In the California of 2018, there are little fires everywhere, every day — and most of the time, awfully big ones, too.
It is nothing short of extraordinary how quickly all Californians have been forced to accept the formerly eccentric-seeming fact, first reported by wildfire experts just a couple of years ago, that there is no longer a “fire season” in our state, as there had been for all recorded human history here. What was the dangerously incendiary time of the late summer and early fall in the Golden State is now the reality — or the potential, given just one spark — 12 months of the year.
Three things caused the new normal: global warming, which has turned most meadows and forests into kindling; the ongoing drought, which has done the same; and the simple fact that humans are affected by wildfires more as residential neighborhoods throughout the state abut or creep into what were formerly uninhabited places.