(CN) — California’s Dixie Fire swelled more than 16,000 acres over the weekend and the unrelenting blaze, which has burned 760 square miles in several rural counties, is officially the second largest wildfire in recorded state history.
With meteorologists forecasting an expansive heat wave and gusty winds later this week, officials in fire-riddled California and across the West are expecting firefighting conditions to worsen.
More than a dozen states, including Washington state, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, are battling large wildfires. But the month-old Dixie Fire is garnering the most attention in the Golden State after leveling a historic foothills town.
Moving through the northeastern part of the state, the blaze has burned 490,000 acres and destroyed over 430 structures in Butte, Plumas, Tehama and Lassen counties. Just 21% contained, officials said Monday the immediate focus is protecting the over 10,000 homes and businesses that remain in the wildfire’s path before firefighting conditions deteriorate.
“Fire behavior is expected to increase with clear air and a warming trend that is forecasted to peak mid-week,” the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection wrote in a morning briefing. “All resources are committed to structure defense in affected communities.”
Trailing only the August Complex, which torched just over 1 million acres in 2020, the Dixie Fire sparked on July 14 and for weeks spread slowly northeast toward Nevada. While state and federal agencies were initially successful in protecting countless foothill towns nestled in the Feather River Canyon, the firefight took a dramatic turn last week.
Extreme winds propelled the Dixie Fire toward the tourist enclave of Lake Almanor on Aug. 4, and the blaze torched an astonishing 100,000 acres of dry brush and forestland in just 24 hours. Suddenly overwhelmed, firefighters were forced to retreat from their lines as the Dixie Fire spread toward the town of Greenville.
In a matter of hours, flames engulfed Greenville and obliterated hundreds of homes and buildings within the quaint Gold Rush-era mining town. While much of their town was turned to rubble, miraculously all Greenville residents appear to have survived the firestorm.
“We lost Greenville tonight,” said U.S. Rep. Doug LaMalfa, who represents the area. “There's just no words.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom met with local officials in Greenville over the weekend and said the damage mirrors that of the 2018 Camp Fire.
“This entire town completely destroyed, not dissimilar to what we saw a few years ago in Paradise,” Newsom said on Twitter.
Newsom said the federal government and state must do a better job clearing vegetation and conducting fire prevention projects, but pinned much of the blame on climate change.
“At the end of the day though, we have to acknowledge this: the dries are getting a lot drier and the heat and hot weather is a lot hotter than it’s ever been," the governor said. "These are climate-induced wildfires.”
Due in large part to the Dixie Fire, California’s wildfire season is on pace to surpass last year’s record-setting season. According to Cal Fire, more than 6,000 wildfires have already combined to burn 580,000 acres of land or 1,260 square miles.
In addition, six of the state’s seven largest wildfires have ignited over the last two years.
Meanwhile across the country over 100 large wildfires are burning in 15 different states.
Montana is currently battling the most major blazes with 23, followed by Idaho (20), Washington state (17), Oregon (16), California (11) and Alaska (10). Nationwide, a total of 39,000 wildfires have burned 3.6 million acres.
The batch of fires continues to produce terrible air quality for most of the Western U.S. And unfavorable firefighting conditions are expected through the rest of the summer.
“The fire outlook continues to reflect warmer and drier conditions leading to the high potential for severe wildfire activity throughout the western United States through the rest of summer and into the fall,” the National Interagency Fire Center said Monday. “Widespread high temperatures observed across areas in the West and with periods of lightning activity continue to exacerbate the wildfire situation.”
The severity of the current wildfire season has prompted a decisive shift in the federal government’s firefighting strategy, as last week the U.S. Forest Service announced it would cease a decades-long “Let it Burn” practice.
Instead of allowing naturally occurring fires — such as those sparked by lightning — to generally smolder out on their own in remote areas, the Forest Service said it would try to extinguish all fires on federal land. The move comes after a California fire escaped under the feds’ watch earlier this summer, drawing criticism from local and state officials who claimed it should have been doused once it was discovered.
The Tamarack Fire began when a lightning strike in the Mokelumne Wilderness started a small brush fire near the mountain town of Markleeville, about 30 miles south of Lake Tahoe. Forest Service firefighters initially monitored the fire, but by the time it grew to a point where they believed suppression was necessary it was out of control.
Presently, the fire has scorched 68,000 acres and is about 80% contained.
The feds’ announcement drew praise from Gov. Newsom but some experts warn reverting back to strict fire suppression will only increase the probability of more megafires.
Instead of backpedaling on prescribed or controlled burning — a practice widely used across the country and gaining momentum in California — the feds should be championing it, says Scott Stephens, a professor of environmental science, policy and management at the University of California, Berkeley.
“It’s on us now to really start to do these treatments in earnest, maybe 10 times the annual rate we’re doing now,” said Stephens. “We can’t continue to have these wildfires, climate change and droughts being the only things that are really changing our landscapes.”
Stephens and his team of researchers released a new study on Monday that documented the return of natural fire to a 60-square-mile parcel inside Yosemite National Park and another in Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks.
The decades-long study found that allowing small, naturally occurring fires to run their course didn’t result in megafires but actually produced a series of surprising ecological benefits.
According to the study, allowing fires to burn boosted plant biodiversity, increased soil moisture, slowed tree mortality common during droughts and improved the basin’s water supply.
Stephens says the experiment proves “allowing wildland fires to play their ecological role” can help fight climate change, adding that the ecological benefits were recorded even during the sort of drought conditions becoming more common in the Golden State.
Stephen’s counterparts are also questioning the Forest Service’s move, including Don Hankins, geography and planning professor at California State University, Chico.
Hankins bemoaned the decision and called it untimely, noting the state in recent years has been trying to promote the use of prescribed fire and reintroduce careful tribal burning practices that were effective for thousands of years.
“It’s a weird direction to go,” Hankins said. “We’re really working to change the discussion around fire and now the Forest Service pulls out and takes a tool away that we probably should be thinking more heavily about.”
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