California Wildfires Rage, Claiming Structures and Lives

(Image: Edited Landsat 8 image of the Camp Fire in Northern California on November 9, 2018. Credit: Stuart Rankin, Flickr Creative Commons)

Several wildfires are currently raging across California, propelled by gusting winds. They include the Camp Fire in Northern California, which has a death toll matching the state’s worst on record. More than 8,000 firefighters are battling three large wildfires that cover nearly 400 square miles, the Associated Press reported.

In Northern California, the Camp Fire claimed 29 lives, making it as deadly as the 1933 blaze in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, Associated Press journalists reported on Sunday. It devastated the mountain community of Paradise, destroying 6,700 homes and businesses — more structures than any other California wildfire on record, according to Reuters.

The Hill Fire in Ventura County tore through more than 4,500 acres and is now 75% contained, Cal Fire says. Also in Southern California, the Woolsey Fire in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties has burned more than 91,500 acres and is currently 20% contained, according to Cal Fire’s latest information on Monday morning. An estimated 370 structures were destroyed. Strong Santa Ana winds fanned the Woolsey Fire over the weekend, Business Insider reported.

Over the summer, the California published its fourth Climate Change Assessment. “By 2100, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, one study found that the frequency of extreme wildfires would increase, and the average area burned statewide would increase by 77%,” the assessment says. “In the areas that have the highest fire risk, wildfire insurance is estimated to see costs rise by 18% by 2055.”

LeRoy Westerling, a UC Merced climatologist who contributed to the Climate Change Assessment, spoke to the Sacramento Bee in August. “When you increase temperatures and make precipitation more variable, and all of the other effects we expect from climate change, you make those really extreme fires even more extreme,” he said. Megafires will become larger and do more harm, Westerling added.

Insured losses from natural disasters — including wildfires — were $12.6 billion in the state last year, a report published in September by the California Department of Insurance found. California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones urged insurers statewide to consider climate risk.

Wildfires Prompt Preparedness Focus

Extreme weather events are nothing new for environment, health, and safety (EHS) managers, but these events are getting wilder and more unusual, a new Environmental Leader report found.

Gregory Mimms, vice president of environment, health, safety and sustainability for Xylem Inc., described visiting one of the company’s largest sites in Emmaboda, Sweden. “They were talking about the forest fires they were having that they’d never had before to this extent,” he said, adding that some of the fires were likely to continue until the first snow of the season.

At this year’s Environmental Leader & Energy Manager Conference in Denver, Los Alamos National Laboratory program manager Kassidy Burnett Boorman spoke about climate change resilience planning. She showed photos of the megafires that had burned in New Mexico and affected the lab. One cost LANL $15.7 million, the other $331 million.

Two years ago, the lab initiated a resource vulnerability risk assessment. “The end goal of the resource vulnerability risk assessment is to provide adequate information to decision makers, and to suggest solutions with a good ROI,” Burnett Boorman said. The ROI aspect, she said, demonstrates not only resilience but potential savings as well.