It stuns me, but perhaps shouldn’t, that California doesn’t have better infrastructure and resources to fight these fires.
These fires in California and other Western states are nothing new. Perhaps part of the problem.is that population continues to grow in fire prone areas. Fighting fires in populated areas is more intense and difficult than containing fire in open country, from what I hear.
For all intents and purposes the atmospheric configuration in the summer prevents cold Pacific storms coming this far south from the Gulf of Alaska during the summer. It essentially never rains but on the rare occasions when it does it’s because of a typhoon or tropical storm falling apart when it approaches the cold coastal waters Off Southern California or Baja, the storm’s energy thereafter streaming ashore. Tropical Storm Fausto is disintegrating 1000 miles southwest of San Francisco but spun off a spear of cloudiness that’s been streaming onshore for four days. Very little rain but lots of thunder and lightning. Very unusual circumstances. I can’t imagine how our infrastructure could have reasonable been prepared for this amount of activity.
Actually as an ex Californian from 20 years ago, the problem with the fires in California is purely politics. The Democrats took over and destroyed the Forestry service.
However the money was diverted to social justice measures so it was not a total loss. Now we have lost the forests, but we have many more social justice types.
Who like fires...