The wildfires show that stopping climate change is no longer enough
By Spencer Bokat-Lindell
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Fixing forest management
Ecologists, forest managers and firefighters Ms Weil spoke to agreed on one vital solution: To control fires, humans have to start more themselves. As my colleague Jill Cowan explains, California’s Native American tribes had for thousands of years used controlled fires to keep wild ones in check. As of 2017, though, only 13,000 acres per year are subject to prescribed burns in California, and the practice is similarly rare in Oregon and Washington.
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Building more resilient housing
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Experts say that governments could impose regulations to make housing developments more resilient, including stipulations for fire-resistant building materials and moats of cleared vegetation known as defensible space. California adopted many of these standards, some of the strictest in the country, in 2008. One analysis of the devastating Camp Fire that killed 85 people in 2018 determined that about 51 per cent of the 350 single-family homes built to the new codes escaped damage, compared with just 18 per cent of the 12,100 homes built earlier.
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Updating the fire safety curriculum
“Vigilance about fire safety must be an everyday concern. From cigarette butts tossed on the roadside to campfires and fire pits, each outdoor spark is a threat to bucolic wildlands, property and life during these long parched weeks,” the board writes. “Every Washington resident and business shares this responsibility. Schools and public-safety bulletins should urgently spread this gospel. The message must be amplified each summer.”
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