THE CULPRIT BEHIND THE CALIFORNIA FIRES

As I wonder why we are seeing such devastating wildfires in California, I return to a story in my documentary Regenerating Life

I was introduced to Linda Gibbs who watched her house in Malibu Burn on television news during the Woolsey fire on November 8, 2018. Then a few days later, her son managed to visit the ruins.

“Major’s house, Brennen’s house, the other house. Active fire from stoves, from gas lines. The fucking studio! Are you kidding me?

Their studio was spared because it was surrounded by Linda’s well nurtured garden, with soil that held the water.

Walter Jehne: Fire needs fuel. It can only burn when it’s dry. If the soil is wet, the grassland is wet, green, it doesn’t burn.

The culprit behind the fires in California is the drying out of the land. This is because we have decimated the forests along the coast, which used to bring lots of fresh water in from the ocean, and that became rain. With powerful agricultural chemicals, we have killed the life in the soil, so that the soil no longer holds the rain water.

And to top it off, we have straightened out and concretized the streams, ponds and rivers that used to send the water through the land, and gradually, ever so gradually, back to the ocean.

To mitigate fires, we must work with nature to regenerate the forests soils and wetlands. It will take decades, but solutions abound.

Photo credits:
Los Angeles River aerial by Joe Mabel
Los Angeles River by Levi Meir Clancy