By Chujun Tang
SAN BERNARDINO, CA — Vice President Kamala Harris declared during her visit to San Bernardino on Friday that billions of dollars in federal funds would be dedicated to the mitigation of wildfires raging along the western coastline.
“It is about recognizing that we cannot, as a government or as a society or people who care, only respond in reaction to a moment of harm or danger,” said Harris, “We must also be able to use technology and common sense and the expertise of those on the ground to understand we have the tools to predict these wildfires ahead of time.”
Before her appearance, Harris took an aerial tour of the San Bernardino National Forest; the site of the El Dorado Fire in the fall of 2020, which burned nearly 23,000 acres and claimed the life of a firefighter. That fire season was the worst in California history in terms of acres burned. However, such disastrous wildfires have become more and more common, according to Tony Scardina, deputy regional forester for the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region.
Within hours of Harris’ announcement, her warnings were being substantiated. On Friday night, a fire started by a private burn and exacerbated by strong offshore winds swept over Big Sur’s Colorado Valley. The National Weather Service’s Bay Area Branch, in a tweet, described the fire as “stubborn” and “surreal.” It burned 700 acres, prompted evacuations of residents in the nearby town, and caused a portion of the oceanside Highway 1 to close.
Intensified by climate change, continuous droughts in coastal areas have created conditions ripe for burning. “More drought creates a longer fire season or even a continuous fire season through the year,” said Craig Clements, professor of meteorology at San Jose State University and director of the school’s Wildfire Interdisciplinary Research Center.
Facing severe damages in the past two years and potential dangers caused by extended drought, Harris announced that the Biden administration is committing 1.3 billion dollars to disaster relief funding, including 600 million dollars for California. That money will help support federal firefighter salaries, fund grants to create defensible space around communities, pay for burned area rehabilitation efforts, and reduce hazardous fuels.
The vice president also unveiled a 10-year plan to quadruple fuel reduction, to create a more resilient landscape and cut down on vegetation that could feed a sweeping wildfire and. The total cost is estimated to be roughly 50 billion dollars, 20 billion for national forest lands and 30 billion for non-national forest lands.
As the government invested enormously in post-fire rehabilitation, some scholars express their concerns with pre-fire activities. “We are not, by any stretch, out of the hole when it comes to the drought situation. And so I think it’s prudent for water agencies to still be planning based on what they have at hand, and not by what or may not fall out of the sky over the next several months,” said Michael Wara, director of the climate and energy program at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
He noted that most of the federal funds Harris announced for California would go into forest restoration and post-fire cleanup, as opposed to the preventive work like water conservation and meteorological monitoring.
“This money is more likely to be devoted to post-fire activities as opposed to what I think of as pre-fire activities, the things that we need to urgently do as a state and also the federal government needs to do … to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire,” said Wara.
Rather than spending more on “restoration and preparedness”, we actually need to do less (in a sense). Here’s an example of the latter:
https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-secures-court-decision-vacating-approval-lake-county
It’s rather frightening that Lake county tried to approve this in the first place. Unfortunately, this type of thing is not unusual.
I wonder how soon Paradise and parts of Santa Rosa will burn again, after they’re fully-rebuilt. “Paradise Strong”, as they say. Or, perhaps Tejon Ranch, after it’s built.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/29/tejon-ranch-housing-centennial-california-wildfires
Isn’t that essentially what former President Trump was saying? That California was not managing its forests properly? Not defending Trump as such, but criticizing the automatic backlash to his comments due to politics, when his comments were essentially correct.
Yup, but orange man bad.
He was not correct.
In the first place, much of “forest” lands belong to the federal government, not the state government.
In addition, no one is going to be “raking up” the forests.
Trump also claimed (during a visit to Sacramento) that the climate will also be “cooling down”, soon (something like that). The guy who asked the original question did not seem to know what to say, after that. (But, I guess you’ve got to admire Trump’s “hutzpah”, in a way. Sort of like how he “won the election”.)
But Biden/Harris are wrong as well, in that they’re proposing to (further) “subsidize” development in high-risk areas:
And once you start “raking up the forests”, that’s a never-ending job.
At least, until the point that nothing much grows there, if the climate change changes enough.
In reference to a recent Davisite article, we can’t even seem to ban leaf blowers, so far. (And, I’m a fan of leaf blowers – electric ones, at least.)
A lot of southern Nevada and Arizona don’t seem to have much problem, since there’s so little vegetation in the first place. Maybe they should put “Paradise”, there?
Of course, they don’t have much water for farming or urban use, either.
According to this article the federal govt and California share in management of all the California forests:
Just noting that the article you posted references more than 40 “stakeholders” (government, and non-government entities).
But, it appears that the government (one way, or another) is the entity that would pay to reduce hazards (on an ongoing/permanent basis).
And it still won’t save “Paradise” next time. But not to worry, much of the resulting costs will also be borne by the government, one way or another.
Meanwhile, they’ve already approved Tejon Ranch, I understand. (Just one example.) “Tejon Strong”, coming up!
I missed this part:
I am not “hopeful” that the current, corrupt approach will end (given that both Republicans and Democrats support it). The only way this ever stops is multiple fires (and multiple government bailouts), to the point that it threatens to bankrupt the government.
The same will be true regarding areas increasingly prone to flooding/sea-level rising. And some of those areas are pretty wealthy, meaning that it’s even less-likely that the corruption will end.