the state’s environment, economy, and the physical and psychological well-being of its residents.

The massive fires California has seen over the last two years alone have destroyed nearly 20 percent of the state’s giant sequoia tree population.

"I've been involved with climate research for 23 years, and I honestly didn't think it would get this bad this fast," Oregon State University climate scientist Philip Mote told NBC News.

"This isn't really news to anyone who have been studying this for a while, but it's depressing to see it coming true."

Meanwhile, today’s blazes are getting much harder to fight, The Los Angeles Times reports, noting that wildfires spread more quickly and more haphazardly when the vegetation is exceptionally dry, as it has been in recent years.

Such blazes “have a greater tendency to do things like hop over barriers, jump over control lines or roads or bodies of water, or to create their own weather conditions,” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain told The Times.

Wildfires emit volatile and semi-volatile organic materials and nitrogen oxides that form ozone and organic particular matter that pose a health risk to first responders, according to NOAA.

And those pollutants can travel. Last year, smoke from California wildfires affected people 3,000 miles away, NPR reports.

Today’s wildfire season is 78 days longer now than in 1970.

All of this is exacting a toll on the mental health of Californians already taxed by the pandemic. Experiencing wildfires has also been linked to depression and other mental health issues, according to WebMD.

Here’s a look at some of California’s largest fires of 2021:

Dixie

When: July 2021

Counties involved: Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta and Tehama

Total acreage burned: 963,309

Total structures destroyed or damaged: 1,329

Total known fatalities: 1

Summary: The second largest fire in state history destroyed most of Greenville, the tiny Plumas County town of 817. Gary Stephen Maynard, a 47-year-old San Jose man, was indicted in connection with starting the blaze, named for a Butte County creek where the fire originated.

Monument

When: July 2021

Counties involved: Trinity

Total acreage burned: 223,124

Total structures destroyed or damaged: 50

Total known fatalities: None

Summary: The blaze was originally called the Panther fire. A lightning strike ignited the 14th largest blaze in state history.

Caldor

When: August 2021

Counties involved: Alpine, Amador, El Dorado

Total acreage burned: 221, 835

Total structures destroyed or damaged: 1,003

Total known fatalities: 1

Summary: The state’s third largest blaze of 2021 threatened the community of South Lake Tahoe, triggering the evacuation of more than 50,000 people. The 15th largest fire in state history is just the second known blaze to have crossed the Sierra Nevada mountains — after the Caldor fire did so days earlier.

River Complex

When: July 2021

Counties involved: Siskiyou, Trinity

Acreage burned: 199,343

Structures destroyed or damaged: 122

Known fatalities: None

Summary: More than 20 lightning-fueled blazes merged to form the state’s 17th largest blaze. It took nearly three months to extinguish the 311-square-mile blaze.

* Source: Cal Fire