ThinkProgress

Northern California firestorm ‘literally exploded,’ killing 15 and destroying hundreds of homes

More than 200 have been reported missing after fast-moving fires devastate communities north of San Francisco.

Natasha Geiling         October 10, 2017

Flames from a massive wildfire burn in Napa, CA. (CREDIT: AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

High temperatures and fast winds are fueling more than a dozen wildfires across California, forcing more than 20,000 northern California residents to evacuate their homes and communities. At least 15 people have died, and more than 200 have been reported missing, after several fires spread rapidly throughout Monday.

The fires ignited late Sunday night and into Monday morning and have since spread over 50,000 acres across Napa and Sonoma counties, destroying at least 2,000 structures and sending at least 100 to the hospital with injuries ranging from burns to smoke inhalation. The Tubbs Fire — which is currently burning at 27,000 acres — has prompted the evacuation of at least 10 neighborhoods in the city of Santa Rosa, which has a population of 125,000. Two hospitals have also been evacuated after the fire jumped across Highway 101 between Sunday night and Monday morning.

Aerial photographs show entire neighborhoods of the city completely destroyed by the fire, which as of Tuesday morning was zero percent contained. Smoke from the wildfires caused the Bay Area Air Quality Management District to issue an air quality warning for the region on Monday; as of Tuesday, much of the area north of San Francisco was still experiencing unhealthy air quality.

The cause of the fires is still under investigation, but officials are confident windy conditions combined with an excess of dry grass and underbrush helped the fuel the fires’ rapid growth. According to the National Weather Service, “fire literally exploded and raced along the landscape” aided by fuel at “all time record dry levels.”

September and October tend to be the worst months for California’s fire season, as strong winds can combine with low humidity and dry vegetation to turn a single spark into a major incident. At the beginning of September, fast-moving winds and record-heat sparked the largest wildfire in Los Angeles’ history, burning more than 5,000 acres north of the city. The worst wildfire in California history — the Cedar Fire of 2003 — started in October and burned more than 273,246 acres, destroying 2,820 structures and killing 15. Already, the scope of this weekends’ fires rivals the destruction of the Cedar Fire.

Fast-moving winds and low humidity aren’t rare in California, and neither are October wildfires, but it’s likely climate change made these fires even more destructive. After years of historic, prolonged drought, which studies have linked to climate change, California experienced record-setting rains that fueled the growth of grasses and underbrush — young vegetation that dries easily during the summer and is especially susceptible to ignition. Because warmer atmospheric temperatures can hold more water, experts have suggested that the cycle of drought followed by intense precipitation could be linked to climate change.

Even the state’s characteristic winds — known in the northern part of the state as Diablo Winds and in the southern part of the state as Santa Ana winds — could be getting worse because of climate change. The Santa Ana and Diablo winds occur when high inland pressure pushes air down the sides of mountains (Mt. Diablo in northern California and Mt. Ana in southern California), whipping wind through the canyons and hillsides outside major population centers like Los Angeles and San Francisco. According to a 2015 study lead by researchers at University of California, Los Angles, UC Davis, UC Irvine, and the U.S. Forest Service, a warming climate will likely make these winds both more frequent and stronger, fueling potentially destructive fires.

Across the country, warm, dry conditions have fueled a record-breaking fire season. The National Wildfire Coordinating Group currently lists 179 active wildfire situations throughout much of the Western United States, from Colorado to Washington. The largest active fire in the United States is the Chetco Bar Fire in southern Oregon, which has burned over 191,121 acres and is 97 percent contained. As of October 6, wildfires have burned 8,469,590 acres across the United States — the third largest total acreage burned in the last 10 fire seasons.

According to an analysis by Climate Central, climate change has increased the length of the annual fire season, a reference to the time of year when conditions are ripe for wildfires, by 105 days since 1970. Over the same period of time, the average number of wildfires over 1,000 acres has doubled across the western U.S. Since 2000, at least 13 states have experienced their largest fires on record.

As climate change is fueling longer fire seasons, human activity — both through an intense focus on fire suppression, rather than forest management, and an decreasingly populated rural-urban boundary, are making fires more destructive and deadly. A longer and more active fire season is also stretching the bounds of the Forest Service’s budget, with 2017 fire suppression costs already exceeding $2 billion, making this the most expensive year on record.

Unlike disasters like hurricanes or earthquakes, wildfires don’t qualify for federal disaster funding under the Disaster Relief Act; instead, the Forest Service is forced to pay for fire suppression costs in excess of the budgeted amount by borrowing from other Forest Service programs. That means in especially active fire years, the Forest Service is taking money from programs meant to prevent fires and using those funds to fight existing fires — a cycle that critics of the current set-up argue puts the Forest Service at a perpetual disadvantage when it comes to anticipating and preventing forest fires.

“Land managers can’t plan for restoration projects, even if they have huge fire benefits, if they don’t know whether the money is going to be there by the time they get around to doing the project,” Collin O’Mara, president and CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, told ThinkProgress. “An account for a forest in Tennessee could be slashed to fight fires in Wyoming, and then all of the sudden you could have a terrible fire in Tennessee the next year, and you didn’t get the project done, so it ends up burning bigger, brighter, and longer than it would have if you had the projects completed.”

Driven by heat and high winds, wildfires are 10 times worse this year than average.

Climate change means that there is no such thing as a typical “fire season” anymore.  

Since 2015, the Forest Service has spent more than 50 percent of its budget on fighting wildfires — more than a thirty percent increase from 1995, when fire suppression was just 16 percent of the agency’s budget. According to a 2015 report, future fires could consume even more of the Forest Service’s budget, to the point where by 2025, two-thirds of the agency’s budget could be spent on fire programs.

One legislative solution for the Forest Service’s budget woes currently being considered in Congress would allow the agency to draw from a separate pool of federal disaster funds, similar to what other agencies can do through FEMA after a disaster like a tornado or hurricane. That bill, known as the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act of 2017, is sponsored by a bipartisan coalition of nine Western senators — five Democrats and four Republicans. In the House, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), has introduced a similar bill for the past three years. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) has urged Republicans in Congress to oppose the bill in the past, arguing that it would “result in increased federal spending.”

Fiscal conservatives in Congress have instead proposed a different way to address the rising costs of forest fires: loosen environmental regulations to allow timber companies more leeway to thin forests, thereby lessening the amount of fuel available for wildfires. One bill, introduced this year by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), would do away with the public input and full environmental review process for thinning or logging projects of 10,000 acres or less (currently, only projects 3,000 acres or less are subject to less stringent environmental regulations). It would also allow the Forest Service to forgo required consultations with the Fish and Wildlife Service if the agency determined the project was unlikely to harm a federally protected species.

Westerman, who has received more than $142,000 from the timber industry since being elected to Congress in 2014, has argued that the bill would “provide protection to America’s forests by reducing the risks of wildfires through proper management techniques.” Westerman received a master’s degree in forestry from Yale Forestry School in 2001, and is the only licensed forester in Congress.

But environmentalists, conservationists, and Democratic lawmakers argue that the real problem with the growing cost of forest fires isn’t a lack of management techniques, but a lack of funds with which to implement them. Even Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue has criticized the current funding structure of the Forest Service, saying in September that without a consistent stream of funding, “we’re asking for disasters.”

“You can have all the tools in the universe, but if you don’t have the resources to implement that, it doesn’t matter,” the National Wildlife Federation’s O’Mara said. “And that’s where we are right now.”

Update, 10/10/17, 4:29 p.m. EST: This story has been updated to reflect new estimates of the number of missing persons, fatalities, and destroyed structures.

Time

California’s Raging Wildfires as You’ve Never Seen Them Before

TIME Staff,         October 9, 2017

Lake Fire | Big Bear June 2015

On the Front Lines of California’s Increasingly Devastating Fires

Video by Jeff Frost | Text by Josh Raab

Forest fires have long been a part of life in California, but not always like this. In recent years, artist Jeff Frost, based near Joshua Tree National Park, has watched as fires raged across the West Coast with increasing frequency and intensity. “Fire is a natural part of nature,” he says, “but what you’ll hear veteran firefighters say over and over, ‘I’ve never seen fire behavior like this.” Fire seasons are also starting earlier and ending later, on average 78 days longer than they were in 1970. On Monday, late in the fire season, Frost was chasing blazes in Sonoma and Napa counties, which have scorched tens of thousands of acres and led to widespread evacuations, including in Santa Rosa, Calif.

Four years ago, Frost, now 39, decided to begin documenting the fires. He put himself through the most intense fire-safety training courses he could find, enrolling in courses sanctioned by the U.S. Forest Service, then equipped his camper with a bed and a generator and headed to the front lines of California’s biggest fires.

Bluecut Fire | Cahone Pass Aug. 2016

Frost’s project, “California on Fire”, will be a feature-length art film combining his wildfire time lapses. The non-narrative film will look at forest fires loosely through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The stages will follow the life of wildfires, looking at their causes and effects from their ignition to the twisted metal and charred forests they leave behind. Frost is especially interested in exploring the role human involvement plays in these fires, both intentional and unintentional. “Human beings are stewards of the planet,” he says. “It’s just a question of whether we’re good stewards or bad stewards.”

On scene, Frost shoots sequences of hundreds of still photos, which he then combines into time-lapse videos. He previously used this approach at Joshua Tree National Park and at CERN, the research center renowned for building particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider.

For the “California on Fire” project, Frost has shot more than 300,000 images at over 40 forest fires, resulting in over 500 time lapses ranging from 1 to 30 seconds. The blazes he has documented include the Erskine wildfire outside of Bakersfield in June 2016 that destroyed 386 structures and led to two deaths, and the King wildfire near Lake Tahoe in September 2014, which destroyed 80 structures and scorched almost 100,000 acres of land. While he is fascinated by fire, Frost’s obsession is to create an art piece that speaks to a larger reality: The role climate change plays in the fires.

Erskine Fire | Lake Isabella June 2016

“The intent is to show the effect of climate change right now, not just in the future,” he says. “Burning people’s houses down is not abstract.” Over the past three decades, climate change has doubled the area burned by forest fires in the western United States and the fire season has grown significantly longer. A number of climate-related issues are intensifying fires. Drier climates and more available fuel cause fires to start easier, burn longer and move faster. In addition, forest fires lower the number of trees that can absorb the carbon dioxide that causes climate change in the first place.

The federal cost of fighting forest fires has risen substantially. Fires cost the U.S. Forest Service more than $2 billion in 2015, over half of its annual budget, up from $240 million in 1985 (not adjusted for inflation).

LaTuna Fire | Los Angeles September 2017

While shooting the Rocky fire in Lake County in July 2015, Frost followed a firefighting team into a valley only to find himself completely surrounded by flames until a backup team arrived. “The wind was whipping across the hillside and catching grass on fire. I was sitting in the truck freaking out,” he says. “There were droves of insects running into the truck trying to get away from the fire. We had to wait for two hours before somebody could come in and retrieve us. That fire was a total of 70,000 acres but that day it burned 50,000.” Frost’s point-of-view video below documents his close call.

Rocky Fire | Clear Lake July 2015

After almost four years, Frost has shifted away from the front lines and turned his focus to covering the aftermath. He is shooting scorched landscapes and the remains of cars left behind. Recently, he started picking up pieces of charred aluminum, polishing them and displaying them in art exhibits to bring awareness to the power of forest fires. He expects to complete his time-lapse film in early 2018. A pre-public release will go out to his Patreon followers before he submits the film to Cannes and Sundance.

Jeff Frost is an artist based outside of Los Angeles. Follow him on instagram @frostjeff.

josh raab IS a multimedia editor at time. follow him on instagram @instagraabit.

The New York Times

Miles of Algae Covering Lake Erie

By Jugal K. Patel and Yuliya Parshina-Kottas        October 3, 2017

A potentially harmful algae bloom covered more than 700 square miles in the western basin of Lake Erie last week, turning the lake bright green and alarming residents and local officials.

Source: Landsat 8

Scientists say that algae blooms have been a growing problem for Lake Erie since the 2000s, mostly because of the extensive use of fertilizer on the region’s farmland.

The algae blooms contain cyanobacteria, which, under certain conditions, can produce toxins that contaminate drinking water and cause harm to the local ecosystem.

During last week’s bloom, the amount of toxins in the algae remained low at the intake points where towns draw water from the lake, according to officials.

Lake Erie’s algae blooms are driven by a landscape dominated by agriculture.

Rain causes nutrients from fertilizers on farmland to run off into rivers.

The nutrients travel along rivers, eventually reaching Lake Erie.

In the Maumee River, the largest tributary to any of the Great Lakes, green algae was visible last week in an aerial photograph.

According to experts, excess nutrients that are transported by the Maumee River can be a good indicator of how severe an algae bloom in the lake will be.

Source: Aerial Associates Photography, Inc., Zachary Haslick

Millions of people get drinking water from Lake Erie. Previous blooms have been toxic.

While not all algae blooms are toxic, they can produce a type of toxin called microcystin that can cause serious liver damage under certain conditions. Dangerous levels of the toxin caused Toledo, Ohio, to shut down the drinking water supply of a half million residents for three days in 2014.

In total, almost 3 million people get drinking water from the central basin of Lake Erie. Officials have been testing the intake pipes in the lake where towns draw water and report that the current toxin levels are low.

Source: NASA MODIS    Note: Only intake points for towns and cities in Ohio are shown.

The blooms are hurting the region’s economy.

Lake Erie attracts millions of visitors for beaches and recreation like fishing, and many businesses stand to lose money during large algae blooms.

David Spangler, vice president of the Lake Erie Charter Boat Association, describes the algae as a musty-smelling, lime-green skin on the lake’s surface that’s so thick you could write your name in it.

“An awful lot of money may go someplace else other than Ohio if we continue having these issues in the lake,” Mr. Spangler said. He noted that in 2015, an algae bloom kept boats out of the lake for six to seven weeks.

The algae blooms are getting larger.

Since the 2000s, algae blooms in Lake Erie have become much more extensive.

According to one study by the Carnegie Institute for Science and Stanford University , most of the increase in the size of the blooms can be attributed to a rise in the amount of dissolved phosphorus flowing into the lake.

In the 1980s, researchers started tracking algae blooms in Lake Erie. They were mostly small, but changes in farming practices caused them to spike.

The blooms are expected to grow more harmful as global warming changes rainfall patterns.

According to local experts, storms have become more intense in the region, carrying more nutrients from the farmland into the lake.

Another study from the Carnegie Institution for Science shows that extensive algae blooms will continue to grow throughout the continental United States and around the globe, especially in Southeast Asia.

The mayor of Toledo, Paula Hicks-Hudson, wrote a letter to President Trump on Sept. 26, calling on the federal government to declare Lake Erie impaired, which would allow for the lake’s nutrient loads to be regulated under the Clean Water Act.

“There is something very wrong with our country when our rivers and lakes turn green,” Ms. Hicks-Hudson wrote in her letter. “As I look out my office at a green river, I can tell you one thing: The status quo is not working.”

Correction: Oct. 5, 2017

An article on Wednesday about an algae bloom in Lake Erie misidentified a toxin produced by algae blooms. It is microcystin, not microcystis.

DeSmog

Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science

Poll Shows Majority Of Americans Want Government To Act On Climate Change, But There’s A Catch

By Farron Cousins            October 4, 2017

Image: Texas Army National Guardsmen assist residents affected by flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Aug. 27, 2017. Army National Guard photo by Lt. Zachary West.

New polling data provides some inspiring news about the prospects for climate change action in the United States. According to public policy polling conducted by AP-NORC and the Energy Policy Institute at The University of Chicago, 61% of American citizens believe that climate change is a threat that the federal government should actively work to prevent. The poll also reveals that majorities in both major political parties – Democrats and Republicans – accept the fact that climate change is actually happening and that human activity is making it worse.

This data reinforces previous polling data indicating that a majority of American citizens, regardless of party affiliation, believe that climate change is a serious issue demanding urgent political action.

What sets the new set of data apart from the rest is also the part that makes it slightly less uplifting.

The poll found that 51% of Americans are willing to pay $1 per month to combat the growing threat of climate change, but when you start look at numbers higher than a dollar per month, the willingness of American citizens to foot the bill begins to decline sharply.

Additionally, the poll found a majority of citizens are against fracking, especially when they learn about the negative health effects from the oil and gas drilling process. However, support for fracking rises to nearly 41% when citizens are told that it could save them a few hundred dollars each year on their electric bills.

The new data helps to provide a clearer picture of how American citizens tend to view most non-social issues, and that is through the lens of finance.

When presented with data showing that dirty energy is harmful — but might save them money (in the short term) — they gravitate towards the “saving money” rather “saving lives” side of the climate equation.

But the fact that most people are willing to shell out even one dollar per month is actually a giant leap forward in terms of Americans’ willingness to address the growing threat of climate change, even if they may have to foot part of the bill.

Another interesting point about these polls is that the data was actually collected prior to the devastating string of hurricanes that hit the US — Harvey, Irma, and Maria — that captured the attention of the public and brought the issue of climate change to the forefront, albeit for a brief period of time.

There’s no doubt that the federal government could and should devote a lot more taxpayer money to fight climate change. Instead, Washington is currently choosing to subsidize an industry that is struggling to survive, and is significantly responsible for the climate change that’s hurting us now.

Why Not Fund Climate Action With Polluter Profits?

Ultimately, when it comes to paying for action to combat climate change, American citizens might consider asking their representatives in Washington to hold polluting industry responsible for funding the US response to climate change. After all, the fossil fuel industry bears significant responsibility for our current and future global warming predicament.

A recent report found that subsidies to the fossil fuel industry top $5 trillion a year – money that could instead be spent on infrastructure to protect low-lying cities from flooding in the event of rising waters, for instance. That money could also be used to provide more subsidies to the renewable energy sector which is already growing at a pace that far exceeds that of the fossil fuel sector.

Perhaps if we end the federal life support going to fossil fuel companies — a form of corporate welfare that is far from necessary — we could finally start addressing climate change without having to ask taxpayers to cough up a few extra dollars every month.

Fusion is with Splinter

Washington Post

Energy and Environment

Notes from closed meeting show how Interior aims to weaken environmental laws

By Darryl Fears        October 5, 2017

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke talks with rancher Heidi Redd at the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah in May. (Scott G. Winterton/Salt Lake City Deseret News via AP)

Near the end of September, officials at the Interior Department bureau that oversees hundreds of millions of acres of public land hosted a conference with state, county and local government representatives to discuss ways to loosen environmental rules.

Bureau of Land Management hosts told attendees and those joining the invitation-only meeting remotely that they wanted to streamline a powerful law that protects wildlife and public land, the National Environmental Policy Act. They asked how its rules could be smoothed out to limit delays that slow public and corporate development so that the federal government, as President Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke have said, can be a better partner rather than a hindrance. The meeting covered ways to fulfill the president’s executive order to remove impediments to new infrastructure, mining and other development on federal land.

At least two groups not on the invitation list obtained the call-in information for the meeting and secretly sat in and took notes, which one group provided to The Washington Post.

Surrounded by miners from Rosebud Mining, President Trump signs his executive order on energy independence at the Environmental Protection Agency’s headquarters in Washington in March. (Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images)

During the Sept. 21 webinar, the BLM and its guests discussed ways to water down NEPA and more. They talked about working around environmental analyses that determine whether infrastructure projects harm ecosystems, about stripping conservation groups of the power to sue the BLM if it wrongly approves a project and about limiting the number of federal Freedom of Information Act requests that allow the public to scrutinize how decisions were made.

“We’re seeking a better decision-making process that’s more productive and getting decisions faster,” Leah Baker, the BLM division chief for planning and NEPA, said in an interview Tuesday. “We heard through this process that we should try and streamline regulations … and that the agency leaves a little to be desired in how effectively we coordinate” with states and local governments.

When a participant in the meeting noticed that the event was being recorded, BLM officials assured the group that it would not be distributed. A second webinar attended by native tribes took place Sept. 25, BLM officials said in an interview this week.

A few days after the webinars, Zinke called employees who disagreed with Trump’s vision for change disloyal and vowed to move policymaking positions at Interior’s Washington headquarters to offices out West, possibly to Denver. Zinke has already reassigned dozens of senior Interior employees to positions they did not want. Interior’s inspector general is probing the legality of Zinke’s rapid reassignments.

Related: [Interior Department whistleblower resigns, calling Ryan Zinke’s leadership a failure]

NEPA is one of the oldest and most progressive environmental laws on the books. Established in 1970, it has been called an environmental Magna Carta that dozens of governments across the globe have used to craft their own environmental policies. But corporations and some state and local government officials have long criticized it as an impediment to development and revenue.

The webinar’s participants, which included the Western Governors’ Association and the National Association of Counties, also took aim at the Equal Access to Justice Act, which allows groups to seek reimbursement of attorneys’ fees when they win cases against the government. BLM officials and their guests said the reimbursements fuel more lawsuits from people who disagree with their land management practices.

The participants complained that the BLM is being overwhelmed with Freedom of Information Act requests from groups and individuals, more than 1,000 so far this year and growing. They discussed submitting recommendations to Zinke to limit those requests in addition to altering NEPA and EAJA.

Kelly Fuller, energy campaign coordinator for the Western Watersheds Project, said some state and local governments want to align the BLM’s environmental priorities with weaker or, in some cases, nonexistent rules of municipalities.

“They want BLM planning outcomes to match local and state plans … but there are different obligations,” Fuller said. “State and local plans are about development and extraction and making more money, creating more revenue.”

Since legislation is required to make those changes, they hoped Zinke would encourage Republicans in Congress, some of whom are working to weaken environmental rules such as the Endangered Species Act and Migratory Bird Act, to include the September meeting’s recommendations as part of overall reform.

“They may say they want to streamline, but what they mean is cut the public out of the process, do less environmental review and have more secrecy so they can give oil, gas and coal companies unfettered access to our treasured public lands,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, a vice president for government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, who called the meeting an attempt to weaken NEPA.

“Let’s be perfectly clear,” said Bethany Cotton, a spokeswoman for WildEarth Guardians, based in Santa Fe, N.M. “The Trump administration’s efforts to roll back environmental protections are meant to strip the public of the opportunity to be informed and weigh in on proposals that will negatively impact our public lands, air, water, and most imperiled animals and plants. Each of these attacks is meant to cede power to resource extractive industries and anti-conservation localities.”

Cynthia Moses-Nedd, the BLM’s liaison to local and state governments who participated on the webinar with Baker and at least two other federal officials, said the issue isn’t so black and white. She recalled that a local government official suggested introducing legislation that would change the Equal Access to Justice Act.

“EAJA … is used to fund lawsuits against the BLM,” Nedd said, and can “paralyze the BLM when it’s doing its work. There needs to be something that deals with that … so BLM can do the work and not be hampered and paralyzed.”

Nedd said BLM isn’t necessarily trying to give its allies a greater role in environmental assessments. “I think our goal is to make sure we’re coordinating better … that’s where we saw the greatest input from our state and local partners.”

A gas flare burns as a driver monitors a water tank near Sidney, Mont., in February 2015. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg News)

Baker called the NEPA statute “a cool law” but said complying with its rules is “a heavy lift. We’re trying to figure out how we do it quicker. … There are things routine in nature that can make [the process] speed up.” She said she recalled an experience where a single misstep caused a decision that could have been completed in months to take years. Officials worried that the misstep would trigger a lawsuit that would doom an entire project.

The National Association of Counties agrees with local officials who say they’re cut out of NEPA’s processes to determine environmental harm and want to help decide how its analysis should be done. Association spokesman David Jackson said counties suffer when a NEPA analysis drags on for months and sometimes years. “NACo supports the revision of NEPA to strengthen the involvement of local government in the federal decision-making process. We also support more public involvement.”

Jackson said the association’s position is that EAJA also should be reformed to ease lawsuits. “You can’t do effective forest management, for example, because you get sued at every turn.”

Fuller, of the Western Watersheds Project, said: “We’re waiting to see the BLM’s recommendations report to Secretary Zinke to give local governments and the states greater control. … How far is he going to go?”