Wildfires are scouring America with unprecedented range and frequency. They are menacing more homes than at any time on record.
In a scary parallel development, we’re also fighting these fires the wrong way. We’re risking lives and property, and turning billions of dollars into ash.
Those are the top notes off a fresh pile of data, analysis and proposed legislation. As a whole, the work could revolutionize the way we deal with wildfire. But for the millions of people affected by wildfires in 2015, change will almost certainly come too late.
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“We’ve been playing catch up,” Stephen Pyne, a leading academic fire expert, told msnbc. “Now all the needles point in the wrong direction. They point to larger fires, more severe burning, and basically a fire scene that is out of our control.”
There is, of course, a terrible irony here. A million years ago, man brought fire under human control. From there it’s pretty much a straight line to modern climate change. We’ve managed to heat up the world with the things we’ve burned. Now unwanted fires are spreading.
Let’s start with Alaska, which is perhaps the most fire-eaten place on the planet this year.
Nearly 5 million acres have burned, leaving a combined dead zone larger than the state of Connecticut. The latest state fire report says “acreage totals are nearly one month ahead of 2004,” the worst year on record.
Not that anyone is really surprised.
Alaska has warmed twice as fast as the continental United States. Temperatures are up nearly 3 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1950s. The extra rays have liquefied snow and melted glaciers, launching fires earlier in the year, and expanding their potential range. Climate Central, an environmental research group, tracked the results for a study published last month.
It found that fire season in Alaska is on average 40% longer than it was in the middle of the last century. It’s also many times more powerful. The drier weather fosters double the number of large fires (1,000 acres of more), and 10 times as many mega-fires (10,000 acres of more).
But it’s not just Alaska.
Hundreds of fires are right now blowing through Washington state and California. The Golden State has suffered 1,000 more fires this year than at the same point in the five years past, according to state data. While fewer acres have burned, the charred land includes 11,000 acres in the San Bernardino National Forest. It’s been at least 100 years since that area burned, according to The Los Angeles Times.
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Even the moss-covered forests of Washington state have been lit by multiple large infernos. One fire took a savage swipe through a lush section of Olympic Peninsula. “I’ve never implemented a burn ban in June,” one fire manager told National Public Radio. “I’ve never seen something like this.”








