5,000 firefighters remain on the frontlines of 10 active Northern California wildfires, many of which are projected to be fully contained within the next few days. Firefighters continue to extinguish hot spots and perform fire suppression repair work.
Since the start of the October Fire Siege on Sunday, October 8, CAL FIRE responded to 250 new wildfires. At the peak of the wildfires there were 21 major wildfires that, in total, burned over 245,000 acres, 11,000 firefighters battled the destructive fires that at one time forced 100,000 to evacuate, destroyed an estimated 8,400 structures, and sadly, took the lives of 42 people.
Tubbs Fire, Sonoma and Napa Counties
Between Calistoga and Santa Rosa
36,807 acres, 94% contained
An estimated 5,300 structures destroyed
22 civilian fatalities
Pocket Fire, Sonoma County
North of Geyserville
17,357 acres, 89% contained
Nuns Fire, Sonoma & Napa Counties
East of Hwy 12 from east Santa Rosa to east of Sonoma
56,556 acres, 90% contained
An estimated 1,200 structures destroyed
1 civilian fatality & 1 private water tender operator in Napa County
Atlas Fire, Napa & Solano Counties
South of Lake Berryessa and northeast of Napa
51,624 acres, 95% contained
An estimated 785 structures destroyed
6 civilian fatalities
Redwood Valley, Mendocino County
North of Hwy 20 in Potter Valley and Redwood Valley
36,523 acres, 98% contained
An estimated 540 structures destroyed
8 civilian fatalities
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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I don’t recall any coverage in NBF about the fires in British Columbia or Washington state a few months ago. Ditto brush fires in Australia several months earlier. Is this some sort of “it’s only important if it happens in California” thing?
Agreed. Current events like this don’t really fall into any category of future tech/discoveries.
There is an argument that widespread fires DO fall into the category of future developments.
Not saying I agree, but there is an argument and you can’t just say there is no argument.
The train of thought is:
Changes to land use, combined with changes to climate (man made or not), can result in fires becoming either more and less devastating.
Current indications are that
1. Some areas, including California, are becoming dryer.
2. Improved communication and transport tech, combined with improved self-sufficiency tech (eg. solar power, energy storage) means that there could develop a trend for people to live in rural areas while still having “city” type jobs because they can work over the internet and/or use more advanced travel tech.
3. City growth means more water going to cities, and hence less water remaining in rural areas.
4. Renewable type energy (solar, wind) is more diffuse so the collection tends to involve more widespread collectors distributed in rural areas.
Result: A growing problem of fires destroying homes and infrastructure.
ok, I’m going to (mildly) disagree – although I am sympathetic to these criticisms.
all it is is another very public datapoint confirming climate scientists’ predictions about climate change. california is in the middle of a 1-in-500-year drought, hurricane harvey was a 1-in-1000-year hurricane, and ditto for three other major hurricanes in the atlantic, coming back-to-back.
once you hear all those 1-in-a- statistics, you really start questioning whether or not the odds themselves have changed.
in any case, if climate science is right and this is just the tip of the spear, we are going to be in for a rough ride. in the battle of technology and climate, climate mops the floor over technology almost every single time.
california has some of the best fire-suppression systems in place out there and this fire just ripped through it. not in out of the way forests, but in downtown urban and suburban centers and through surrounding grasslands. parts of santa rosa look like the face of the moon.
How about the wild fires in Portugal that have killed about 100 people this summer??? One thing though about the fires in California verses fires in BC is the economic impact on things like the wine industry.