Tony Dunn writes:

On November 8, 2018, I was trapped in my car as embers fell all around me in Paradise, California, and the thought that kept going through my head was, “This can’t be the same fire [that had been reported 10 miles away only two hours before]. Fires can’t move like that.”

I should know: I spent nearly a decade studying wildland fire history, fire ecology and fire behavior in southern California for the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies.

But it was the same fire.

I thought a lot of other things on that cold, windy morning stuck in an endless line of unmoving cars, as the flames engulfed the homes around me. I thought I would never see my wife again. I thought I was going to die.

I didn’t die that day, though 85 people did. But I came away from that experience knowing that climate change isn’t some far-off dystopian prediction that we don’t need to worry about. I met climate change face to face that day. It is real. It is here. And it is happening right now.

Five of the most extreme fires in all of California history have happened in the past two years. In 2017, the Thomas Fire set a record as the largest ever fire in California — only to be surpassed eight months later by the Ranch Fire. In 2017, the Tubbs Fire set a record as the most destructive fire in California history — only to be far surpassed 13 months later by the Camp Fire in Paradise. The 2017 Carr Fire experienced an unheard-of fire tornado with winds of 143 miles per hour — equal to an EF-3 tornado. What fire researchers like myself used to consider to be inconceivable fire behavior has become the new normal.

Before the Camp Fire, I felt that I was safe from the worst impacts of climate change. I was wrong. If you feel that you are safe from climate change, so are you.

“But you had insurance, right? So you’re OK, right?” is something I’ve heard over and over during the past year.

No, we’re not OK. [Continue reading…]