A Burning Problem: 20 Facts About Wildfires in the United States.

Every year, wildfires plague our landscape, reducing millions of acres of natural beauty to smoke and ash, threatening our communities, burning homes, draining resources, and jeopardizing lives. 

In fact, 2015 has been the worst year on record for wildfires in the United States. To date, more than 11 million acres have burned in wildfires across the country since January 1, 2015, as reported by the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). TO put it in perspective, 11 million acres is about the size of Massachusetts and Vermont combined.

The scary thing is that it wasn’t just concentrated in the hot summer months, but 250,000 acres are still burning in wildfires well into October, including four new fires that have sparked to life since October 1. In particular, the western United States has been engulfed in flames at a record rate, with significant fires in California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Texas, and Alaska.

Here are some notable facts about wildfires:

1.  With this year’s record 11 million acres burned, 2015 enters a dubious group. In fact, more than 8 million acres burned only six other years since the NIFC started tracking data in 1960: 2012, 2011, 2007, 2006, 2005, and 2004.

2.  Every year in the U.S., an average of 1.2 million acres burn in uncontained or wild fires. But the instance and severity of wildfires has grown exponentially worse in the last decade and a half because of draughts, and climate change from global warming.

3.  Whenever our national wildfire preparedness level is 5, like it has been most of the summer and fall of 2015, Our Forest Service spends $100 million per week fighting fires. With record blazes in 2015, this will be the first year that the Forest Service spends more than 50% of its total budget fighting fires.

4.   We know them simply as wildfires, but fire fighters, scientists, and firefighting professionals also refer to them as wild land fires, surface fires, forest fires, dependent crown fires, spot fires, running fires, or ground fires.

5.  Wild fires certainly aren’t typically started with wild conditions in nature. In fact, 90% of all wildfires are started by people.

6.  Human beings commonly start fires either intentionally from arson, or unintentionally through carelessness or a disregard for safety and precautions. That could mean a still-lit cigarette butt, a campfire that emits embers, or sparks from train exhaust.

7.  The other 10% of wildfires that are not started by humans are either combusted after lightning strikes, or lava in fewer cases.

8.  It’s estimated that Lightning strikes hit the earth an astounding 100 times each second, or 100,000 times a day. 

9. With temperatures up to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit – five times hotter than the surface of the sun - up to 20% of all lightning strikes have the potential to initiate a fire.

10.  Weather and wind patterns contribute to many wildfires, but some fires are so big, they actually change the weather. Huge wildfires produce their own wind, which in response feed it more oxygen and further strengthen the blaze. In fact, a large enough wildfire can generate winds up to 120 mph, as strong as in a hurricane.

11.  Of course wind is also the enemy of firefighters because strong winds not only feed oxygen to fires but push flames toward new fuel sources as well as spread burning embers and sparks that start new “spot” fires.

12.  Wildfires usually end up with names made popular in newspapers and on the TV nightly news, but who comes up with the names? Usually first responders will name a fire, basing it on a nearby feature like a meadow, creek, city, or type of plant they see.

13.  Prolonged draughts, like the one in California, contribute tremendously to the risk of wildfire because dead matter like leaves, twigs, fallen trees, brush, etc. become devoid of any moisture and therefore extremely susceptible to alight. With the right conditions and hot enough temperatures, fires can even break out by spontaneous combustion.

14.  The worst wildfire in U.S. history is referred to as The Great Fires of 1871. During the week of October 8-14 that year, four of the worst fires in the history of the nation all blazed at the same time in the Upper Midwest, including The Great Chicago Fire which destroyed or damaged a third of the city’s buildings and homes, leaving 100,000 residents homeless.

15.  But even worse that week was The Great Peshtigo Fire in nearby Wisconsin that ended up killing 1,500 people, making it the most fatal fire in U.S. history. 

16. Of course they didn’t have modern technology and instrumentation to analyze the cause of the fires, but the consensus was that it was no coincidence that so many terrible fires broke out in the same region the same week. The prevailing theory was that a shower of meteorites falling to earth sparked the blazes, while others said it was unusual wind patterns that year.

17.  The greatest fire in our nation’s history by area burned took place in 1910. Called the “Big Burn” or the Great Fire of 1910, the inferno burned 3 million acres across Idaho, Montana, and Washington. In response to that fire, the U.S. Forest Service was formed, with the mission to fight all wildfires.

18.  Wildfires also cause monumental damage not only to forests and rural areas but encroach upon communities and homes. Here are the largest wildland fires losses (according to the National Fire Protection Association):

October 1918 - Cloquet, Minnesota: $35 million in 1918 dollars.

June 1990 - Santa Barbara, California: $273 million loss in 1990 dollars.

October 1991 - Oakland, California: $1.5 billion loss in 1991 dollars.

October 1993 - Orange County, California: $528 million loss tin 1993 dollars.

May-June 1998 - Florida: $395 million loss in 1998 dollars.

May 2000 - Los Alamos, New Mexico: $1 billion loss in 2000 dollars.

October 2003 - Julian, California: $1.1 billion loss in 2003 dollars; and San Bernardino, California: $975 million in 2003 dollars.

October 2007 - San Diego County, California: $1.8 billion in 2007 dollars.

November 2008 - Sacramento, California: $800 million loss in 2008 dollars

19.  Each year, brave volunteers, fire fighters, and professionals from the Forest Service and other agencies fight these fires, making the ultimate sacrifice to keep us safe.

Firefighter Wildland Fatalities:

(U.S Fire Administration)

2001: 15

2002: 23

2003: 29

2004: 21

2005: 19

2006: 22

2007: 11

2008: 26

2009: 16

2010: 11

2011: 10

2012: 15

2013: 31

20.  To combat wildfires, the National Forest Service now uses modern technology and scientific methods. But all fire fighting or prevention still focuses on an old premise: The Fire Triangle. In fact, wildfires need three things to keep burning: heat, fuel, and oxygen. Without one of those, a fire will cease to burn, and so fire-fighting measures focus on cutting off one of those elements.

Tapped? The truth behind California’s water shortage and what it means to homeowners.

Is California really in danger of running out of water in one year?

A heat wave of concern envelope California last week as the media reported that NASA scientist James S. Famiglietti came out with a startling revelation: California would run out of water in about one year. We all knew that we’d been in a perpetual draught for the last four years, but to hear the news that the state would completely be tapped out in such a short time was downright frightening.

Whipped into a panic, people responded as they often do: politicians orated a flotsam and jetsam of rhetoric, climate change advocates pointed fingers, industries that consume water (i.e., Nestle) tried to put their finger in the dam of negative public sentiment, and residents of the Bay area even started stealing water from their neighbors.

But before we continue the discussion, there are two facts to clarify:

1) California is not going to run out of water in one year’s time, and

2) Despite the good news, we are still in a critical situation that demands immediate action when it comes to our state’s water resources.

It turns out, the media actually misquoted Famiglietti, In fact, in a follow up interview that was vastly under-reported, the senior water scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a professor at UC Irvine explained that the state’s reservoirs have only about a year’s worth of water left, but those reservoirs are only a portion of the water used by Californians and usually only hold a few years worth of water.

"We are way worse off this year than last year,” Famiglietti said. "But we're not going to run out of water in 2016 because decades worth of groundwater remain.”

However, Californians should take small comfort in that fact that the one-year statistic is untrue. What no one will argue is that we’re facing quite possibly the worst draught in state history, at a time when population growth and water use has us opening the taps like never before. The data Famiglietti and other NASA scientists compiled shows precipitous declines in water levels since 2011, as a paltry snowpack and rainfall have left rivers, streams, aquifers, and reservoirs thirsty.

Whether we have enough for 365 days, three years, or a decade until we run out, something needs to be done to slow the rate of use in California. In response, Governor Jerry Brown along with a bipartisan group of lawmakers just announced a one billion dollar package to address the water shortage. However, $660 of that emergency aid money is for flood prevention, and it’s unspecified how the rest will really help. But other, more tangible measures have also been instituted, like limiting watering lawns and gardens to two days a week and mandating that restaurants can only serve tap water at patrons request.

Will that really do the trick? Hardly. And as we start to see water become just as valuable a commodity as oil in the Golden State, homeowners and residents will feel the strain.

Many communities have seen their water bills rise substantially over the last couple years, higher costs are expected. In parts of Sacramento, it’s anticipated that water bills will rise 30% in the next six months, and possibly triple over the next year.

The EPA estimates that the average American household uses 320 gallons of water a day, with about 30-60% of that in dry climates devoted to outdoor irrigation. Limits on washing cars and urging homeowners and landlords to install environmentally friendly low-flush toilets and low-volume showerheads will help. But when we add up all residential water usage, more than half is dedicated to watering lawns. Furthermore, up to 60% of that amount is wasted by over-watering, inefficient methods, and waste. So residents are already urged to cut back and convert their water-wasting lawns into “zero-scapes” that use native shrubs, trees, plants, and rocks that require little or no watering. 10 Water-saving ways to replace your lawn (and still have the nicest yard on the block.)

But the largest user of water in the state is bay far the agricultural industry, which currently accounts for a remarkable 80% of our total water usage. Almond farms, alone, use enough water regularly to supply 75 percent of the state’s residential population.

So we may not be out of water in a year, and homeowners and residents should cut back and conserve as much as possible, but real solutions to the problem also need to come from politicians, the agricultural industry, and big business, as well.

10 Water-saving ways to replace your lawn (and still have the nicest yard on the block.)

Take a nice Sunday drive in most California neighborhoods and you’ll notice something different. House after house, the front lawns are browning. They are still cut and landscaped neatly, and the homes are impeccably cared for, but the grass is so dry it almost looks scorched. And it’s not just our lawns – you’ll see it on the grassy median of highways, public parks, and even the vast grassy promenade in front of the state capitol in Sacramento.

The browning of California’s grass has become the new reality as we face the most serious draught in our history, with no end in sight. In fact, an alarming 63 trillion gallons of water has been lost in the west over just the last 18 months. Scientists are now alarmed that as the water deficit accelerates, relieving the ground of 240 billion tons of weight in H20, the ground is actually shifting and rising. Conservationists and municipalities have tried to sound the alarm, instituting no-watering days for lawns, washing cars, and trying to educate the public as to how cut back. But so far, our collective water bill hasn’t significantly shrunk – and we still insist on having putting greens in front of our homes.

So what can we do? The EPA estimates that the average American household uses 320 gallons of water a day, with about 30-60% of that in dry climates devoted to outdoor irrigation. Of that, more than half of it is dedicated to watering lawns, but up to 60% is wasted by over-watering, inefficient methods, and waste.

Point blank – we can install low-flow toilets, cut our shower time in half, and stop washing our cars, but the real and immediate impact into water usage will come from irrigation; our lawns. The good news is that many communities in arid climates like Arizona, New Mexico, or abroad, have already been through this and adjusted their landscaping accordingly. 

So here are 10 alternatives to front lawns that will vastly reduce our collective water usage – and save you a big chunk on your next water bill. Hopefully when we take a drive around the same California neighborhoods in a year or two, we’ll see beautiful natural landscaping that conserves water in front of most homes – not lawns.

1. Lay natural rocks and fill in groundcover in between for a “hardscape.” It will require almost no watering and naturally keep weeds out, bust still offer greenery.

2. In areas that remain shady most of the day, plant moss. Since it’s not a deeply rooted plant, it will transplant very easily and within as little as 4-6 weeks it will take hold and spread, but never take over.

3. Plant beds of creeping thyme. It looks delicate but it’s actually a very tough and resilient low-water plant that will remain green all year, while also providing great fragrance. You never got that with your lawn!

4. Construct a brick or flagstone zero-scape, placing potted plants or small “oasis” areas throughout. Fill between them with mortar to eliminate weeds sprouting up.

5. Or, you can lay flagstones or pavers and fill in with your beloved green grass, or natural grasses. You can make great symmetrical patterns with these that make your property look bigger, or mix it up to replicate the beautiful chaos of nature.

6. As a general rule, think about plating flora that occurs naturally in your climate and geography. For most of California, that is not green grass and big oak trees!

7. Speaking of trees, you can take out the grass but plant a host of low-water, hot-weather trees, including almond, olive, avocados, figs, almonds, and pears, among others. Not only will you be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor (and nuts) but these will attract native birds and butterflies and keep your home cooler with their shade.

8. A fantastic alternative to grass is to fill surface area with sand, native crushed pebbles, or and crushed stone. You can still fill in with rocks, flowers, and plant groupings to make your yard the envy of the neighborhood – but with very little watering.

9. Synthetic grass. We hate to mention an artificial alternative when there are so many other great ways to replace your lawn, but if you must have that perfect putting green front yard, they make amazing synthetics these days. They aren’t cheap but you’ll never have to water again.

10. A new trend in landscaping is to replicate the natural ecosystem, planting native species of draught-resistant grasses, flowers, shrubs, and trees but then letting them grow wild. By using native species you’ll ensure these plants require little water and thrive in our climates. After all, there is no better landscaper to emulate than Mother Nature!