By Shoshana Hebshi, Redwood Chapter Communications Coordinator
Since the fires struck, the dominant story has been one of resilience and community support throughout the North Bay. As days passed, deeper stories of causality, urban growth, housing stock and climate change have surfaced, including a few appearing on the Sierra Club’s website.
In an Oct. 13 article, writer Jonathan Hahn directs us back to the devastating fires that consumed the Oakland Hills in 1991. That event was catastrophic, destroying more than 2,500 homes. Our fires stretched across four counties and charred more than 200,000 acres and destroyed nearly 8,000 structures and killed at least 42 people, according to the Press Democrat. This one is for the record books, yet is the “new normal,” Hahn writes.
Sonoma County took the hardest hit, losing about 5,300 homes, while Napa County lost more than 500. The Redwood Valley fire in Mendocino County destroyed 313 homes, and the Sulpher fire in Lake County razed 136 residences. It’s estimated that Sonoma and rural Napa Counties each lost at least 5 percent of its housing stock, including entire neighborhoods in Santa Rosa.
Hahn goes on to state, “The breadth and intensity of the disaster caught many people by surprise. But to fire ecologists, conservationists, and policy experts, there’s nothing surprising about it. This is the New Normal, it’s been here for years, and we’re badly in need of leadership and a national dialogue on what to do about it.”
Is this new normal something we can attribute to climate change? It’s not as simple an answer as expected. This fire event, which was massive, had all the perfect ingredients: a hot, dry summer (normal for the area, but hotter than normal), increased dried-out vegetation from excessive winter and spring rains (not normal), incredible gusts of hot, dry winds that were clocked up to 96 miles per hour (normal enough to be dubbed El Diablo winds but still not ordinary).
This new normal, writes Heather Smith on Oct. 11, is the instability of our changing climate. “We shouldn’t be surprised about anything burning anymore, especially with the National Climate Assessment predicting that by 2080, wildfires will consume four times as much of the Northwest each year than what has burned over the last decade.”
The calamitous Tubbs Fire, which started on the night of Oct. 8 in Calistoga, spread so fast it had first responders dumbfounded. Part of its severe devastation came from the fact that it destroyed so many homes and businesses in Santa Rosa and threatened two hospitals. Yet, this fire followed nearly the same path as the 1964 Hanly fire, which only destroyed about 100 homes. Santa Rosa’s population has grown to about 175,000 from about 30,000 in 1960, and that means more people living in areas once uninhabited, like in the path of the Tubbs fire.
“What makes this fire different is the scope of it and the fact that the ensuing half-century has placed so much development in its path,” wrote local local columnist Gaye LeBaron on Oct. 18 in the Washington Post. “In 1964, there were very few houses in the area that burned. As the city limits extended and the population increased by 135,000, the open land in that earlier fire corridor became a destination for developers.”
Sierra Club has long been an advocate for smart, sustainable growth, protecting open space, promoting urban boundaries with greenbelts and advocating for affordable housing. While no area on Earth is completely safe from natural disasters, urban planning can take into account known hazards and build accordingly.
In an NPR interview Oct. 25, Sonoma Group Chair Teri Shore, speaking on behalf of Greenbelt Alliance, said this is an opportunity when “we can think about doing things a little bit differently.”