1. What is Cal Fire?

2. a) How long did it take for the town of Berry Creek, California to get approval from the state for forest-thinning projects?
b) Berry Creek is in Butte County. What was the Butte County Fire Safety Council planning to do with money they received in Oct. 2018 from Cal Fire?

3. What happened in Berry Creek just a few days before forest-thinning work was about to start?

4. a) According to experts cited by the WSJ reporter, what two factors have caused the extreme fire season?
b) How has poor forest management by state and local governments led to the extreme fires?

5. a) What is the California Environmental Quality Act?
b) How did it delay the forest thinning work in Berry Creek?
c) For what reason did Cal Fire officials reject some of the paperwork filed by local leaders?

6. Volunteer Fire Chief Reed Rankin, who lost his own home, said, “We’ve got to rethink how we are going to manage the forests.” What do you think local and state government should do regarding forest management? Should any laws be changed? Explain your answers.

7. Consider this: Steven Greenhut writes in Spectator:

…Governor Newsom and his predecessors have failed to take simple, tangible steps to deal with the wildfire situation whatever the broader climate is doing.

The main issue (to control the fires) involves land management. Governor Newsom [acknowledged] that problem. His focus, however, was not on nuts-and-bolts governance, but climate change. “That’s one point [land management], but it’s not the point,” he said.

By the way, California has passed some of the most far-reaching climate-change-battling policies in the world, and yet here we are, facing another fire season that has destroyed property, lives, and our air.

The issue isn’t particularly complex. Because of the state’s environmental fixations, California has been less apt to clear away underbrush, thin out forests, and allow prescribed burns. “Between 1982 and 1998, California’s agency land managers burned, on average, about 30,000 acres a year,” according to a recent investigative report in the progressive ProPublica. “Between 1999 and 2017, that number dropped to an annual 13,000 acres.” That article truly is a must-read.

Watch the video under “Resources” below. What is your reaction to the information about aging power lines/infrastructure? What do you think of the assertions made about the causes of California wildfires? Does this information change your view? If you are concerned with climate change, what do you think about these other factors contributing to / causing wildfires?