Guinda, Calif. : As a roaring fire engulfed the hillside above him, Capt. Mark Bailey leaned on his shovel and guarded against embers leaping to the unburned side of the road above this small Northern California town. “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said on Monday.
Guinda, Calif. : As a roaring fire engulfed the hillside above him, Capt. Mark Bailey leaned on his shovel and guarded against embers leaping to the unburned side of the road above this small Northern California town. “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said on Monday.
He was one of a dozen firefighters positioned along the dirt road in a remote patch of forest, which fire engines and bulldozers used to access the front lines of the blaze, a wall of flames several stories tall and moving north above a valley filled with vineyards and olive groves.
Wildfires are tearing across California, Colorado, New Mexico and other Western states this week, chewing up bone-dry mountainsides, scorching buildings and forcing hundreds of people to evacuate from their homes. The message across the West - just as plans for July 4 fireworks and camping trips get underway - is that after a record-breaking 2017 fire season, 2018 is likely to be brutal, too.
“We didn’t really get a lot of rain this year, so the fields dried out quickly,” Captain Bailey said. “A big fire like this in early July is the new normal for California.”
The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, is predicting that warmer and drier-than-average temperatures, combined with large amounts of grass, below-average snowpack and increased potential for lightning is likely to create “above average to extreme” wildfire activity this year.
Complicating the challenge for firefighters in several states is that over the last few decades, population growth and suburban expansion have led more and more people to build homes tucked into the very forests that are likely to burn.
For some of these people, said Jessica Gardetto, a spokeswoman for the fire center, “it’s not a matter of if a wildfire is going to come to your home - it’s a matter of when.”
There are currently 29 large uncontained fires raging across the United States.
In California, three times as much land - 120,000 acres - has burned this year compared with the same period last year, according to state data.
The wildfire here in Yolo and Napa Counties, roughly an hour and a half drive north of San Francisco, is the largest fire to ignite in California this year. It began on Saturday and has experienced what firefighters described as “explosive growth.” Since then, 300 people have been evacuated and the state has spent $3.5 million trying to tamp it down.
By Monday, the fire had spread to more than 44,000 acres, most of it steep and rugged terrain of oak forests and brush. The fire was propelled over the weekend by high winds and extremely dry conditions.
“We shouldn’t be seeing this type of fire behavior this early in the year,” said Chris Anthony, a division chief at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “It really speaks to the fact that in California and in the West in general, fires are burning and they are behaving differently from what we’ve seen them do in the past.”
Unlike the fires that swept through wine country last October, the fires moving through Northern California today have been largely confined to remote areas. On Monday, fire was only threatening around 115 structures.
But the story is different in Colorado, with at least four major wildfires forcing hundreds of people from their homes.
Among the largest is one called Spring Creek, in the southern part of the state. At more than 50,000 acres, it was just 5 percent contained on Monday. And many evacuated residents have been waiting - and waiting - to hear if their homes have been destroyed.
Bob Rael, 74, is one of the few who have heard the news.
His mountain cabin, a place he has visited with his grandchildren, is now cinders. “It was our escape and their escape,” he said, “and it’s now gone.”
A few miles away, the owner of the oldest business in the state, a grocery store called R&R Market, has been watching the plumes with anxiety.
“We’ve never seen any fires like this. Ever,” said Felix Romero, 71. “We’re just afraid the fire will start heading south. If it does, we’re in deep trouble.”
Like most wildfires in the state, this one is believed to be human-caused, and last week local authorities arrested a Danish man, Jesper Joergensen, 52, on related arson charges. They do not believe he intentionally started the blaze.
So far this year, 2,080 structures have been lost to wildfires in the United States, Ms. Gardetto said. By comparison, more than 10,000 structures burned last year, a record.
New Mexico, where crews have battled one fire after another this year, is grappling with the devastation and disruption caused by the blazes. The authorities ordered the temporary evacuation in June of Cimarron, a town on the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that is home to about 1,000 people, when a wildfire burned more than 36,000 acres in the Ute Park area.
Elsewhere in New Mexico, the authorities are trying to limit danger by shutting down access to some forests. As a drought across much of the state persists after abysmally low snowfall in the winter, access to the 1.6-million acre Santa Fe National Forest was closed in early June.
The forest closings have stirred tension among New Mexico residents and businesses that rely on tourism for their livelihood.
“We’re not getting the moisture we need, but closing the forest is too drastic a step,” said Chris Blecha, manager of Amanda’s Jemez Mountain Country Store, which sells fishing rods and other supplies to vacationers. “They could have closed back roads while keeping parts of the forest accessible. Our business volume is down about 80 percent from where it should be this time of year.”
He was one of a dozen firefighters positioned along the dirt road in a remote patch of forest, which fire engines and bulldozers used to access the front lines of the blaze, a wall of flames several stories tall and moving north above a valley filled with vineyards and olive groves.
Wildfires are tearing across California, Colorado, New Mexico and other Western states this week, chewing up bone-dry mountainsides, scorching buildings and forcing hundreds of people to evacuate from their homes. The message across the West - just as plans for July 4 fireworks and camping trips get underway - is that after a record-breaking 2017 fire season, 2018 is likely to be brutal, too.
“We didn’t really get a lot of rain this year, so the fields dried out quickly,” Captain Bailey said. “A big fire like this in early July is the new normal for California.”
The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, is predicting that warmer and drier-than-average temperatures, combined with large amounts of grass, below-average snowpack and increased potential for lightning is likely to create “above average to extreme” wildfire activity this year.
Complicating the challenge for firefighters in several states is that over the last few decades, population growth and suburban expansion have led more and more people to build homes tucked into the very forests that are likely to burn.
For some of these people, said Jessica Gardetto, a spokeswoman for the fire center, “it’s not a matter of if a wildfire is going to come to your home - it’s a matter of when.”
There are currently 29 large uncontained fires raging across the United States.
In California, three times as much land - 120,000 acres - has burned this year compared with the same period last year, according to state data.
The wildfire here in Yolo and Napa Counties, roughly an hour and a half drive north of San Francisco, is the largest fire to ignite in California this year. It began on Saturday and has experienced what firefighters described as “explosive growth.” Since then, 300 people have been evacuated and the state has spent $3.5 million trying to tamp it down.
By Monday, the fire had spread to more than 44,000 acres, most of it steep and rugged terrain of oak forests and brush. The fire was propelled over the weekend by high winds and extremely dry conditions.
“We shouldn’t be seeing this type of fire behavior this early in the year,” said Chris Anthony, a division chief at the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “It really speaks to the fact that in California and in the West in general, fires are burning and they are behaving differently from what we’ve seen them do in the past.”
Unlike the fires that swept through wine country last October, the fires moving through Northern California today have been largely confined to remote areas. On Monday, fire was only threatening around 115 structures.
But the story is different in Colorado, with at least four major wildfires forcing hundreds of people from their homes.
Among the largest is one called Spring Creek, in the southern part of the state. At more than 50,000 acres, it was just 5 percent contained on Monday. And many evacuated residents have been waiting - and waiting - to hear if their homes have been destroyed.
Bob Rael, 74, is one of the few who have heard the news.
His mountain cabin, a place he has visited with his grandchildren, is now cinders. “It was our escape and their escape,” he said, “and it’s now gone.”
A few miles away, the owner of the oldest business in the state, a grocery store called R&R Market, has been watching the plumes with anxiety.
“We’ve never seen any fires like this. Ever,” said Felix Romero, 71. “We’re just afraid the fire will start heading south. If it does, we’re in deep trouble.”
Like most wildfires in the state, this one is believed to be human-caused, and last week local authorities arrested a Danish man, Jesper Joergensen, 52, on related arson charges. They do not believe he intentionally started the blaze.
So far this year, 2,080 structures have been lost to wildfires in the United States, Ms. Gardetto said. By comparison, more than 10,000 structures burned last year, a record.
New Mexico, where crews have battled one fire after another this year, is grappling with the devastation and disruption caused by the blazes. The authorities ordered the temporary evacuation in June of Cimarron, a town on the eastern slope of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains that is home to about 1,000 people, when a wildfire burned more than 36,000 acres in the Ute Park area.
Elsewhere in New Mexico, the authorities are trying to limit danger by shutting down access to some forests. As a drought across much of the state persists after abysmally low snowfall in the winter, access to the 1.6-million acre Santa Fe National Forest was closed in early June.
The forest closings have stirred tension among New Mexico residents and businesses that rely on tourism for their livelihood.
“We’re not getting the moisture we need, but closing the forest is too drastic a step,” said Chris Blecha, manager of Amanda’s Jemez Mountain Country Store, which sells fishing rods and other supplies to vacationers. “They could have closed back roads while keeping parts of the forest accessible. Our business volume is down about 80 percent from where it should be this time of year.”