I’m seeing a lot of posts on social media attempting to tie the Palisades, California wildfire to climate change, so I had to respond. Please stop. This is simply not true. “Inferno” is California’s natural climate.

I used to live in Silicon Valley (San Jose) in the early 2000’s and I can tell you that the weather in Cali is dry, arid and not for the weak. There were days when we weren’t even allowed to use water hoses to wash cars or water lawns because water shortage was just the way it was out there. Water has to be irrigated from other places and transported to other parts of the state, so since abundant water isn’t native to those parts of Cali, water had to be artificially brought in and conserved for more necessary things. Yes, there are curfews on water there. High winds and wildfires are California’s natural climate, so anything that lives outside easily dries out, becomes brittle and fire fuel. Especially plants. California didn’t get three deserts by osmosis.

Both the Santa Ana winds and wildfires are also both completely normal annual phenomenon that have been going on since likely the creation of the North American continent, but definitely long before colonists invaded it to form California. The state has wildfires all the time, hell, even I was in a few when I was in Sunnyvale. I hadn’t watched the news so in my first wildfire, I was completely confused when I walked out my apartment only to step into a cloud of smoke and have ash raining down on me. After a few years in Cali, I got used to it though. I remember driving by small walls of flames just to get to class and passing firefighters on the side of the road standing by spraying it with retardant and making sure it didn’t make it to the road.

I believe the fires are a combination of poor agricultural practices in the early years of the state from over-clearing of trees, farming and poor handling of nearby forests by the current state and local governments. Basically, poor maintenance of the land, just like what caused the Dust Bowl.

In the mid 1800s, European invaders started heading West in search of resources and the Gold Rush. Mines were built in search of gold and other minerals and logging was also a thing going on, which led to a large deforestation of trees and brush. Of course, the invaders never put those trees back, so today the forests atop the mountains and hills in California are far more sparse than they originally were.

By the 1900s, the forests became extremely damaged from all the deforestation from the logging and mining, creating large gaps and barren clearings in areas that were once completely carpeted by trees. Densely packed trees create a natural fire barrier that slows spread, but due to these man-made clearings, fire creeps along the ground covered in dried-out grass, causing it to spread much faster and wider than it normally would. The cutting of the trees also leaves behind debris along the ground called “slash” which are dried out branches and leaves that are highly flammable. This is the “brush” that people are claiming the California government failed to clear regularly as dead tree branches fall year-round to the ground, becoming natural tender for wildfires. Brush-clearing and regular controlled fires have to be done consistently to keep wildfires from spreading and threatening nearby cities.

For decades, California has been holding this natural phenomenon of wildfires back, but this time, they got caught with their pants down and Mother Nature’s fires have come back to reclaim her land. Wildfires, aren’t going to stop wildfiring, just because you put your house in front of it.

So, make no mistake that the fires affecting the Palisades and surrounding cities in California, aren’t the result of climate change, but the state paying the price from greed leading to excessive deforestation for logging, farming and mining from 200 years ago.

Where there’s yin, there’s yang. ☯️

#california #climatechange #deforestation #palisades #wildfire