Some of the top wildfire experts in the state gathered Tuesday to figure out how to prevent them and how to manage them post-disaster.
We have experienced a hotter than normal June, combined with an excess of grasses and fine fuels after the wet winter, which means we have seen a higher number of acres burned than the five-year-average for the state.
In the tri-counties alone, more than 50,000 acres have burned so far this year - but no fires that have threatened communities on a large scale.
Brian K. Rice from the California Fire Foundation – a non-profit which provides support to firefighters and the communities they protect – says the increase in wildfire activity is having significant impacts.
"California's always had wildfire, but in the last six years, I've heard the terms 'largest fire in state's history', 'most destructive fire in state's history', over and over again," said Rice.
"Climate change. It's real. It's happening. It is having a major effect on the fire problem in California. And I think that we know that. But as we have begun to study it and begin to search for solutions to that problem, part of it is identifying it - and educating people. And we need people to start thinking about how a wildfire can transition into your community as an urban conflagration and no one is safe," he said.
What lessons can be learned from previous wildfires which have impacted our communities like the Thomas and Woolsey Fires?
"We find that communities that have had a recent and close wildfire are more likely to get a fuels mitigation project, but that that really falls off after two years when actually their fuels regrowing and they probably really need to be paying attention," said Sarah Anderson, an expert in Environmental Politics at UC Santa Barbara.
"A lot of what I find in my own research is that we actually have pretty short memories. We pay attention and then we forget, and that's that's our challenge," said Anderson. "It's an urgent but also continuous problem that we're facing and learning to live with."
Kevin Aguayo is at the front line of firefighting - he drives the fire trucks, as an engineer with Ventura County Fire Department for 16 years. He knows first hand about the toll that fighting fires takes on him and other firefighters.
"It does take an emotional toll, especially when you live and work in the same community and your family's being evacuated as well. So in the back of your mind, you're worried about your family at home and you're trying to help the people at the same time," said Aguayo.
"It becomes emotional at some point, and especially as you're exposed to all the smoke, the heat, you're tired, you're hungry. So you have all these things that are happening at one time and there comes a tipping point. It gets to be emotional," he said.
As we go into high fire season, climate predications are indicating above normal temperatures for all of California for the remainder of the year, so there’s an abnormally high fire risk for the rest of 2024.
