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This week California firefighters have been battling blazes across the state, the largest being the Kincade fire in Sonoma County which swelled to more than 74,000 acres Monday. In Southern California, the Getty fire which forced the evacuation of 10,000 structures, including mansions in the wealthy Brentwood neighborhood. Next month brings the anniversary of the start of the Camp Fire, which killed 86 people and burned more than 5,000 homes and other structures in Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties, including 2,800 homes in Santa Rosa.
In the last three years, California has experienced the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in its history, according to Cal Fire. The Carr, Camp and Tubbs fires caused the loss of more than 100 lives and were fueled by drought, a buildup of dry vegetation and extreme winds.
Wildfires have been part of California’s natural landscape for millions of years. They clear out dead brush and trees, release nutrients into the soil and help some plants grow, by releasing seeds. But with California’s population expanding into fire-prone areas, the climate getting warmer and firefighters having spent a century putting out fires, the risk to human lives and structures continues to increase.
Cal Fire, the state’s main firefighting agency, has built a database showing the perimeters of major fires in California over the years. Although the list is not complete, because early records are imperfect, the state and U.S. Forest Service have documented more than 25,000 large fires between 1900 and 2018, which have burned 35 million acres — an area equal to about one-third of the land in the state.
Many of the places that burned have burned multiple times over the past century. Combining all the fire perimeters onto one map shows that certain areas, including the hills around San Diego, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, along with the Central Sierra Nevada, Big Sur, the counties in the northern San Francisco Bay Area and the Klamath Range, have experienced repeated and regular wildfires.
For the latest California wildfire coverage click here.
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