Plenty of water to put out the Los Angeles fires - homes can be rebuilt to be far more fire-resistant - main risk is to people who ignore evacuation orders - and forest fires are natural in California
For a quick overview see the list of sections, skip to Contents. Or on laptops click on the column of dashes to the left.
The California fires are a natural part of the US landscape and forestry - though inconvenient (to say the least) for the humans who now life there in their cities and houses. The US gets tens of thousands of wildfires every year - and California is one of the worst affected, with an average of over 8,000 wild fires every year. It’s a natural thing in this part of the world. When there are no fires, the dry wood builds up. Then from time to time it burns up in a fire, followed by new growth.
We expect more wildfire conditions as the climate warms but not necessarily more wildfires as we can control fires. Californians anyway need to control the fires far better than nature.
Wildfires ran through every forest every few years before humans got there.
Every houseowner can help by following simple tips to make their homes firewise - then their home may be one of the ones the fire doesn't burn down - and if everyone does this the job of firefighters is far easier - have a new section about this now.
The first peoples controlled the fires to some extent. But they did this with controlled burning, burning most forests every few years. By one estimate, on average
1.8 million hectares burnt in prehistoric times in California every year (Stephens et al, 2007. Prehistoric fire area and emissions from California’s forests, woodlands, shrublands, and grasslands)
In modern California the average is about
400,000 hectares burn in modern times in California every year
- with a maximum just short of 1.8 million in 2020 and a minimum of less than 45,000 in 2010. See List_of_California_wildfires#Area_burned_per_year (Wikipedia).
So it’s less than a quarter of the prehistoric levels of fire in California.
Controlled burns are part of the solution. But modern Californians need to control them far more than even the first peoples did and that's how these fires happen.
This is a solvable problem. We can put them out and there is much we can do to control them in the future far more than we are already.
The main risk in Los Angeles is that most people don’t understand how fast a fire can spread. If you get an evacuation order, leave.
The fires will be controlled. You can’t save your house by staying. You will only get in the way of firefighters trying to save it, and put the firefighters’ lives at risk as they have to divert from fire fighting to a rescue mission to try to rescue you.
This is just the biggest fire in LA, most of LA will be safe.
The biggest fire in terms of damage to buildings in California was in 2018 when it destroyed 18,840 buildings in the city of Paradise, 95% of the city.
It’s not the usual time of year for fires, large fires are rare in winter. But they happened this year because of an unusual combination of events.
Two very wet winters which led to lots of vegetation growing
One very dry summer which dried it out
A high pessure over the Las Vegas and the Mojave desert and a low pressures system over Los Angeles.
See: It’s not really the typical time for nasty California fires. What changed that?
They can’t yet say if these conditions will be more common in a warming world.
This funnels hot dry air down through the mountain passes, over more desert which dries it even further then yet more mountain passes leading to very dry gusts of 45 mph or more.
When they say it's a risk area it does NOT mean that it will all burn up. Rather it means they don't yet know where the fire will go and until it is under control need people to be alert for evacuation orders.
There is a temporary shortage of water locally at higher elevations in the Palisades, one of the hilly areas around Los Angeles. They are solving it by trucking in water.
There is plenty of water in the main parts of Los Angeles. It is not about water in the big reservoirs.
It is just about the amount of water in water tanks up in the hills around Los Angeles. They had three big water tanks, they were all completely full and all have been emptied to fight the fire. They are constantly refilling them but because there is so much demand for water in Los Angeles they can't supply the extra pressure needed to move enough water fast enough up to the water tanks. Some water is getting to them but not enough. So some of the fire hydrants in the hills are not providing enough water to fight the fire.
So they are now filling trucks with water in areas where the fire hydrants still supply enough water and trucking in water to the firefighters.
QUOTE STARTS
Quiñones and other DWP officials said that the city was fighting a wildfire in hilly terrain with an urban water system, and that at lower elevations in the Palisades, water pressure remained strong.
Before the fire, all 114 tanks that supply the city water infrastructure were completely filled.
Malibu, California January 8, 2025-A firefighter battles a house fire as the Palisades Fire burns in Malibu Tuesday. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
Quiñones said that the hydrants in the Palisades rely on three large water tanks with about 1 million gallons each. The first ran dry at 4:45 p.m. Tuesday; the second at 8:30 p.m.; and the third was dry at 3 a.m. Wednesday.
“Those tanks help with the pressure on the fire hydrants in the hills in the Palisades, and because we were pushing so much water in our trunk line, and so much water was being used. ... we were not able to fill the tanks fast enough,” she said. “So the consumption of water was faster than we can provide water in a trunk line.”
In other words, the demand for water at lower elevations was hampering the ability to refill the tanks located at higher elevations. Because of the ongoing fire, DWP crews also faced difficulty accessing its pump stations, which are used to move water up to the tanks.
The utility on Wednesday was sending 20 tanks with water to support firefighters in the Palisades, and the tankers were having to reload at other distant locations.
“We are constantly moving that water to the fire department to get them as much water as we can,” Quiñones said.
It’s unclear how widespread the hydrant issues were. In November, the lack of water from hydrants hurt the effort to combat the Mountain fire in Ventura County, when two water pumps became inactive, slowing the process to deliver hillside water
. Fire hydrants ran dry as Pacific Palisades burned. L.A. city officials blame 'tremendous demand'
Wildfires are natural.
Houses can usually be rebuilt in less than a year if the funding is available. It takes about 14 months after a hurricane in the USA typically. https://webassets.inman.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/BuildFax-Hurricane-Recovery-Study.pdf
California has had many wildfires.
Rebuilding depends on permits also and people wanting to come back. The biggest fire in recent times is 2018 which destroyed the city of Paradise, only 1 in 20 of the houses remained and and 18,804 buildings were destroyed. They are gradually coming back again but it's taken a while. Required to rebuild to be more fireproof.
. Paradise, California - Wikipedia
The fires in California can be controlled, the main issue is people like to live near trees. There are places in Australia with frequent fires but they have large fire gaps around the houses. Then another issue is forest maintenance, keeping down the underbrush, and again fire gaps and controlled burning. All this costs money.
But California actually had much much bigger forest fires before the modern cities. They are far more controlled now. In the nineteenth century, it used to be that for larger parts of the year you couldn't see far at all from Los Angeles because of the smoke from fires especially in summer.
QUOTE STARTS
‘‘Of the hundreds of persons who visit the Pacific slope in California every summer to see the mountains, few see more than the immediate foreground and a haze of smoke which even the strongest glass is unable to penetrate.’’
(C.H. Merriam, 1898) - quoted in this paper, page 9.
The trees there are adapted to fire for millions of years and some of them can't even reproduce without fire. Such as the giant sequoia. They do controlled burning of the Giant Sequoia groves in order to stimulate the seedlings to germinate.
This blog post has material from my earlier:
BLOG: Why fires in California are part of the natural order and not a sign the world will end.
Also
It is NOT a tipping point. Fires can be controlled and the risk is far far lower than it was in the nineteenth century in California even with warming.
It is a wakeup call to invest more in preparing to prevent wildfires in California. We know what to do. But it is expensive and needs more investment.
It is about measures to make houses more fireproof and with less fuel for fires in the forests and fire strips and controlled burning. We know what to do but the expense can be an issue - and also some of the measures are politically difficult to put in place especially controlled burning which are also limited because of the clean air acts. We can clear out the undergrowth mechanically instead but that is expensive.
Because of the way humans like to live in and near forests, then we have to do a better job than nature to protect our houses.
Contents
How the Santa Ana winds form - high pressure funnelling through mountains to low pressure
Native trees and plants that require fire - and some even encourage it - to reproduce
How the Santa Ana winds form - high pressure funnelling through mountains to low pressure
Screenshots from this video from CBS news:
First a high pressure east of the Sierra mountains and a low pressure in the South of California.
Then it pushes down through the mountains.
Then it is funnelled over deserts that dry it out even more.
Funnelled through more canyons that speed it up further.
As it reaches the shore the gusts can be as dry as 1% humidity and 35 mph or more.
How to keep your house much safer by protecting from embers in a firewise home
It’s embers that destroy houses. Not hundred foot flames, a pile of firebrands that would fit in our hand.
Even in Los Angeles homes that are better built and maintained, firewise homes are often saved from fire when others around them burn down. So when people rebuild, if they are wise, they will make them firewise. There are state grants to help with fire protection of your homes.
A home made of steel frames and masonry won't burnt at all. But there is a lot you can do to protect a wood frame house too, it's not the flames that burn houses down, it's embers even in a big fire like this, so long as you have some space between your house and the burning trees. So the key to it is putting grates in place to stop embers getting into the roof space or any exposed wood, clearing up pine needles, maintaining the garden to remove dry and dead foliage and leaves, making sure any garden furniture is fireproof, not to leave piles of logs and leaves around near your house and so on.
If you do that then your house may well be one of the ones that the fire doesn't destroy. If everyone does this the job of the fire fighters is far easier.
This is from a guide by the US Forest Service and the United States Department of Agriculture:
Video here:
See: Ignition Resistant Homes for more information.
Los Angeles fire fighting department has a check list:
HOME SAFETY CHECK
Simple fixes from roof to foundation to make yourn home safer from embers and radiant heat.
Clean roofs and gutters of dead leaves, debris and pine needles that could catch embers.
Replace or repair any loose or missing shingles or roof tiles to prevent ember penetration.
Enclose under-eave and soffit vents or screen with metal mesh to prevent ember entry.
Cover exterior attic vents with metal wire mesh no larger than 1/8 inch to prevent sparks from entering the home.
Repair or replace damaged or loose window screens and any broken windows.
Screen or box-in areas below patios and decks with wire mesh to prevent debris and combustible materials from accumulating.
Move any flammable material away from wall exteriors – mulch, flammable plants, leaves and needles, firewood piles – anything that can burn.
Remove anything stored underneath decks or porches.
FIREWISE LANDSCAPING
Home Ignition Zone
Keep leaves and needles off your roof and deck. Create a fuel free area within 3-5 feet of your home’s perimeter. From 5 feet to a minimum of 30 feet out, thin and space vegetation, remove dead leaves and needles, prune shrubs and tree limbs. Keep areas around decks, sheds, fences and swing sets clear of debris and vegetation.
Landscaping and Firewise Plants
To prevent fire spread, trim back branches that overhang structures and prune branches of large trees up to 6 to 10 feet from the ground. Remove plants containing resins, oils, and waxes; make sure organic mulch is at least 5 feet from structures. Choose Firewise plants – find lists at firewise.org or from your local Cooperative Extension service.
CNN lists the top priorities as:
• First priority: Install a Class A-rated roof such as asphalt fiberglass shingles or metal panels. Clear leaves, pine needles, and other flammable material from the roof, gutters, and areas near fences. Install flame and ember-resistant vents.
• Second priority: Replace wood or plastic fences attaches to the home with noncombustible metal fencing. Enclose low decks and areas under bay windows with mesh screening or ventilated noncombustible material. Remove branches overhanging the roof and gutters.
• Third priority: Replace at least the lower foot of wood or vinyl sliding with fiber cement, stucco, brick, or stone siding. Enclose open eaves with noncombustible soffit material. Use dual-paned, tempered glass in windows and doors. Replace wooden decking with fire-rated composite material, metal, or lightweight concrete
There is financial help available as well as advice:
The cost of reinforcing existing homes against wildfires can vary significantly, depending on the extent of protection needed and the size of the home, but will likely range between $2,000 and $15,000, and full hardening could cost as much as $100,000, according to Headwaters Economics.
To assist these families, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, in partnership with Cal Fire, have developed a state home hardening initiative which “focuses on high social vulnerability communities and providing financial assistance for home hardening activities to low- and moderate-income households.”
Homeowners who need assistance to retrofit, harden, and create defensible space for their homes at high risk to wildfires can apply to the California Wildfire Mitigation Program.
Cal Fire also released a low-cost retrofit list to help homeowners focus on the most critical priorities needed to harden their homes.
This is a striking example which shows what a difference the construction of a building makes in a wildfire.F
from:
QUOTE STARTS
ICF (insulated concrete forms) are becoming more common for building there, thanks to their energy efficiency, fire resistance, and earthquake resilience, but many of the homes affected by the fires would have been constructed from materials such as wood, or stucco - a cement-based sand render.
“The survival of homes, while others around them were destroyed, can actually be attributed to a mix of careful planning, structural integrity, environmental factors, and sheer effort,” says fire safety expert Daniel Vasilevski, of Bright Force Electrical.
"The choice of materials isn’t just an aesthetic or cost decision,” he adds. "It directly impacts a structure’s ability to withstand extreme fire conditions as well.”
Other factors that could play into how well a building survives includes having double-glazed windows - which prevents shattering and doesn't allow flames to enter a property.
Sealed gaps in walls also prevent both smoke and fire from getting inside a home and allowing it to spread.
“David Steiner’s Malibu mansion includes pilings driven 50 feet into the bedrock,” explains Vasilevski.
“While these are primarily meant to provide stability during seismic activity, they make homes more resistant to wildfires as well. A deeply anchored foundation resists heat-induced shifting or cracking in the ground, which could otherwise weaken the structure and expose it to flames or embers.”
. How the 'miracle' Malibu mansion survived LA wildfires while homes on both sides were destroyed
Native trees and plants that require fire - and some even encourage it - to reproduce
It’s been happening like this since long before humans came to the Americas, for milions of years. So much so that many plants there not only are adapted to resist fire - they actually require fire in order to reproduce, and some are even covered in a resinous covering in order to encourage fires!
Chaparral landscape of central and southern California - adapted to fire and Caeonothus plants are actually coated with flammable resins to help start fires. Their seeds only germinate in conditions of intense heat so they need fires to reproduce.
Giant Sequoias are covered in a thick fibrous bark two to four feet thick (0.6 to 1.2 meters) to protect them from fire. Their seeds have to fall on partly burnt or mineral soil to germinate
Several species of pine, knobcone pine, Bishop pine, and Sargent cypress, actually require a fire before their cones will open. The high temperatures of a fire char the outside and cause the cones to open, dropping the seeds on the ash and minearl soil
So, for millions of years before there were humans in America, the trees would burn in frequent forest fires in the dry conditions of California.
First peoples’ use of fire - controlled burning - most of Yosemite national park was meadowland and most of the forest grew up after it was made into a national park and the first peoples evicted
When the first peoples got to California, the fires continued, but in a more controlled way. The first peoples did controlled burning of wild fires in small areas in the spring when it's less flammable.
As an example, you think of the Yosemite national park in Northern California as forest - but originally it was mostly meadowland before it was made into a national park. The American Indians kept it that way through controlled use of fire. one of the reasons they have so many fires now is because of their eviction in the mid C19. A fair bit of the woodland there is new, as in, less than two centuries old.
. Native American use of fire - Wikipedia
See this account of their use of fire:
“Generally, the American Indians burned parts of the ecosystems in which they lived to promote a diversity of habitats, especially increasing the "edge effect," which gave the Indians greater security and stability to their lives. Their use of fire was different from white settlers who burned to create greater uniformity in ecosystems. In general, during the presettlement period, Indian caused fires were often interpreted as either purposeful (including fires set for amusement) or accidental (campfires left or escaped smoke signaling).”
“Most primary or secondary accounts relate to the purposeful burning to establish or keep "mosaics, resource diversity, environmental stability, predictability, and the maintenance of ecotones (Lewis 1985: 77)." These purposeful fires by almost every American Indian tribe differ from natural fires by the seasonality of burning, frequency of burning certain areas, and the intensity of the fire. For those Indian tribes that used fire in ecosystems tended to burn in the late spring just before new growth appears, while in areas that are drier fires tended to be set during the late summer or early fall since the main growth of plants and grasses occurs in the winter. Indians burned selected areas yearly, every other year, or intervals as long as five years. Steve Pyne put much of the Indian use of fire into perspective as he reported that:”
“’the modification of the American continent by fire at the hands of Asian immigrants [now called American Indians, Native Americans, or First Nations/People] was the result of repeated, controlled, surface burns on a cycle of one to three years, broken by occasional holocausts from escape fires and periodic conflagrations during times of drought. Even under ideal circumstances, accidents occurred: signal fires escaped and campfires spread, with the result that valuable range was untimely scorched, buffalo driven away, and villages threatened. Burned corpses on the prairie were far from rare. So extensive were the cumulative effects of these modifications that it may be said that the general consequence of the Indian occupation of the New World was to replace forested land with grassland or savannah, or, where the forest persisted, to open it up and free it from underbrush. Most of the impenetrable woods encountered by explorers were in bogs or swamps from which fire was excluded; naturally drained landscape was nearly everywhere burned. Conversely, almost wherever the European went, forests followed. The Great American Forest may be more a product of settlement than a victim of it (Pyne 1982: 79-80).’”.
Prehistoric fires burnt far more of the state than present day fires
In the nineteenth century fires there were so common that in summer, most of those who visited the Pacific slope in California were not able to see the distant mountains because of the smoke, and normally you couldn't see much further than the immediate foreground.
‘‘Of the hundreds of persons who visit the Pacific slope in California every summer to see the mountains, few see more than the immediate foreground and a haze of smoke which even the strongest glass is unable to penetrate.’’
(C.H. Merriam, 1898) - quoted in this paper, page 9.
Up to the nineteenth century, between 1.8 and 4.8 million hectares were burnt every year or about 4.5–12.0% of the states lands burning annually. By comparison in 2019 105,147 hectares burnt (a recent year with not much burning).
So, in prehistoric times, more than 40 times as much land burnt every year than now, sometimes more than 100 times as much land
. Prehistoric fire area and emissions from California’s forests, woodlands,shrublands, and grasslands
More uncontrolled fires after the first peoples were evicted - but now a transition to more controlled fires again
After the first peoples were evicted - then it’s natural that they have uncontrolled ones from time to time. Since fires are natural to this type of woodland, you can’t really have them without fire. It's just a matter of whether they are controlled or uncontrolled. See Fire Over Ahwahnee: John Muir and the Decline of Yosemite
There’s been a change now towards controlled fires, after a long period of time of just letting the forests grow. But the Yosemite area - and other areas too presumably - are still very forested and not the meadowland of the time of the American Indians when they were resident there.
Fires are totally normal. For instance, it says here that on average there are 54,000 wild fires in the US by late August - this is an article from 2013 when there was another big fire that threatened Yosemite. Yosemite Fire Example of How Droughts Amplify Wildfires
Also it’s the new normal to have summers with droughts and very dry weather longer than usual, this will be the new normal. Again not every year - but the worst years will be worse than before, as the new normal again.
What sets off the fire and why now? - power lines - arson, camp fires, sparks from engines, backyard fires, cigarettes etc
They don’t know the cause of the fires yet but a lot of the fires that start during strong winds are set off by power lines blown down and sparking fires.
After many years without a fire and no controlled burning or clearance the trees are ready to burn again and anything can set them off. It’s pretty much as it was before humans got there. Then after a fire, the area will be okay for a fair number of years until the next generation of trees grows up - then it burns again (unless burnt down in between in a controlled fire).
So it’s mainly a question of what sets it off - once the forest is mature - it’s all ready to go up in fire again. With humans we have many more ways they can start. These include people setting the fires deliberatly for fun - arson (may be as many as 30%), camp fires left unattended, sparks from engines, burning debris in a backyard, cigarettes, fireworks, and then natural causes: lightning and lava eruptions Causes, Effects and Solutions to Wildfires - Conserve Energy Future
Global warming may increase the frequency and intensity of wildfires
It's one of the predictions of climate change that California will have more of them as the weather gets warmer - not too surprising as the general prediction for most places including the US is for hotter summers - temperatures that were rare become common and new record temperatures occasionally - and the hot dry spells to last longer. This is about effect of climate change on Yosemite national park:
"Hotter, drier weather could increase the frequency and intensity of wildfires, threatening the property, forests and the species in the park."
That was predicted long ago and that’s exactly what has happened. And despite what the climate deniers say, the Earth’s climate is changing. The seas are warmer. The air is drier in summer and we are getting more hot spells and longer dry spells in summer already. So it should be no surprise that we have more fires and more devastating fires.
The Colorado basin is getting drier, but many other places are getting wetter in a warmer world. In this diagram the yellow shaded areas are getting drier,the blue-green shaded areas are getting wetter.
You can see how the Colorado and Rio Grande basins are getting drier, the others are getting wetter.
From figure 4.16 of chapter 4 of IPCC_AR6_WGII
So these fires are no great surprise
So when we read Huge California fire threatening Yosemite's famous giant redwoods - then - it’s not a surprise.
This new one, instead of threatening redwoods, is now burning expensive homes in Bel Air and threatening the homes of Holywood stars. Otherwise it’s much the same.
A wildfire in California is not going to end the world or endanger Earth in any way at all. Sometimes the smoke from a fire can have minor effects on the atmosphere a long way away - they got a red looking sun in England as a result partly of wild fires as far away as Spain this summer. It was a photo op but no harm to anyone. See Debunked: Why is the sun red and the sky an orange colour? Does this mean the world is about to end because of ‘Nibiru’?
Need to do better than nature to stop damaging fires to homes - controlled burns (though limited by clean air act and risk of damage to houses) - clear undergrowth (more expensive) - maintain firebreaks - and make houses more fire resistant.
So, wildfires are natural and but nowadays most are human caused so of course it is important not to accidentally start wildfires oneself. And yes they need to change the fire management. That's mainly creating better firebreaks and doing controlled burning when conditions are right for a slow fire which doesn't go out of hand.
This is about emergency mitigation projects as a result of an executive order by the Governor Gavin Newsom after some of the fires.
. Community Wildfire Prevention & Mitigation Report
This is about how the native Americans used to use controlled fire and how they are beginning to do this again with support of CalFire (as well as sometimes illegally)
. 'Fire is medicine': the tribes burning California forests to save them
This is about what to watch out for about not starting new fires.
. Causes, Effects and Solutions to Wildfires - Conserve Energy Future
Remember the aim is to do better than nature, to have fires less often than they would happen naturally.
So - controlled burns help but it is hard to do controlled burns because of the risk of harming houses and property and the government then being liable. Also there are problems with the clean air act, keeping the amount of the smoke in the air down.
So, other things they can do include clearing the undergrowth - this basically simulates the effect of a slow burn in a wetter time of the year but without actually burning anything. But it is far more labour intensive. Another thing is to maintain firebreaks. Also make the houses more fire resistant.
However, the clean air acts mean that most times of year they can't do controlled burns. Then even if they do they worry about liability if a fire gets out of control. Meanwhile cutting the undergrowh is very expensive. Also they are fighting against nature. '
The natural regime is a fire going through the forest every few years. They are trying to reduce that to much less than once every few years but to do that they have to do better than nature at eliminating the brushwood etc.
Then on top of that they have the climate change but it is probably only a minor contribution.
This can be solved with lots of cutting of brush and fire breaks and so on but it is expensive.
Also many people are building houses surrounded by trees and close to forests. It's asking for trouble they need to ensure they build more fireproof houses like they do in parts of Australia, with fire breaks.
They can find solutions but it’s not an easy job.
I also go into this in my Australian bush fires draft (mid edit). Some of the solutions for Australia are also relevant to California but California can’t do the controlled burning as easily as Australia.
https://www.quora.com/q/auvqlllunpfjglkj/Australia-bush-fires
Wildfires are part of nature and trees are adapted to them from millions of years ago - when giant redwoods are burnt they soon spring back to life unless the fire is exceptionally fierce
Fires are natural and part of the way the forests work in California. The big giant redwood trees used to burn every few years. There are more fires because of global warming but e.g. the giant sequoia actually needs fires - its cones won't open and it can't have seedlings without forest fires. Also modern humans have suppresed the fires, and even with the warming, more of the forest burnt in the nineteeenth century and earlier.
Text on the video (Mercury News): Fire scientists say the burned redwoods at Big Basin Redwoods State Park will recover
The CZU Lightning Complex fire blackened all 18,000 acres of California’s oldest state park
But the giant scorched trees will begin sprouting green leaves again by this winter, when rains arrive
Individual trees at Big Basin today were standing during the Roman empire.
Unlike other trees, redwoods have cells that lie dormant in their trunks and limbs for centuries
When the trees burn, the cells sprout new buds.
As long as every part of the softer inner layer under the bark isn’t destroyed, the trees almost always recover from fire.
Commenting on the fires, Mark Finney, who as a research project in the late 1980s tried his hardest to burn 20 plots of redwoods, each half an acre, for research purposes.
“We tried our best to kill them and we couldn’t,”
…
“None of this looks that bad to me. There’s a lot of scorch in there, but most of these trees are fine. You can see brown foliage on these trees. It doesn’t mean the tree is dead at all. It means the foliage is dead, but the buds underneath the branches and main stem are still alive, and they will probably sprout right back. Most of these trees will do just fine. I know it sounds shocking. If this was a forest in the Sierra Nevada, most of them would be dead.”
California fires: Burned redwoods at Big Basin, other parks will recover soon, experts say
Like this:
But the redwood was nearly indestructible. “One year later, even large trees where all the foliage was scorched off were covered with a light green fuzz of new foliage,” said Berkeley Ecologist Benjamin S. Ramage, who led the research project. “Of trees over 1.5 feet in diameter, maybe only one redwood out of a hundred was killed.”
aRedwoods Regrow After Fires | Grants | Save the Redwoods League
The giant redwood is especially resilient. The giant sequoia is also very resilient but is unable to sprout from burnt wood like the redwood.
“Second largest tree in the Black Mountain Grove, showing heavy indications from fire. Thankfully, it seems to have survived. Photo by Max Forster”
Many of them sadly died though.
“The warming climate is likely playing a role, as is the increase in tree densities and woody debris as a result of over a century of fire exclusion. This fire highlights the urgent need for restoration to restore fire resilience in giant sequoia.”
Some trees require fires before their seeds open. An example here is the Sequoia. In many places controlled fires are used. Yosemite National Park does controlled burning every fall-winter
Yosemite Fall-Winter Prescribed Burns 2021
October 13, 2021 Posted by: Yosemite Fire Information
Fall has arrived bringing cooler temperatures and precipitation in the forecast. With these favorable conditions approaching, Yosemite National Park hopes to build on its 51-year legacy of prescribed burning by conducting several prescribed fires in the Valley, Crane Flat, and Studhorse (Wawona) areas as conditions allow. In addition, pile burning is also planned in several other locations throughout the park.
Prescribed fire is the most efficient and effective way to decrease the risk of unwanted wildfires by reducing excessive fuel build-up, improve habitat for wildlife, mitigate future smoke impacts, encourage sprouting of seedling sequoia trees, restore cultural burning practices, and creating more drought and fire resilient forests.
. Yosemite Fall-Winter Prescribed Burns 2021-1 - Yosemite National Park (U.S. National Park Service)
This is an example in deliberately burning this fire in the Mariposa grove of giant sequoias in the Yosemite national park.
Quote from the video:
Controlled burn of Marioposa grove - largest remaining stand of ancient giant sequoias - without fires the next generation of seedlings can't grow
"We can't let all fires burn and we can't put all fires out we have to find that medium but understand that fire is vital and important part of our ecosystem"
Quote from 0:44 into this video
Taro Pusina,
Yosemite Fire Specialist.
The Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias is one of the most historically important few acres of Yosemite. Some of them have been standing for 3000 years. Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias - Yosemite National Park (U.S. National Park Service)
This is another video about it from PBS. The giant sequoia can’t reproduce without fire. The cones open up and seeds rain down to the ground.
The sequoia seeds need bare mineral soil before they can germinate and survive well and they need a space in the cannopy to let light in to grow.
Many animals, insects, birds also depend on fires. Here is an example, the native black-backed woodpecker in the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain ranges in California and Oregon
US Fish and Wildlife Service, CC license
The woodpecker deliberately seeks fire-damaged forests out in search of their favorite food: the larvae of the black fire beetle, which have evolved heat-sensing organs to find which trees are still warm from fires to lay their eggs in.
see also . Wildfires: Bad For People – But Good For The Environment
These are not apocalyptic for humans either. Only a few thousand buildings in California are affected despite the vast fires, because there is a lot of wilderness there .
People living in cities are safe because they don't have forests in the cities. It is mainly people in leafy high end suburbs with lots of trees backing onto forests that are most at risk - and only because they don't maintain firebreaks properly and don't take the right precautions.
A fire in California will do nothing to anyone in another state or even in another part of california. As for nature, the trees are used to it, adapted to fire millions of years ago. Also, it doesn't add significantly to CO2 emissions because the forests regrow.
Though fires this year are largest in recent times there were far larger areas burnt before European history in California. Even in the nineteenth century summer visitors to the Pacific slopes couldn't see the mountains for smoke.
Climate change is surely a factor but many other things are as well, such as not doing enough controlled burning (partly ironically because of clean air acts), not maintaining fire breaks well enough, not clearing the undergrowth / brush, people buidling houses with lots of trees around them, and individual fires started in various ways such as accidents, power cable sparks etc. Natural fires are only started by lightning. Hardly any of these fires would be started by lightning.
So, humans can adapt to prevent the fires, stop them quickly, do the fire breaks etc.
Nature is already adapted to fires everywhere except the tropical rainforests which are too wet for natural fires.
Some trees require fire to reproduce. When fires are very intense it can overwhelm the natural response but for the most part it is within the natural range.
The natural state of the Californian forests is to have fires burn through them every few years. It’s actually unnatural the way that humans are preventing them from burning so often, and instead they have to do artificial things like clear undergrowth manually.
In the nineteenth century it was so smoky that a visitor visting California in autumn on the pacific slopes would not expect to see the mountains or much beyond the near foreground.
‘‘Of the hundreds of persons who visit the Pacific slope in California every summer to see the mountains, few see more than the immediate foreground and a haze of smoke which even the strongest glass is unable to penetrate.’’
(C.H. Merriam, 1898) - quoted in this paper, page 9.
Up to the nineteenth century, between 1.8 and 4.8 million hectares were burnt every year or about 4.5–12.0% of the states lands burning annually. By comparison in 2019 105,147 hectares burnt (a recent year with not much burning).
The giant redwoods are used to fire so much that the fire would burn through them every few years. The way we control fires now is way beyond what nature does. Even all the fires so far this year are only half of the amount burnt in the natural fires in the years with the very least amount of burning in the nineteenth century and earlier.
This is my previous debunk, from an earlier fire season - it goes into more details on some of these points, for instance - did you know the Yosemite national park originally was mostly meadows, and - though obviously some of the forest is ancient, many of the trees only grew up after the first peoples were evicted to make the national park. They used to burn the trees regularly to maintain their meadows.
. Why fires in California are part of the natural order and not a sign the world will end.
Some mature sequoia trees are killed in the more intense Californian wild fires and young seedlings can die in droughts - using seedlings adapted to hotter drier parts of their range can help with regeneration
The main problem for some of the areas with sequoia is that by putting out fires so often humans have created artificial conditions with lots of dry brushwood. Then on top of that there's warming and drought, the Colorado basin is drying in a warming world (the Mississippi basin is getting wetter). The natural range of the sequoias may be shifting north.
With some of the more fierce fires the sequoias can die and thousands have died. So - the aim of the water sprinklers wouldn't necessarily be to stop the fire but to slow it down.
Of course sequoias would be killed in gentler fires too sometimes. But more gentler fires more often is better for them.
After one fire that killed thousands of sequoias, there were carpets of young sequoia trees as normal, but then many of them died in drought conditions. So they did a big replanting program to help make sure the sequoia forests regenerate and don't turn into a new different ecosystem - for the long term so that we still have the trees thousands of years from now.
They are also helping accelerate evolution by growing lots of sequoia seeds from different parts of the range of the sequoia in seed plots to see which grow best in the new warmer drier conditions. They expect that sequoia that grew in the southern part of their range and lower elevations and from regions with more extreme variations between winter and summer will do better.
QUOTE Generally, scientists expect trees from farther south and lower elevations, as well as those accustomed to greater variability in winter, to produce seeds most viable for the hotter, drier climate ahead.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sequoias-trees-california-destroyed-17137598.php
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Yo
Found this concerning study, repeating "Nuclear winter is that severe with a ten-digit butcher's bill
https://www.rutgers.edu/news/nuclear-war-would-cause-global-famine-and-kill-billions-rutgers-led-study-finds