THE WEST - Wildfires and Dry Wells

"West U.S. wildfires are so extreme that they’re creating lightning, fire whirls" PBS NewsHour 7/20/2021

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SUMMARY:  More than 80 large fires are burning in 13 states across the U.S. currently, impacting nearly 1.3 million acres.  One of the worst remains in Southern Oregon — the Bootleg Fire.  It has been burning for two weeks and has already scorched an area a third of the size of Rhode Island.  Carrie Bilbao with the National Interagency Fire Center joins William Brangham with the latest on the fires.

 

 

"Californians scramble for fresh water as taps, wells run dry" PBS NewsHour 7/20/2021

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SUMMARY:  The severe drought across the Western U.S. is already causing long term problems, exacerbated by the warming atmosphere driven by climate change.  As William Brangham reports from California’s San Joaquin Valley, the demand for water has threatened the drinking supply for hundreds of thousands of rural residents — including the farmers who grow a significant part of the country’s food supply.

WILDFIRES - Australia Burning

"Australia’s catastrophic and relentless battle with bushfires" PBS NewsHour 1/8/2020

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SUMMARY:  The devastation from wildfires in Australia is on a scale that is difficult to comprehend.  More than 20 million acres have burned, destroying 2,000 homes and killing potentially hundreds of millions of animals, as well as 27 people.  Although the entire country has suffered from the fires, New South Wales is currently one of hardest-hit areas.  Kylie Morris of Independent Television News reports.

"How Australia is fighting fires while also mounting recovery effort" PBS NewsHour 1/8/2020

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SUMMARY:  As devastating bushfires continue to burn across Australia, how is the country’s government responding?  William Brangham speaks with David Littleproud, Australia’s minister for natural disaster and emergency management, about fighting fires while also embarking upon a recovery effort, whether the country has enough personnel and equipment and how it's preparing for hotter, longer fire seasons.

WILDFIRES - Australia Burning

"Deadly wildfires rage across Australia, with forecasts of worse to come" PBS NewsHour 1/2/2020

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SUMMARY:  Vast swaths of Australia are still burning, with thousands of people under evacuation orders -- and forecasts of worse to come.  A record summer fire season has charred 12 million acres, destroyed 1,400 homes and killed 17 people.  The states of New South Wales and Victoria are hardest hit, but fires are also burning across the rest of the country.  Dan Rivers of Independent Television News reports.

CALIFORNIA BURNING - Selling PG&E

"Could selling PG&E to its customers help solve California’s power problems?" PBS NewsHour 11/7/2019

SIDE COMMENT:  Years ago PG&E made an attempt to merge with our local utility SDG&E, thankfully it was turned down.

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SUMMARY:  During California’s recent wildfires, the intentional blackouts PG&E implemented to reduce danger frustrated residents.  The utility’s poorly maintained infrastructure is blamed for at least five previous fires.  Now, the mayors of over a dozen California cities are suggesting PG&E should be sold to its customers.  William Brangham talks to San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, who first proposed the plan.

CALIFORNIA - Wildfire Fallout

"This wildfire season, aging power infrastructure may leave parts of California dark" PBS NewsHour 5/17/2019

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SUMMARY:  California wildfires have been brutal recently.  The worst in a century was last November’s Camp Fire, which killed 85 people and largely destroyed the town of Paradise.  State investigators have confirmed a Pacific Gas & Electric transmission line caused the blaze.  Amna Nawaz talks to The Wall Street Journal’s Russell Gold about how it started and whether PG&E has taken steps to prevent recurrence.

MEDIA ART - Fire & Ice

"Artists harness the power of fire and ice to shape attitudes on climate change" PBS NewsHour 5/15/2019

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SUMMARY:  There's no shortage of powerful images and video when it comes to natural disasters like wildfires and melting glaciers.  But a pair of artists are now using those images in new ways, as part of their mission to warn people about climate change and its devastating impact on familiar landscapes.  Miles O'Brien takes a different look at fire and ice and the balance between horror and beauty.

"California on Fire" preview



Art of Zaria Formen

AFTER THE FIRE - Paradise California

"In Paradise, housing, water, and jobs prove elusive in Camp Fire’s aftermath" PBS NewsHour 2/20/2019

Reminder to my readers, the ENTIRE town was effectively gone.

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SUMMARY:  In Paradise, California, thousands of residents are trying to cope with disruption and displacement resulting from November's devastating Camp Fire.  Children attend school in a repurposed hardware store, where counselors try to help them manage their trauma.  Meanwhile, amidst millions of tons of toxic debris, finding safe and stable housing is a challenge.  Special correspondent Cat Wise reports.

CALIFORNIA - Wildfires' Aftermath

"Trauma, loss and logistics plague communities hit by wildfire" PBS NewsHour 11/27/2018

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SUMMARY:  California’s deadliest wildfire, the Camp Fire, is now fully contained, but its death toll has climbed to 88, and more than 200 people are still missing.  How are the people still searching for loved ones, and the thousands of residents displaced from their homes, coping in the disaster's aftermath?  Amna Nawaz talks to William Brangham, reporting from Gridley, California.

"After wildfire, Calif.  authorities struggle to find the missing and the dead" PBS NewsHour 11/29/2018

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SUMMARY:  It’s been three weeks since the devastating Camp Fire swept through California, leaving at least 88 people dead.  In its aftermath, forensic anthropologists comb through mountains of ash in search of human remains.  At the same time, law enforcement and other officials struggle to understand the whereabouts of the 190 people still missing.  William Brangham reports from Paradise.

CALIFORNIA - Wildfires' Aftermath

"The daunting task of identifying victims of the Camp Fire" PBS NewsHour 11/19/2018

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SUMMARY:  In the 11 days since Northern California's Camp Fire ignited, residents have experienced “hell on earth."  Firefighters have now contained about 66 percent of the fire.  But as rain approaches, rescuers scramble to locate the nearly 1,000 people still missing--fearing that piles of ash will become treacherous mud.  William Brangham speaks with Jim Wood, a forensic dentist helping to identify victims.

"After the flames, what challenges lie ahead for Northern California?" PBS NewsHour 11/20/2018

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SUMMARY:  The Camp Fire destroyed the town of Paradise but is now 70 percent contained, marking progress for Northern California.  Predicted rain should reduce risk of additional fires, but heavy smoke and threats of mudslides and flooding loom over residents’ heads.  The situation remains dire for the thousands who lost their homes.  William Brangham talks to Mat Honan of BuzzFeed News from South Lake Tahoe.

REF:  "There's No Looking Away From This Year's California Fires" BuzzFeed News



"Thanks to this lab, we can better protect our homes from fire" PBS NewsHour 11/20/2018

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SUMMARY:  California's recent spate of wildfires has caused devastating death and destruction.  Can scientific experimentation help us minimize the scope of fire disasters?  Scientists at the National Fire Research Laboratory in Gaithersburg, Maryland, are studying how materials burn and combust, in an effort to inform us about avoiding and mitigating fires.  Science producer Nsikan Akpan has the details.

"Housing California residents displaced by fires proves difficult" PBS NewsHour 11/21/2018

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SUMMARY:  In the areas of California hit hard by recent wildfires, displaced residents are struggling to find shelter.  In some of these places, like Chico, there was already a housing shortage even before the fires hit.  What resources are available to help?  Judy Woodruff speaks with Raquel Dillon of KQED for an update on the services being provided by FEMA and other organizations during the crisis.

CALIFORNIA - From Paradise to 'Hell'

"From Paradise to ‘hell,’ California fires blaze statewide" PBS NewsHour 11/12/2018

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SUMMARY:  Over a dozen active fires continue to wreak destruction across California, from the northern part of the state to Malibu and Oak Park outside Los Angeles.  Nearly a quarter million people have been displaced and hundreds are missing.  Amidst dry, windy weather, 8,000 firefighters statewide struggle to contain the blazes.  Mary MacCarthy of Feature Story News joins Judy Woodruff with the latest.

"Responders to Northern California fires face ‘unprecedented’ ordeal" PBS NewsHour 11/12/2018

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SUMMARY:  A ‘monumental’ ordeal lies ahead for authorities dealing with fires in Northern California.  Sheriff Kory Honea, who is also the coroner of Butte County, and his colleagues must lead evacuation efforts, attempt to locate missing people and tragically, sift through the ruins for bodies -- which are difficult to identify due to the intensity of the flames.  He speaks by phone with Judy Woodruff.

"After the flames, California recovery crews face grim search for victims" PBS NewsHour 11/13/2018

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SUMMARY:  In California, the effort to control two major wildfires remains a struggle.  Northern California's Camp Fire has become the deadliest fire in the state's history, claiming at least 42 lives and covering nearly 200 square miles.  Meanwhile, the Woolsey Fire in the southern part of the state remains 35 percent contained but has left 200,000 people under evacuation orders.  William Brangham reports.

"The science behind California’s surging wildfires" PBS NewsHour 11/13/2018

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SUMMARY:  As three major fires blaze in California, we consider some of their causes, both human and meteorological.  Science correspondent Miles O’Brien has been filming a NOVA documentary on megafires and witnessed the Camp Fire not long after it began.  He joins William Brangham to describe that stunning experience, along with the broader scientific context around these destructive phenomena.

"Fire recovery continues across California, as new fire blazes east of LA" PBS NewsHour 11/14/2018

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SUMMARY:  Fifty miles east of Los Angeles, a brush fire has quickly grown into a wall of fast-moving flames.  The new “Sierra Fire” is spreading south from the edge of the Angeles National Forest, though firefighters say they’re making gains against the blaze.  Meanwhile, 100 more National Guard troops arrived in Northern California to search for people missing after the Camp Fire and help identify victims.

"Paradise gone, wildfire evacuees faced with rebuilding their lives" PBS NewsHour 11/15/2018

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SUMMARY:  In the tally of death and destruction from California's Camp fire, officials confirm that 56 people died, 130 are missing and 8,800 homes have been destroyed in the town of Paradise.  Special correspondent Cat Wise reports from Chico, California, where a Walmart parking lot is now home to hundreds of evacuees who are left with nothing and unsure of where to go.

WILDFIRES - California, the American West, Western Europe

"Climate change is making wildfires more extreme.  Here’s how" PBS NewsHour 8/6/2018

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SUMMARY:  High winds, high temperatures, pervasive drought.  These extreme conditions are driving two enormous fires in California, and many more throughout the American West and much of Northern and Western Europe.  William Brangham talks with Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University about the ways climate change is contributing to the danger and destruction.

"Weary California crews fighting unpredictable fires prepare for worst yet to come" PBS NewsHour 8/7/2018

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SUMMARY:  Across California, 17 major wildfires are burning, the most devastating in the north.  Overnight, the Mendocino Complex Fire grew into the largest in state history, breaking a record set just eight months ago.  As Nick Schifrin reports, officials admit the expanding fire season is taking a heavy toll on their resources.

"Massive California wildfires take a toll on residents and air quality" PBS NewsHour 8/9/2018

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SUMMARY:  The Mendocino Complex is a fire of unprecedented size, but the scenes are strikingly familiar: thick haze, homes charred, evacuees at shelters.  At its peak, the fire displaced almost 20,000 people, and there are more than a dozen more blazes burning across California.  Special correspondent Cat Wise joins William Brangham from Ukiah to discuss how the fires are affecting air quality.

"In some areas, controlled fires can prevent runaway blazes" PBS NewsHour 8/11/2018

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SUMMARY:  As massive fires continue to rage in California, firefighters are setting backfires, dropping flame-retardant from planes and hoping for a break in hot, dry conditions.  Another method is to intentionally set fires to tamp down the prospect of larger blazes.  Jeff Mapes, senior political reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting, joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss.

CALIFORNIA - The Extreme Destructive Fires

"‘Extreme isn’t even the right word’ for conditions fueling California’s destructive fires" PBS NewsHour 7/30/2018

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SUMMARY:  Fire crews in Northern California spent another long day laboring to contain the sprawling Carr fire, which has killed at least six people and reduced more than 720 homes, and other buildings, to ashes in the Redding area.  A total of 17 large fires are burning across the state.  John Yang reports, then Judy Woodruff gets an update from Ken Pimlott, director of Cal Fire.

"California wildfires are breaking the rules by burning downhill fast" by Allie Weill, KQED Science PBS NewsHour 7/28/2018

Right now, on the outskirts of Redding, a rampaging wildfire is doing something

that was once unusual: It’s burning fast…downhill.

“Fires are burning almost as fast downhill as they burn uphill,” said Cal Fire spokesman Scott McLean, from the scene of the Carr Fire, which by midday Friday had torched more than 44,000 acres and was only 3 percent contained.

That’s not typical.  One of the first things wildland firefighters learn is that fires burn much faster uphill.

It’s simple physics, heat rises, so the heat from the fire warms and dries out the upslope fuels fastest.  It’s also a case of proximity, if you draw a picture of a flame on a slope, you’ll see that there’s a much shorter distance between flame and ground on the uphill side than downhill, so the fire can jump directly from one blade of grass to another.

Then there’s the wind.  During the day, when fires are typically most active, wind tends to blow uphill, carrying heat and embers up the slope.  Facing a fire coming up a hill has long been a serious threat to firefighters, and fires moving rapidly uphill have been implicated in many of the deadliest fires for firefighters, such as the South Canyon Fire of 1994 and the Mann Gulch Fire of 1949, which killed 14 and 13 firefighters, respectively.

Because of the dangers of fighting a fire burning up a hill, crews working in hilly terrain take advantage of the opposite effect, anchoring firefighting operations on the downhill side of a fire and using the slope as a buffer zone as fire will move more slowly downhill.

But this trick has become less reliable in recent years.  Chris Anthony, a division chief at Cal Fire who has worked on fires for more than 25 years, has observed more examples of fires spreading rapidly downhill.  The Carr Fire is just one example.

Researchers haven’t measured this trend yet, so nobody knows for sure why this might be happening, but Anthony has an idea.

“One of the things that really contributes to that, right now, is we came out of this very long drought period, and we still have a lot of fuels out there, that are very dry or very dead, even,” says Anthony.  “And so they carry fire much more rapidly than prior to the drought.”

The wet winter that followed the drought added to the fuel load.  The hillsides are now so packed with dry grasses that the slope matters less on a downhill run.  When there’s so much ready fuel, combined with hot, dry conditions and strong winds, fires just move faster in all directions.

An uptick in downhill fire behavior might also be related to the increase in nighttime temperatures.  On a typical day, local winds move uphill during the day and downhill in the evening.  In the past, cooler nighttime temperatures could impede fire activity driven by these evening winds.  But if fires remain active at night, local evening winds could drive faster downslope fires.

For now, the trend toward more intense downhill fires is anecdotal, and some researchers are hesitant to speculate why firefighters might be seeing this behavior.

“Is that a statistically significant trend?” asks Nick Nauslar, a fire weather forecaster at the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma.  “And if so what might be causing that? There would have to be a couple more steps before I try to make assumptions or formulate theories on why that might be happening.”

Regardless, there have always been some downslope fires that spread quickly.  Santa Ana and Diablo winds typically run downslope, says Nauslar.  These winds have long driven most of California’s most destructive fires, including the 2017 Wine Country Fires, which were the state’s deadliest fires, and the Thomas Fire in Southern California, now the state’s largest fire on record.  There’s mixed evidence as to whether climate change is affecting the strength or frequency of these winds, but they were especially powerful last year.

“We saw some of the strongest winds in recorded history, especially from that direction, that northerly, northeastern component winds, and that’s downslope,” says Nauslar of the Wine Country fires.

Rapidly spreading downhill fires also played a major role in last winter’s Thomas Fire.  It coincided with the longest Santa Ana wind event on record, according to a recent analysis of the 2017 fires led by Nauslar.

“You would still see very, very active fire behavior on the downslope portion of those fires,” adds Anthony, “because those fuels were so extremely dry and the climatic conditions were such that embers would start new fires ahead of the main fire front.”  Fires that burn quickly downhill are particularly worrisome because communities are often situated at the base of the mountains.  Last fall, it was a downslope fire that pushed into Santa Rosa and drove the destruction of Coffey Park and other local communities.

Firefighters are keeping careful tabs on changes in fire behavior to help prevent tragedies like what happened in Santa Rosa.

“If we get reports that we’re going to have a large downslope or down-canyon wind in the evenings,” notes Cal Fire Battalion Chief Jonathan Cox, “there’s things we can do such as reinforcing the downhill line, putting additional resources below the fire in anticipation, and understanding that when the fire comes downhill what the risks might be as far as communities or hazards or whatnot that we need to protect.”

The tools are there to manage downhill fires, but Cal Fire’s general approach to firefighting may need to readjust to changing times as these difficult conditions become more common.  Climate change is expected to continue to increase nighttime temperatures and the types of extreme weather that has primed fuels this year for faster, bigger fires.

“It makes us really have to reevaluate our strategy,” says Anthony, “and not just expect that fire to just transition to something that is going to burn less intensely.”

WILDFIRES - The New Normal

"High temperatures and dry conditions are helping wildfires spread" PBS NewsHour 7/27/2018

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SUMMARY:  Firefighters are battling rapidly expanding wildfires across California, facing high winds and triple digit temperatures, while mass evacuations are underway in some areas.  Other states like Oregon and Alaska are facing even more severe situations.  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on why fire officials say this is “the new normal.”

Miles O’Brien (NewsHour):  There are 89 large fires burning more than 870,000 acres across 13 states, mostly in the American West.  Oregon and Alaska are each dealing with 15 fires.

CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES - Aftermath, Mudslides

"After devastating wildfires came deadly mudslides.  Here’s what makes them so treacherous" PBS NewsHour 1/10/2018

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SUMMARY:  Huge mudslides have wiped out at least 100 homes in Southern California, where authorities have confirmed 15 deaths.  Rescue crews dug through the mud and debris on Wednesday in search of survivors; hundreds are still trapped or missing.  Judy Woodruff gets an update from Sharon McNary of Southern California Public Radio from Montecito, the community that has suffered the worst damage.

"California mudslide rescue crews pull out ‘all the stops’ to search for the missing" PBS NewsHour 1/11/2018

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SUMMARY:  Since mud cascaded through the wealthy California enclave of Montecito, rescuers have been forced to trek through knee-deep sludge, using long poles to probe for bodies.  For some families, it's an agonizing wait as the window to find life begins to close.  Judy Woodruff gets an update on rescue efforts from Amber Anderson of the Santa Barbara City Fire Department.