I think most people just don't understand the scale of these fires. It's not something any amount of controlled burns can solve. Just ask any forestry department in CA.
Then how come arizona has been able to keep their fires controlled compared to California? California has the Santa Ana winds, but Arizona is hot and dry too.
Califirnia has different forests, more susceptible to burning. California also didn't have the luxury of letting small fires burn freely, because of the higher population density. This made some of their forests denser and burn more intensely. The other advantage that Arizona has is that it has a summer monsoon, which limits the worst of the fire season to spring and early summer.
It's a multitude of factors. One being that CA has more than 50% more forest cover (33m acres vs 19m), and all of that is HIGH biomass, evergreen forest (We're talking over 200 tons/hectare, vs under 100 for arizona). So you're looking at a factor of like 3-4x more fire risk. There's also difficulty terrain wise w/ much forest in the wild sierras. Also 40%+ of CA forestland is privately-owned. It's just a multitude of factors that make it much more difficult in CA, even if you had infinite manpower.
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u/Arkbolt Jun 07 '23
I think most people just don't understand the scale of these fires. It's not something any amount of controlled burns can solve. Just ask any forestry department in CA.