One after another, major fires exploded across Washington, Oregon and California earlier this month. They have added up to the worst fire season on record.
One after another, major fires exploded across Washington, Oregon and California earlier this month. They have added up to the worst fire season on record.
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Record Wildfires on the West Coast Are Capping a Disastrous Decade
ByBlacki MigliozziScott ReinhardNadja PopovichTim WallaceandAllison McCannSept. 24, 2020
With more than a month of fire weather ahead for large parts of the West Coast, the 2020 fire season has already taken a disastrous toll.
Combined,over five million acreshave burned in California, Oregon and Washington so far. Thousands of buildings have been destroyed by some of the largest fires ever recorded. More than two dozen people have died. Millions up and down the coast have spent weeks living under thick clouds of smoke and ash.
“We’ve broken almost every record there is to break,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, referring to his home state, where catastrophic fires have become an almost-yearly occurrence.
Data from two NASA satellites that can detect heat shows fire activity in California, Oregon and Washington in 2020 has already eclipsed even the worst previous year.
2020 is the most active fire year on recordfor the West Coast
Many fires that erupted in California in August were sparked by lightning strikes, including the August Complex, which has become the state’s largest. It has burnedover 850,000acres— an area larger than Yosemite National Park — in the northern part of the state. The deadly Almeda fire in Oregon is being investigated as possible arson.
Butoutdated forest management practicesand climate change — which brings hotter, drier conditions — have provided the kindling for infernos of such immense scale.
In California, some of this year’s largest blazes encroached onareas that had already burned in recent years, again threatening lives and homes, and putting fragile ecosystems back at risk.
The town of Paradise, which was nearly destroyed by the Camp Fire just two years ago, has faced evacuation warnings in recent weeks. Emergency crews are still battling nearby fires, which are among the largest in the state this year.
In Oregon and Washington, fires have burned areasuntouched for decades. Several towns have been “substantially destroyed,” according to Gov. Kate Brown of Oregon.
Where major fires have burned this year in relation to previous ones
Fires 2000-2019
2020 fires
Pearl
Hill
Seattle
Wash.
Portland
Beachie
Creek
Holiday
Farm
Eugene
Ore.
Archie
Creek
Biscuit
2002
Slater
August
Complex
Redding
Camp
2018
North
Complex
Tubbs
2017
L.N.U.
Lightning Complex
Sacramento
San Francisco
Creek
S.C.U.
Lightning Complex
Dolan
Calif.
Thomas
2017
Bobcat
Los Angeles
Cedar
2003
100 miles
San Diego
Pearl
Hill
Seattle
Wash.
Portland
Beachie
Creek
Ore.
Biscuit
2002
Slater
August
Complex
Camp
2018
North
Complex
Creek
San Francisco
Dolan
Calif.
Thomas
2017
Bobcat
Los Angeles
Cedar
2003
100 miles
San Diego
Pearl
Hill
Seattle
Wash.
Portland
Beachie
Creek
Holiday
Farm
Eugene
Ore.
Archie
Creek
Biscuit
2002
Slater
August
Complex
Redding
Camp
2018
North
Complex
Tubbs
2017
L.N.U.
Lightning Complex
Sacramento
San Francisco
Creek
S.C.U.
Lightning Complex
Dolan
Calif.
Thomas
2017
Bobcat
50 miles
Los Angeles
Cedar
2003
San Diego
Nearly 20 percent of fires this year are burning in areas that were scarred by fires as recently as 2000, data from the National Interagency Fire Center shows.
“Reburn,” as Dr. Swain called it, can happen after a year or two under “sufficiently extreme climate and weather conditions.” Vegetation that grows back after forest fires may also look differently than what grew before. New growth, including more flammable brush and grasses, could fuel fires and put homes and lives at risk again, he said.
As the climate has warmed, fire season, which traditionally peaks in late summer and into the fall,has been expanding— sometimes starting as early as the spring, and lasting into late fall. Wildfires in the Sierra Nevada region and the Pacific Northwest have also gottenlarger and more frequentin recent years.
In the last 20 years, on average, the number of square miles burned annually across California, Oregon and Washington has increased sixfold compared with the average between 1950 and 2000.
The amount of land burned on the West Coast each yearhas ballooned over the last two decades
Fires have become more destructive over time, especially as people have moved further into fire-prone areas. A majority of the fires that have destroyed the most buildings and structures have occurred in the past five years, according to a New York Times analysis of state data through the end of last week. Five fires this year are among the most destructive on record.
The fires this year have not, however, been as deadly as some in the recent past. The Camp Fire, which claimed more than 80 lives in 2018, remains the deadliest in modern California history.
Some of the West Coast’s most destructive fires have occurred this year
Fire
State
Year
Structures
Deaths
Acres
Camp Fire
Calif.
2018
18,804
85
153,336
Tubbs
Calif.
2017
5,636
22
36,807
Tunnel
Calif.
1991
2,900
25
1,600
Cedar
Calif.
2003
2,820
15
273,246
Almeda
Ore.
2020
2,350
4
3,200
Valley
Calif.
2015
1,955
4
76,067
Witch
Calif.
2007
1,650
2
197,990
Woolsey
Calif.
2018
1,643
3
96,949
Carr
Calif.
2018
1,614
8
229,651
L.N.U. Lightning Complex
Calif.
2020
1,491
5
363,220
C.Z.U. Lightning Complex
Calif.
2020
1,490
1
86,509
Nuns
Calif.
2017
1,355
3
54,382
Beachie Creek
Ore.
2020
1,288
5
190,138
North Complex
Calif.
2020
1,147
15
280,775
Thomas
Calif.
2017
1,063
2
281,893
As wind fueled many of the fires in the last month, it also spread a thick blanket of smoke and soot across the region. Far beyond the fire zones, millions of West Coast residents lived under darkened skies and breathed polluted air.
Major cities saw harmful particle pollution known as PM2.5 skyrocket, reaching levels considered dangerous for human health.  In Oregon, several cities, including Portland and Eugene,smashedprevious daily records for poor air qualityduring wildfire season.
Air quality based on PM2.5
35
150
250
500µg/m3
Good
Unhealthy
Hazardous
Breathing in high concentrations of particulate pollution can worsen asthma and other respiratory problems in the short term, and can even lead to strokes or heart attacks. Oregon hospitalsreported a 10 percent increasein emergency room visits for breathing problems during this month’s fires.
Wildfire smoke has also been linked to longer-term consequences, likelower birth weight for babiesandimpaired lung function in adults.
“Unfortunately, it looks like we’re going to have these occurrences for the foreseeable future,” said Linda George, a professor of environmental science at Portland State University. “Policy makers need to make guidelines for people on how to protect themselves if this is what we’re going to see every summer or every other summer,” she said.
Daniel Jaffe, a professor at the University of Washington who studies the impact of wildfires on air quality, said the only way to reduce the frequency of such “airpocalypse” events was to reduce the frequency of large fires.
“If we could bar people from going into the forests and starting fires, that would help. If we could stop climate change, that would help. Better forest management would help,” he said. “But right now, it combined into the perfect storm.”
Note: Animation at top created using GOES-16 satellite fire detection data from the U.S.D.A. Forest ServiceActive Fire Mapping Program. Areas burned prior to Sept. 6 are not shown.Data is provisionaland may have gaps. Satellite imagery from Bing and Google.