The wildfires in California

[icelolly12]

Just awful seeing the news of families losing their homes and also feel devastated for the wild animals that will have perished. I can only imagine worse is to come in the future months/years.

It is so sad, yet still so few people want to change anything

It’s utterly devastating but… our wildfires are nothing new. We face these crises several times a year. I grew up evacuating these wildfires. As a Californian, you learn to live with the risk. The climate is arid and getting more so (it’s much hotter and drier than when I was growing up in the 70s/80s), and the dry vegetation combined with Santa Ana winds is an arsonist’s dream. Lightning is often another culprit. The difference I see now is that wildfires happen year round. As a kid, summertime was the danger zone. As our Indian summers became more regular, fire season extended to October, then November. Fires in January were just unheard of in my youth. Then again, there were also vast stretches of undeveloped land, orange groves and agricultural land, throughout Southern California that are now completely developed. Southern California is a perfect example of what happens when climate change really shows its power: rapid overpopulation, crowded living, rapid over-development- it was all ranches just over a century ago, increasingly excessive traffic (road and air) have created this inevitable monster. I always think Chinatown is a great film (in itself) for showing why Southern Californian ultimately became the most sunny, sexy, dystopian region that it is.

I agree, much worse to come.

What no one is mentioning - possibly because it seems either too callous or too frightening - is that it may well devastate the tourism industry that they depend on. It's possible that the whole metropolitan area may wither away.