56 square miles of uncontained wildfire in LA County
The situation in LA keeps getting worse, now with 10,000 structures destroyed and damage projections (because this isn't over yet) estimating over $100 billion in losses. But several fires are still not contained, two new uncontained fires flared up yesterday inside LA County, and the National Weather Service has issued Red Flag warnings from San Diego to Santa Barbara (an area more than 200 miles long) -- because conditions are ideal for wildfire combustion and rapid spread.
Some California politicians are squabbling over who is to blame for not fully funding state and local fire suppression programs, and this year's LA fire budget decreased (after adjusting for salary increases), but the problem of wildfires is global and has been getting worse for decades due to climate change -- a moving average of global annual burned acreage has doubled since the beginning of the 21st Century.
Wildfires are now a significant contributor to global deforestation, although humans are still destroying more forests than wildfires are. From the point of view of other species, we humans are the ongoing disaster.
I haven't forgotten how two years ago smoke from the massive Quebec wildfires made it to my own house in Maryland and poisoned me, leading me to buy an air filtering machine for our house.
[A possibly amusing sidenote?: Several celebrities' houses have burned down in the wildfires including the homes of Mandy Moore, Cary Elwes, Eugene Levy, Billy Crystal, Paris Hilton, Adam Brody, Leighton Meester, Anthony Hopkins, John Goodman, Miles Teller, James Woods, Mel Gibson, Mark Hamill, and Ed Harris. Is the destruction more real when it hits Paris Hilton and Anthony Hopkins?]
Some California politicians are squabbling over who is to blame for not fully funding state and local fire suppression programs, and this year's LA fire budget decreased (after adjusting for salary increases), but the problem of wildfires is global and has been getting worse for decades due to climate change -- a moving average of global annual burned acreage has doubled since the beginning of the 21st Century.
Wildfires are now a significant contributor to global deforestation, although humans are still destroying more forests than wildfires are. From the point of view of other species, we humans are the ongoing disaster.
I haven't forgotten how two years ago smoke from the massive Quebec wildfires made it to my own house in Maryland and poisoned me, leading me to buy an air filtering machine for our house.
[A possibly amusing sidenote?: Several celebrities' houses have burned down in the wildfires including the homes of Mandy Moore, Cary Elwes, Eugene Levy, Billy Crystal, Paris Hilton, Adam Brody, Leighton Meester, Anthony Hopkins, John Goodman, Miles Teller, James Woods, Mel Gibson, Mark Hamill, and Ed Harris. Is the destruction more real when it hits Paris Hilton and Anthony Hopkins?]