“Each new conflagration would be punctually followed by reconstruction on a larger and even more exclusive scale as land use regulations were relaxed to accommodate fire ‘victims.’”  Mike Davis

“When the fires are extinguished, victims who have lost their homes and businesses must be able to rebuild quickly and without roadblocks. The executive order I signed today will help cut permitting delays, an important first step in allowing our communities to recover faster and stronger. I’ve also ordered our state agencies to identify additional ways to streamline the rebuilding and recovery process.” Governor Gavin Newsom, January 12, 2025

What we seem to not have learned.

Looking at images of Los Angeles, specifically Pacific Palisades and Altadena, one can’t help but be reminded of the photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even Gaza comes to mind. Sadly, all of these destructive events were human-caused conflagrations. The devastation of these enclaves is extremely sad. 

Fire can both rejuvenate and devastate a landscape; it can be an ally and an enemy. It has been part of a natural process that has modeled many ecosystems, from the ones surrounding Los Angeles to the Snowy Range of Wyoming. Yet for over a century, as we have unsettled this country, beginning with Manifest Destiny, fire has been labeled an enemy, something to be suppressed and not allowed to do its job in maintaining healthy forest ecosystems. And just as we have suppressed fire, history, science, and the humanities (memory) are continually being snuffed out. As humans, we still don’t know who we are, because we want to suppress the knowledge of where we are. 

Screaming “climate change” is not enough. Even rapidly reducing fossil fuel emissions will do nothing for decades to come. There will always be fire, both natural and manmade, and Santa Ana ember-spreading winds. Knowing where we are is critical in how we act. Land management policies must always include housing/development policies. And they must be in parallel with climate change policies. Homes are fuel, just as overgrown forests are fuel, and where one is allowed to build those homes is just as important as reducing the potential fuel surrounding those homes.

Fire accelerates as it climbs uphill, just as a grizzly bear does, with or without wind. The cold northeastern Santa Ana winds blow out of the mountains warming as they descend towards the ocean. Allowing homes to be built on the slopes of these mountains with their convoluted canyons and ravines is kindling for catastrophic fires. It makes no sense to warrant such development and behavior. Yet this is what has happened year after year since this Mediterranean-like geography was developed unabated since the early 1900’s. Add a lack of precipitation and soaring temperatures charged by fossil fuels (fire) and you get a perfect storm – conditions for an inferno – as we witnessed on January 7.

What the 2020 Mullen Fire taught us.

I tell those who will listen that it is not a matter of if, but when my hometown will burn down. We are coming off one of the wettest summers on record allowing vegetation to grow. A dry warm fall was followed by the driest December on record. Like Los Angeles with its Santa Ana winds, it is just a matter of time. But unlike Los Angeles, Flagstaff, because of its elevation, is blessed with frigid winter nights.

Unlike humans with their legs and vehicles, trees can’t just pull on a pair of boots, strap up the lacings, and move. They rely on their seeds and other forms of nature to do that: wind, animal scat and fur, and human migration. 12,000 years ago, when ice age glaciers receded, fauna and flora slowly returned to their current habitats. These habitats are known as refugia. The Snowy Range is one such refuge.

Now with a changing climate, it is more prescient than ever to preserve these places. But what happens when a disruptive species has already changed the paradigm of that place? What happens when this species has created a system that has so changed the dynamic of a landscape that it wouldn’t be recognizable just a hundred years ago? This is exactly what was done when fire suppression remodeled these Wyoming forests. The 2020 Mullen fire within the Snowy Range is an example of how climate change impacted that remodeling.