Although the smoke has nearly cleared from last week’s catastrophic fires that left 480,000 acres burned, questions remain as to whether it could happen again on an even more devastating level.
The answer, if trends in recent history are any indication, is a resounding “yes.” In fact, since 2003, 1.5 million acres have burned in California.
Fires seem to have become for Southern California what hurricanes are for the Gulf Coast: Residents annually brace themselves for the inevitable, hoping this isn’t the “big one” and that they will be able to pick up the pieces and move on.
But when considering the damage and confusion caused by last week’s fires, one would hardly guess that only four years ago San Diego was affected by a fire that burned the same area, leaving 2,400 without homes and killing 18.
Third-year biology student Sara Briley remembers the 2003 fire clearly.
“I’ve never experienced anything that big before. It felt like the world was ending. … The sky was completely brown,” she said.
Rather than consider the most recent fires as an isolated incident, it is more accurately contextualized as one disaster in a sequence of similar catastrophes.
Instead of focusing all our attention on redeveloping the charred land, we should ask ourselves why fires keep burning out of control and what steps should be taken to reverse this dangerous trend.
One possible reason for such fires, according to fire management experts, is that with further development, wooded regions are prevented from burning on a regular basis, which is nature’s way of clearing out excess dried foliage.
In Mexico, for example, small wildfires are normal and occur annually, causing minor inconveniences but nothing near the devastation of the recent wildfires.
By controlling areas so they do not burn naturally, we essentially save up large amounts of fuel just waiting to go up in flames.
To combat this, California could implement more controlled-burn projects and send out teams to clear brush to fulfill the natural purpose of fires ““ to make room for new germination ““ without the negative consequences.
It’s one thing to allow nature to take its course, but in deciding where to build houses, some argue that some areas should just be left alone.
As reported in the Houston Chronicle, legal action can sometimes be used to stop housing expansion into heavily wooded areas that may be susceptible to fires.
In 2005, the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society and three other environmental groups successfully sued to stop the construction of a 57-home development near Lake Arrowhead.
This solution seems to place only a small Band-Aid on a larger wound since expansion seems inevitable, but we must consider such options when deciding where to place homes. Safety should be the primary focus.
Apart from deciding where to build homes, developers should look into voluntarily putting more fire-safe features into their designs, and county governments should consider making such features mandatory.
“My sister was watching TV, and she saw our street with a bunch of houses on fire,” said Ramee Younes, a second-year psychobiology student. “Fortunately our house didn’t burn down, but it still literally hit really close to home.”
Ultimately, although locations may prove hazardous, San Diego remains a desirable place to live.
“A lot of people look at San Diego from the outside and say it’s silly to rebuild in high-risk areas. But its hard when it’s where you’ve lived and grown up,” said second-year psychobiology student Naomi Serling-Boyd.
Though the prospect of such fires reaching UCLA seems slim except in the most horrific of scenarios, as a university, we should consider the implications of what such risks mean to our regional community.
Unless advancements are made to ameliorate this problematic trend, fires may continue to ravage the region for years to come.
E-mail Noble at bnoble@media.ucla.edu.