Xinhua News Agency, Los Angeles, December 16th, special feature: Why did the loss of a mountain fire hit a hundred-year record — — Reflection on Mountain Fire Disaster in California, USA
Xinhua News Agency reporter Huang Heng Gaoshan
On the real-time fire map of California Forest Fire Bureau, many mountain fires are still burning. Compared with the basically controlled mountain fire "Kemp", these mountain fires are small in scale, but they still make Californians nervous.
Recently, mountain fires "Kemp", "woolsey" and "Hill" have ravaged the north and south of California at the same time, causing at least 89 deaths and burning more than 20,000 buildings. The "Kemp" mountain fire has become the most deadly and destructive mountain fire disaster in the United States in the past 100 years because it claimed more than 80 innocent lives.
Although California mountain fires are related to natural factors, they also expose some problems such as outdated infrastructure, improper planning and insufficient budget in some parts of the United States, which causes American society to reflect.
Climate change policy is questioned.
On December 7, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced a new policy, which greatly loosened the restrictions on carbon emissions of new coal-fired power plants. This is the latest action of the Clean Power Plan issued by the current US government during its subversion of the Obama administration. In the eyes of many scientists, similar carbon emission loosening policies will aggravate global warming, thus leading to more "Kemp"-style deadly mountain fires.
According to the statistics of the National Inter-departmental Fire Center of the United States, four of the five largest mountain fires in California history occurred after 2012 in terms of fire area. The "Thomas Mountain Fire", which just set a fire area record at the beginning of this year, was surpassed by the "Mendocino Joint Mountain Fire" with a fire area of more than 1,148 square kilometers seven months later.
Neil Laru, an atmospheric researcher at the University of Nevada, Reno, believes that the frequent severe mountain fires are behind the trend of climate warming. "When the atmosphere warms, it also becomes hungrier." Strong winds accelerate the spread of fire, and at the same time, "thirsty" air will absorb water from plants, making vegetation more flammable. "Heat, drought and strong winds are all raw materials for mountain fires. It’s all collected this time. "
In the view of California Governor Jerry Brown, "Fire Devil" is rampant because of human factors. He emphasized to the media and the public that global warming and the increase in extreme weather are the fundamental reasons for the destructive power of California mountain fires. Humans need to "stand with nature" to stop the trend of global warming.
This is an important part of the White House’s policy philosophy. The current U.S. government not only withdrew from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, but also abolished a series of energy reform measures formulated during the Obama era by administrative order, and even planned to force the reduction of automobile exhaust and carbon emission standards of coal-fired power plants.
Coincidentally. When reflecting on the severe flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey in Houston last year, many scientists also expounded the relationship between climate change and frequent hurricanes. Jim Black, a professor of environmental engineering at Rice University in Texas, told reporters that in the United States, climate change has almost become a taboo topic, and he does not agree with this practice. He believes that facing up to climate change will help to deal with disastrous weather conditions to a certain extent.
"These measures [to loosen carbon emission restrictions] mean that when people face heat waves, droughts, fires and floods, the government will ignore them. These disasters will become more terrible because of climate change. " Ken Chimel, president of the American Union of Concerned Scientists, told reporters.
Infrastructure aging buried hidden dangers.
In addition to the "bad weather", California suffered heavy fire losses in the past two years, which also reflected two major livelihood issues that have plagued the United States for many years, namely, the housing crisis and the aging of infrastructure. Failure to nip in the bud is closely related to these disadvantages of people’s livelihood.
In California, for example, the housing needs of a large number of low-income people have been unable to meet for a long time, and their homes have been forced to gradually expand from the edge of the city to the adjacent wild forest areas, some of which are even the originally planned urban fire belts. In order to ensure the real estate tax that supports local finance, some municipal authorities have relaxed supervision on developers. As a result, a large number of buildings were illegally built in the forest. Once a mountain fire happens, it is easy to cause huge personal and property losses.
Richard halsey, an expert on mountain fires, wrote in the Los Angeles Times that the social reasons behind mountain fires must be acknowledged, including "poor planning". "They allow developers to leave hidden dangers during development, but let firefighters take the blame."
The aging of power, communication, emergency and other infrastructure has seriously affected the life-saving and escape measures such as fire warning, notification and evacuation. The communication signal in the mountainous area of California is extremely poor. In Paradise Town, the hardest hit area of the mountain fire "Kemp", many victims who escaped from the fire confirmed to reporters that about one-third of the 27,000 residents in the town did not receive the mandatory evacuation order issued by the police through mobile phones, networks and other channels when the mountain fire occurred.
According to an after-the-fact investigation by the California Public Facilities Committee, the first batch of firefighters who rushed to Paradise Town arrived at the scene 10 minutes after the fire broke out, at about 6: 45 am on November 8. Due to the shortage of local base stations and communication difficulties, although the county sheriff’s office quickly issued an evacuation order, it was past 8 o’clock when the first batch of residents learned the order, and by 10: 15, the mobile communication signal in Paradise Town was completely interrupted.
Savannah Lauscher, a resident of Paradise Town, recalled that when she received the alarm at about 8: 30, the ashes had drifted outside her house. "We saw a wall of fire. The Woods 50 yards (about 45 meters) away are burning and moving forward at a speed of almost 10 yards (about 9 meters) per minute. " Their family escaped by car like most people, but the road was so congested that they had to drive into the opposite lane to find a way out. Many people abandoned their cars and fled, while many people who stayed in the cars were burned to death.
Old power facilities are also a great hidden danger. According to the investigation report of the California Forest Fire Bureau on the cause of the fire in 2017, of the 21 large-scale fires in that year, 17 were caused by the equipment failure of Pacific Gas and Power Company. According to reports, the cause of the "Kemp" mountain fire may also be related to this.
Insufficient special budget attracts criticism.
The frequent occurrence of catastrophic mountain fires highlights the shortage of funds related to disaster prevention and relief in the United States. When the fiscal deficit and debt are rising, the U.S. government insists on using more government budgets in the military field, and does not hesitate to squeeze the budgets of federal agencies related to people’s livelihood. In addition, short-sighted economic and fiscal policies have magnified the shortcomings of insufficient and unbalanced disaster prevention and relief resources in the United States at this stage.
In FY 2018, the department responsible for forest fire prevention at the federal level — — The overall fire budget of the US Forestry Administration decreased by 17%, of which the budget for fire fighting was 1.06 billion US dollars, and in fiscal year 2017, the bureau spent more than 2.5 billion US dollars on fighting mountain fires. Overexpenditure on fire fighting has resulted in less and less expenses on fire prevention and related scientific research.
Us president trump accused California of failing to clean up dead trees and weeds in the forest in time after the "Kemp" mountain fire. The budget table of the US Forestry Administration shows that this year’s federal budget will directly reduce the budget for "cleaning up dangerous combustibles" from more than $37 million to zero. The inter-departmental "Joint Fire Science Research Project" has funded 280 sub-projects in the past 10 years, which has played a great role in guiding the disaster reduction and prevention of mountain fires. However, the funding for this research project in 2018 is less than a quarter of that in 2011.
Due to historical reasons, a large area of land in the western United States belongs to the federal government. Take the forests of California as an example, 40% are owned by federal agencies, 30% are privately owned, and 30% are owned by the California government. The federal government has invested less in the prevention, control and scientific research of mountain fires, so the state government has to use local financial funds to advance. In 2016, California paid $16 million in firefighting funds for the federal government. Until 2017, the money was not returned, which led California to threaten to stand by and watch the fires in the federal government’s jurisdiction.
The California mountain fire also exposed the imbalance in the allocation of disaster relief forces of local governments in the United States. An official of the Los Angeles Fire Department told the reporter that "Kemp" caused heavy casualties in northern California, while the other two fires near Los Angeles caused relatively light losses. The most direct reason was that the local government in southern California had more money, so it could hire more firefighters, professional firefighting planes and other large equipment. The worst-hit paradise town, which is located in Buyut County, is one of the poorest places in California.
The casualties and losses caused by a fire are heartbreaking. The inability of the federal and local governments to cope with the disaster has exposed the shortcomings of American social governance. These deep-seated contradictions and problems should arouse the reflection of the American government and society, otherwise, the future fire and water disasters will only be more ruthless. (Participating in reporters: Wu Xiaoling, Changyuan, Gaolu, Liu Liwei)
