Another Cataclysmic Wildfire In California: Signs Of Climate Change

A home burns in Paradise, California as an intense wildfire
swept through. Photo by Noah Berger/AP

Another autumn, another terrible, unprecedented wildfire.

As you might have seen on the news, an explosive wildfire charged through parts of northern California yesterday and last night.
While there are often wildfires out west, this one was yet another example of fire behavior people haven't seen before. At least until recent years.

This blaze, called the Camp Fire, went from basically nothing to scorching 31 square miles within 12 hours. Like some extreme fires before it, like those in Redding and Santa Rosa, California last year, this one moved so fast people couldn't get out of the way.

Although there have been no confirmed fatalities yet in and around the city of Paradise, though the San Franciso Chronicle says it has reports of some deaths. Searchers haven't been able to get into the fire zone to have a look. It's too chaotic.

That's putting it mildly. Here's a glimpse of this awfulness via the Weather Channel:

"Officials confirmed to the AP that some residents who attempted to escape the fire in their vehicles were then forced to flee on foot - some holding pets and even babies in their grasp -as the flames drew closer. With few options out of Paradise, roads quickly became gridlocked, and abandoned cars left in the middle of the road only made the problems worse."

In desperation, bulldozers pushed those cars off the road so emergency responders could go in and try to rescue people. The roof of the emergency room at the local hospital caught fire. People were forced to drive through flames to get out. Other people only had a couple minutes' warning to get out of their homes as flames roared in.

Who knows how many people got out?  These paragraphs from the San Francisco Chronicle sounds grim:

"Family members and friends searched for scores of missing people. They inundated 911 with hundreds of requests for help tracking down people who were feared trapped behind fire lines. They flooded Twitter too, posting names and photos of loved ones, along with the addresses where they'd last been seen."

"Hundreds of people were unaccounted for Thursday evening after the mad rush to evacuate. Especially worrisome were reports of older people - including some with dementia or mobility problems - who had not checked in with friends or relatives."

To give you an idea about how fast this fire is, CalFire says in modern California history only nine fires destroyed more than 1,000 structures. This one looks like it destroyed that many homes and businesses within just 12 hours.

A church burns in Paradise, California Thursday.
Photo by Scott Strazzante/SF Chronicle

Southern California is under the gun, too. Fires in Ventura County kept getting worse overnight, and thousands evacuated from there as well. It appears from news video that many houses are on fire.

One of those fires is burning around the community of Thousand Oaks, forcing evacuations there. This comes just one day after a mass shooting at a bar in Thousand Oaks that claimed 12 lives. Just terrible.

Of course you can't fully blame climate change on each individual fire. But recent fires have all the hallmarks of being influenced by climate change. Including this one in northern California.

The wildfire's behavior - incredibly fast moving under intense winds -  is becoming increasingly commonplace. It used to be rare to have these chaotic evacuations with people trapped. And this fire and others are happening at a time of year that would have been virtually impossible in decades past.

Northern California should have had its first batches of autumn rains by now. It should have been too wet for this fire to get going so intensely across a parched forest and landscape. (The ongoing fires in southern California make a little more sense because winter rains normally wouldn't have really reached the south yet.)

There've been other fires that have been equally bizarre. In July, 2017, the now-famous fire tornado or fire whirl, a massive rotating firestorm with winds of up to 165 mph, crashed through neighborhoods around Redding, California.

Last October, the Tubbs fire in the Napa Valley area of California became the most destructive in California history, killing 22 people and causing $15 billion in damage.

Destructive wildfires have been popping up in weird places in recent years, too. A fire in what is normally fairly damp forests killed 14 people in and around Gatlinburg, Tennessee in late November, 2016. Again, that's a weird time of year for a wildfire in that part of the country.

Another extreme wildfire in May, 2016 destroyed parts of Fort McMurray, Canada, at a time of year when things should have been wet from melting spring snow.

Skeptics will say there have always been extreme wildfires. That's true. The deadly Peshtigo, Wisconsin wildfire of 1871 that killed as many as 2,000 people comes to mind.

But the increased frequency of these incredible, super-wildfires of recent years should give anyone concerned about climate change pause. Other things besides climate change are making these fires worse. The biggest problem is people keep building houses in or on the edges of forests that are prone to fire.

Climate change, though, is certainly a factor. Which means we'll see more and more wildfire tragedies like we're seeing in California today.

Here'a a harrowing video of somebody driving through the flames to get out of the wildfire. A fiery tree even lands on the car!



Here's news video from Paradise, California that shows everything, including an elementary school, in flames: