California has 13 large wildfires burning in the state. These fires occur due to extreme heat and extreme drought brought about by human consumption of fossil fuels.
The heat and drought desiccate the vegetation, and it becomes a tinder for out-of-control wildfires. A rapidly changing climate is to blame for these massive fires, and we witness news reports that they are too complicated to curtail the damage.
The NY Times has a must-read piece on how California fights these firestorms and how the largest of them illustrate the futility of fighting them. The fires send out embers carried by the wind, sometimes for miles igniting more wildfires as they fall.
The Caldor fire, as did the Dixie fire, jumped the Sierra-Nevada and Cascade mountains for the first time in recorded history. In other words, unprecedented.
The country has just gone through climate crisis double trouble in just the past couple of days.
We can't let Manchin and Sinema torpedo any chance of softening the impact of this catastrophe by them effing up the house reconciliation infrastructure bill in the Senate.
From the New York Times via Yahoo News: (It’s a great article)
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — They sent thousands of firefighters, 25 helicopters and an arsenal of more than 400 fire engines and 70 water trucks. Yet the fire still advanced.
They dropped retardant chemicals through an ash-filled sky and bulldozed trees and brush to slow the march of the flames through the steep and rugged terrain of the Sierra Nevada. Yet the fire still advanced.
Bursting across a granite ridge into the Lake Tahoe basin, the Caldor fire now threatens tens of thousands of homes and hotels that ring the lake.
Battling the Caldor fire has been humbling and harrowing for California firefighters. Experts believe the challenge is a cautionary tale for future megafires in the West and lays bare a certain futility in trying to fully control the most aggressive wildfires.
“No matter how many people you have out on these fires, it’s not a large enough workforce to put the fire out,” said Malcolm North, a fire expert with the U.S. Forest Service and a professor at the University of California, Davis.
Traffic jams are no longer just for hurricanes anymore.
On Monday, propelled by strong winds, the fire crested a granite ridge that officials had hoped would serve as a natural barrier. Embers leapfrogged past firefighting crews and descended toward the valley floor just miles from South Lake Tahoe. By early Tuesday, the fire had taken hold in the Tahoe basin. Stands of pine ignited by flying embers were fully engulfed in flames, casting a bright orange glow into the night sky.
It was only the second time, officials said, that a wildfire that began on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada crossed into the eastern side. The first was also this summer: the Dixie fire, the second largest in California history. No deaths have been reported in either fire.
We aren’t ready for climate impacts in California, New Orleans, Tennessee, or anywhere else.
Russia, where wildfires are larger than all the other fires burning on earth put together, does not have the resources to fight these fires over such an expansive area of permafrost, and I suspect they know the futility of even trying. When you fight fires with shovels and garden hoses that approach your secret nuclear warhead facility, all hell can break loose at any moment.