Current Events - Building Background

"As of Tuesday, (Sept 15) more than two million acres have burned across the state...which makes this a record year...according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection."

"High temperatures and strong winds have made the situation even worse. A heat wave baked Southern California over the weekend"

"But while California’s climate has always been fire prone, the link between climate change and bigger fires is inextricable. “This climate-change connection is straightforward: warmer temperatures dry out fuels. In areas with abundant and very dry fuels, all you need is a spark,” he said."

"But Dr. Sun...identified a second fire season that runs from October through April and is driven by the Santa Ana winds. Those fires tend to spread three times faster and burn closer to urban areas...."

"...the United States’ history of suppressing wildfires has actually made present-day wildfires worse.

“For the last century we fought fire, and we did pretty well at it across all of the Western United States,” Dr. Williams said. “And every time we fought a fire successfully, that means that a bunch of stuff that would have burned didn’t burn. And so over the last hundred years we’ve had an accumulation of plants in a lot of areas."

Even if the conditions are right for a wildfire, you still need something or someone to ignite it...more often than not humans are responsible, said Nina S. Oakley, a research scientist..."