Introduction to Fire in California: Second Edition

By David Carle

An up-to-date, essential guide to California's long relationship with fire, for the climate-change generation.

What is fire? How are wildfires ignited? How do California's weather and topography influence fire? How did Indigenous people use fire on the land we now call California? David Carle's clearly written, dramatically illustrated first edition of Introduction to Fire in California helped Californians, including the millions who live near naturally flammable wildlands, better understand their own place in the state's landscape. In this revised edition, Carle covers the basics of fire ecology; looks at the effects of fire on people, wildlife, soil, water, and air; discusses fire-fighting organizations and land-management agencies; and explains how to prepare for an emergency and what to do when one occurs.
 
This second edition brings the wildfire story up to the year 2020, with information about recent extreme and deadly fire events and the evidence that climate change is swiftly changing the wildfire story in California. This update reflects current debates about California's future as a climate-crisis leader facing massive, annual natural disasters; the future of California development and housing; and the critically necessary alternatives to traditional energy options.
 
Features:

• A larger, more reader-friendly page format
• More than 110 color illustrations and maps
• An overview of major wildfires in California's history
• An updated and expanded discussion of the effect of climate change on fires in natural landscapes
• Tips on what to do before, during, and after fires
• Discussion of utility companies and massive power shutoffs

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Aug 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9780520976566

David Carle

David Carle is a former park ranger and the author of California Natural History Guides about water, fire, air, and soil (UC Press), as well as other books in water history and management, including Drowning the Dream: California’s Water Choices at the Millennium and Water and the California Dream. His most recent UC Press book is Traveling the 38th Parallel: A Water Line around the World (2013).

Book preview

California Natural History Guides

PHYLLIS M. FABER AND BRUCE M. PAVLIK, GENERAL EDITORS

Introduction to Fire in California

SECOND EDITION

David Carle

UC Logo

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press

Oakland, California

Although the University of California Press and the author have made every attempt to ensure that the information in this book is accurate, they are not responsible for any loss, damage, injury, or inconvenience that may occur to anyone as a result of using this book. Following the advice in this book does not guarantee protection against fire risk. You are responsible for your own safety, as well as the safety of your home, property, and belongings.

© 2021 by the Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Carle, David, 1950– author.

Title: Introduction to fire in California / David Carle.

Other titles: California natural history guides.

Description: Second edition. | Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2021] | Series: California natural history guides | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020053088 (print) | LCCN 2020053089 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520379138 (hardback) | ISBN 9780520379145 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520976566 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH : Wildfires—California. | Forest fires—California. | Fire ecology—California.

Classification: LCC SD 421.32.C2 C 38 2021 (print) | LCC SD 421.32.C2 (ebook) | DDC 634.9/61809794—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053088

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053089

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The first edition of Introduction to Fire in California was for GREG, former fire captain; for Ed, former fire chief; and in memory of HAROLD BISWELL, a pioneer in prescribed fire. This second edition is for naturalists and scientists NICK, RYAN, AND JESSIE.

And in memory of DORIS BROUGHTON.

Low water pressure was a major problem during the Laguna Beach fire in 1993.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

The Nature of Fire

What Is Fire?

The Fire Triangle

Oxygen: Fire Breath

Fuel: Fire Food

Heat: Fire Energy

Ignition Sources

Fire Behavior

Weather

Wind

Topography: Lay of the Land

Fire and Life across California

Fire Regimes

Seeds, Sprouts, and All of the Above

Vegetation Types and Fire

Chaparral Shrublands

Conifer Forests

Oak Woodlands and Savannas

Sagebrush Shrublands and Pinyon-Juniper Forests

Deserts

Grasslands

Wetlands and Riparian Woodlands

Wildlife

Soil, Water, and Air

The Climate Crisis

The Flames of History

California’s Light-Burning Debate

The Big Ones

Extremes after 2010

Burning Issues

Fighting Back: Tactics and Weaponry

Making Peace: Restoring Fire

The Chaparral Dilemma

Logging versus Thinning

Fire Policy and Plans

A Fire-Safe Power Grid

Public Safety Power Shutoffs: Do They Increase Safety?

Getting Ready: Life on the Edge

Wildland-Urban Interface

Becoming a Fire-Adapted Californian

Before the Fire, Be Ember Aware

During the Fire

After the Fire

COVID-19 Pandemic Impacts on Wildfire

Kindling Change

Online Fire Resources

Glossary

References

Art Credits

Index

Acknowledgments

Two books that were published by the University of California Press in 2006 were particularly timely and helpful resources as I prepared the first edition of this book: Fire in California’s Ecosystems is a comprehensive textbook, coedited by Neil G. Sugihara, Jan W. van Wagtendonk, Kevin E. Shaffer, JoAnn Fites-Kaufman, and Andrea E. Thode; and Introduction to California Chaparral, by Ronald D. Quinn and Sterling C. Keeley, is in the California Natural History Guides series and devotes attention to the role of fire in chaparral and the challenges for humans living in that environment.

My sincere thanks to UC Press editor Stacy Eisenstark, project editor Kate Hoffman, and copyeditor Lou Doucette, and, for helpful suggestions by Dr. Jan van Wagtendonk, research forester at the U.S. Geological Survey Yosemite-Oakhurst Field Station; Dr. Connie Millar, U.S. Forest Service scientist at the Pacific Southwest Research Station in Albany; Dr. James K. Agee, emeritus professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington; Dr. Neil G. Sugihara, U.S. Forest Service regional fire ecologist; Tom Higley, retired U.S. Forest Service silviculturist; Sally Gaines; Dr. Rick Kattelmann (who also provided five photographs for this book); and, always, Janet Carle, my wife and first reader.

Introduction

Pile some kindling and small logs in a fireplace so that the paper underneath will send its heat up into them after it is lit. Strike a match. Quickly tilt it so that the flame burns up along this tiny bit of fuel between your fingers, so the match flares strongly enough to pass fire to the wood. Or to the charcoal in a backyard barbecue. Or to the pine needles and twigs within a circle of rocks forming a campfire ring. Or, perhaps, simply to a candlewick, which flares, flickers, and then persists. Light emerges from wick and wax, energy suddenly made visible. Heat also appears, which had been trapped within that fuel, hidden until that moment.

Light and heat are basic attributes of the familiar process of fire. Flames can be comforting and useful when tamed to our will. But this is a wild force, too, one that can roam across the landscape, transforming matter, returning often enough to shape adaptations by plants and animals, and sometimes delivering unstoppable destruction to human communities.

Need it even be said that fire is neither bad nor good, in itself? It is one of the natural, inevitable processes of this earth. We, too, are creatures shaped by fire, using it more purposefully than any other species.

Fire, as our tool, melts, reshapes, cuts, heats, cooks, emits light, and propels us over the ground or through the air. Obvious fires burn in furnaces and smelters, welder’s arcs and acetylene torches. More subtle uses trap fire out of sight in our internal combustion engines, or where small pilot lights hide beneath gas water heaters and stoves, waiting to awaken heating elements and burners.

So many examples in our lives reveal our special relationship with fire. Homes, factories, and business buildings may be equipped with fire extinguishers, smoke alarms, and overhead sprinklers. Career firefighters staff fire stations with specialized fire engines and fire gear. Where communities are too small for that extravagance, volunteer fire departments are organized to fill the need. By the start of each year’s fire season, seasonal wildland firefighters are hired and trained as hotshots and smoke jumpers, hand crews, and hose crews. Dozer operators and highly trained aircraft pilots are put on call.

Though preparation for fires permeates our lives, when they finally arrive, it is usually a shock, as if our secret thought all along was fire will never happen to me. A woman who lost her home in the wildfire that raced through the Oakland Hills in 1991 exclaimed, We had sidewalks! The way people talk about the fire area, you would think I was Little Red Riding Hood living in the forest! (Sullivan 1993, 23). Her amazement, after learning that modern urban life could be so disrupted by wildfire (fig. 1), illustrates the importance of knowledge about fire in California.

FIGURE 1. One of the Oakland Hills houses burned in the Tunnel fire of 1991.

Over eight million Californians live at similar risk, near the edge of wildlands subject to periodic wildfires (map 1). They need to understand this aspect of their environment. Ignorance about fire, as the population has grown and sprawled, has contributed to increased structural damage losses and lost lives from wildfires.

MAP 1. Statewide fire threat.

This book is meant to help humanity understand its place in the California landscape as another one of many fire-adapted species in this state.

Introduction to Fire in California was first published in 2008 as part of the California Natural History Guides series. Most of the first edition remains accurate, but this second edition addresses increasingly extreme temperature and wind events and the relationship of wildfires to global climate warming. Why have superfires driven by high winds become so prevalent?

California’s eternal wildfire challenges intensified from 2010 through 2020, when the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in the state’s history ignited. The number of wildfires started in those years and the total acreage burned were actually not far outside of historical norms. Before the California gold rush, natural ignitions and fires purposely set by the native population had touched about 4 million acres each year. But comparing historical statistics with recent fire totals did not capture essential changes: a few massive holocausts, particularly in 2017, 2018, and 2020, began racing across the landscape, driven by extremely high winds, and in those years, wildfire killed far too many people.

The Rim fire that burned wildlands from August 2013 to October 2014 in Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park impacted 257,000 acres and exhibited extreme fire behavior. In 2017, 2018, and 2020, fire impacts flung Californians into a frightening and deadly new normal pattern. In 2019, power shutoffs intended to reduce utility-caused fires added a controversial tactic felt by millions of Californians at once. For weeks, preemptive blackouts broadened the impact of the wildfire threat beyond the fewer people directly in the line of fires. And yet, downed transmission lines did ignite several fires that year. Adding insult to the prospects of future injury, some insurance companies stopped offering homeowners fire coverage in locations considered to have fire risk. In response to wildfire disasters, California Governors Brown and Newsom each declared emergencies, and though a plan was quickly prepared in early 2019 that was intended to improve readiness before the next onslaught, Santa Ana and Diablo winds once again drove uncontrollable fire behavior that autumn. In August 2020, an extreme weather event produced more than 14,000 lightning strikes and ignited 700 fires in Northern California, including megafires that soon dominated the biggest fires in California history list.

The Nature of Fire opens with the question What is fire? A detailed answer includes the aspects of the fire triangle: fuel, oxygen, and heat. Almost all fires are ignited either by lightning or by human activities. The many ways that California Indigenous peoples used fire are explained, as are ways that weather and topography influence fire behavior.

Fire ecology is the focus of the next chapter, Fire and Life across California, detailing adaptations to fire regimes affecting California’s variety of vegetation types and wildlife, and its soil, water, and air resources. Impacts of the global climate crisis on relationships between fire, weather, and the landscape are a major topic in this second edition of Introduction to Fire in California.

During the last century, California events played central roles in shaping national fire policies and attitudes about wildfire. The Flames of History tells about the state’s light-burning debate early in the twentieth century. Threats to West Coast forests during World War II helped bring Smokey Bear into being. An overview of major wildfires in California history includes those that burned the most acres and houses, or were most deadly to people up through October 2020.

In Burning Issues, missions, responsibilities, tactics, and weaponry of firefighting organizations and land management agencies are followed by policy changes aimed at Making Peace by restoring fire to the landscape with prescribed burns, where feasible. Timber harvest versus a mix of thinning and burning to reduce fire risk remains a current contentious issue. State and national fire plans aim at solutions to the growing challenges of deadly wildfire. Extreme fire behavior and recent controversies about A Fire-Safe Power Grid are addressed.

The Getting Ready chapter emphasizes new state construction policies with a focus on hardening structures to resist flying embers. Problems and solutions when insurance policies are canceled, offer too little coverage, or have become unavailable for residents in high-fire-threat areas are explained. Getting Ready then shifts to personal responsibilities of Californians living on the edge of wildlands, with suggestions about what to do before, during, and after fires.

Finally, Kindling Change, the concluding essay, anticipates our future with wildfire and recommends that Californians confront the Earth’s human-made climate crisis and, at last, stabilize the state’s population.

My interest in these topics took root, as it has for many Californians, because of a personal experience with the drama and tragedy of Southern California wildfires. In my senior year in high school, our family home was one of dozens destroyed during a large, Santa Ana wind–driven wildfire that swept across the hills of Orange County. Is it just coincidence that a brother became a fire captain with the city of Los Angeles, a brother-in-law was the fire chief of El Cajon, and one of my sons staffed a Forest Service fire lookout tower during summer fire seasons? Though a member of a small community’s volunteer fire department, I