The fire in Paradise, CA, is overwhelming and devastating. How can an entire community with 26,000 people be destroyed in just a couple days? This should give everyone a new perspective on the power of wildfire.
California has been hit hard by wildfire the past few years; 7,500 fires burned 1.7 million acres. Yes, it has been a dry environment the past six years. California has about 40 million people inhabiting the state, which puts tremendous pressure on resources, especially water.
California is a crazy place—I know, I grew up there. But I will have to say they bring a lot of issues upon themselves, especially when it comes to environmental management. Everyone wants a pristine natural landscape that is pleasing to view. Now, more and more people want to have their little place in the mountains, surrounded with trees and heavy vegetation. Green just looks better than brown, but I would have to draw the line with black and grey, which is what’s left of Paradise.
Last week President Donald Trump made one of his famous tweets, this one aimed at California state government. “With proper forest management, we can stop the devastation constantly going on in California, get smart. There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments.”
Trump is right; the forests need active management. Gov. Jerry Brown, aka Moonbeam, continues to blame California’s fire episodes on global warming. It’s a convenient scapegoat that is popular and what politician wouldn’t jump on that? Remember the phrase, “Don’t let a tragedy go to waste.” But while we’re waiting for the global warming solution, the fires will continue to burn unless active management is applied.
Then folks around the country start parsing Trump’s words. A Washington Post article titled “fact checker” takes Trump to task by quoting local climate experts, who say the fire in Southern California is a chaparral fire and isn’t under U.S. Forest Service management, then pointing out that the Forest Service manages 60 percent of the forests in California. So it’s Trump’s problem; not ours. Then Trump said the feds send billions to California for fire management. But no, that’s wrong too. The feds only spent $1.4 billion on California firefighting. I can’t believe how folks want to beat up on Trump for not citing the exact details. They can’t see the forest through the trees. Trump’s point is: The place is burning up and what are you going to do to make it better and safer?
California is a very aggressive environmental state and has, perhaps, more environmental laws than other states. Then throw in federal environmental laws. These laws have created a mountain of red tape for utility providers.
At this point in time the fire is being blamed on Pacific Gas and Electric, the area’s utility provider. PG&E has been blamed for fires in the past. PG&E did report some issues prior to the Paradise fire and was attempting to fix the problems. We’re still not sure how the fire started.
Utility companies don’t always have the easiest time maintaining those high-power transmission lines. They must follow National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rules and the Endangered Species Act to travel to and maintain their lines and towers. They get hung up in the permitting process on public lands, which can take quite a bit of time.
In June of 2017, Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) introduced and Congress passed a bill—H.R. 1873, the Electric Reliability and Forest Protection Act—and several other forest management bills. This bill would allow power companies to circumvent the NEPA and ESA process in order to maintain electric lines and avoid fires on land administered by USDA or the Department of Interior. However, the Senate hasn’t taken that bill up yet.
There is plenty of blame to go around on how these wildfires start. Most are caused by human carelessness, so let’s not blame global warming for everything as Governor Brown wants to do. This is an all-of-the-above situation for fire mitigation. Livestock grazing, logging, clean up the brush around the home and community to make it safer from catastrophic wildfire. Less politics and more common sense would go a long way. Remember: Log it, graze it, or watch it burn. — PETE CROW
