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LA FIRES - Los Angeles wildfire survivors are starting to rebuild.
The Gifford Fire, California’s largest so far this year, has burned more than 131,000 acres.
And in preparation for an August heat wave, local and state leaders pre-deployed fire crews across Southern California.
It’s hard to escape wildfire news. In a never-ending fire season, many communities are either actively fighting a disaster or recovering from one. Others worry about what may be coming. Unfortunately, our leaders are short on solutions and refusing to address the elephant in the room.
It’s time to finally have an honest discussion about restricting development in high fire-risk areas. Today’s wildfires are ignited by downed powerlines, fireworks and other human sources. Building homes and roads in undeveloped, fire-prone areas increases the chance that more fires will ignite, more homes will burn and more lives will be lost.
Between 2000 and 2050, up to 1.2 million new homes are expected to be built in California’s most fire-prone areas. Allowing this amount of irresponsible development means we’re not only in denial, but we’re also fanning the flames.
Some leaders are genuine about helping. Rep. Jared Huffman and Rep. Jay Obernolte want to invest $1 billion annually for home hardening, defensible space, renewable energy resources like microgrids and other proven wildfire-resiliency strategies.
But others in Congress are opting for false solutions.
The so-called Fix Our Forests Act, which is expected to be in mark-up when Congress returns from recess, would allow the timber industry to log our national forests without scientific review or community input. The bill would also give the industry an unfair advantage in the courts in cases where environmental laws might otherwise constrain reckless logging.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, including Sen. Alex Padilla, have justified this public lands giveaway by calling it a wildfire response even though the bill doesn’t offer a single dollar to protect communities from wildfires.
Padilla, an L.A. native, should know that the January fires erupted in shrublands and urban areas, propelled by extreme fire weather worsened by climate change. Logging faraway national forests — which would be the outcome of the Senate bill he introduced — would do nothing to prevent this. Instead, Padilla is helping Republicans advance their anti-conservation agenda, a shameful move that Sen. Adam Schiff and others who care about real solutions should avoid.
Last year the legislation wallowed in committee but proponents resurrected it by capitalizing on L.A.’s disaster. If this bill passes, old-growth national forests will fall to the timber industry, worsening a climate crisis that is bringing us hotter and drier conditions — a recipe for another disaster. Research shows that the most heavily logged areas experience the most severe fires.
As wildfire politics play out in Washington, communities struggle in ways that aren’t always immediately visible. A catastrophic fire can wipe out a neighborhood and take a person’s life in minutes. But it can take years to fully understand the immense toll of urban wildfires.
Toxic smoke and ash from burned buildings and cars are harming our protectors. Firefighters suffer from disproportionately high rates of cancer and chronic diseases long after a fire is contained. They are put at risk year-round, often going to protect communities without having proper protections themselves.
The physical and mental toll affects firefighters and fire survivors alike. Researchers reached that sobering conclusion when they found out that a fire’s death toll doesn’t tell a complete story. While the L.A. fires are believed to have killed at least 31 people, more than 400 other deaths could be attributed to the disaster because of increased exposure to air pollution, interruptions in health care and other factors.
These consequences can’t be ignored.
Yet across California, cities and counties are still approving sprawl development in very high fire hazard severity zones, increasing wildfire risk. For example, Los Angeles County approved a massive housing development on a site that has repeatedly burned, despite the clear risks.
Our knowledge of how land use influences wildfire risk has evolved. We now know that we must direct new housing construction to less risky, dense urban areas. We can do this while steering resources toward home hardening and climate-resilient design.
Our leaders have an important choice to make: Continue to kowtow to developers and the logging industry or pay attention to communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis. We hope they make the right choice.
(Tiffany Yap, D.Env./Ph.D., is an urban wildlands scientist and Ashley C. Nunes is a public lands policy specialist at the Center for Biological Diversity.)
