Possibility Exists

Just one thing:

For this week’s One Thing we have a one-two punch of some sobering news followed by some news we feel is pretty actionable if, for instance, you happen to be building fire technology that could be implemented in the new few years.

In a new paper, scientists conclude that wildfires are burning through our carbon budget while the Earth’s systems of carbon sequestration is weakening. "We estimate that considering fire reduces the remaining carbon budget by 25 Gt CO2 (~5%) for limiting temperature rise to 1.5 °C and 64 GtCO2 (~5%) for 2.0 °C compared to previous estimates." If those kinds of numbers aren't your thing, try this sentence: "...Fire is already playing a major role in decreasing the effectiveness of land carbon sinks." 

However, other scientists have developed a way to classify forest land ripe for managing as a natural climate solution. For the land they studied, they said this: “We conservatively estimate that a 10% reduction of average annual forest carbon losses through improved forest management and conservation could reduce emissions by as much as 9.1 MtCO2e yr–1, equivalent to 5.2% of the 2030 land-based climate commitments made by the United States and Canada combined.”

This week:

Notes from the Fire Tower 🌈 | Odd hobbies, the long view, and engagement

Fire, Generally 🔥 | Emergency info block, wildfire preparedness kit, post-fire playbook, update on Lahaina, recouping fire expenses (or not) and voting in CA

Climate 🌎 | Lotsa new science and a bright note about beavers 🦫

Firefighting 🚒 | Casualties 🖤🖤, political endorsements (or lack thereof), new interpretations of rules, exodus, and preparing for megafires

Firetech 🚁 | Fire from space, Watch Duty, Pano and smoke sensors for Silicon Valley

What’s burning? | Portugal, Greece, The Amazon (where it is spring), Wyoming, North Dakota, the American West

Notes from the Fire Tower

Odd hobbies, the long view, and engagement 

In the midst of a scorching heat wave in Northern California and endless news about the destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene—let’s just say it was not always easy to deep dive into scientific papers about the warming planet, wildfire risk, shifting jet stream patterns, historic droughts and communities ill-prepared for a new era of wildfire. But that is absolutely the moment to stretch a muscle we are going to need in the coming years, the part of us that looks for hope. 

Let me give you three thoughts that kept me hopeful, starting with the story of a pack mule society who sprang to action after Hurricane Helene, carrying needed supplies (like insulin) to folks isolated because of the storm. When disasters take out some of our most critical infrastructure, old time hobbies are probably going to keep coming in handy—think about your skills and interests with that in mind. Second, in September I took my 9 year old to see Dr. Jane Goodall speak in person, and I took away with me a sense of long perspective. “We know that things are not good. But I've lived 90 years and I've seen bad times and I've seen us get over them. Somehow this indomitable spirit within us will get us through.“ And lastly, we can and should read the news with a sense of engagement like Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (author of What If We Get It Right) does. ”Possibility Exists.” 

Now, on to the news.

Fire, Generally

Emergency info, wildfire preparedness kit, post-fire playbook, update on Lahaina, recouping fire expenses (or not) and voting in CA

• Facebook has been found blocking timely emergency information posted by users—including information from The Red Cross, Cal Fire, or Watch Duty, an app that’s become a real-time source of truth about active wildfires. “The explanation: ‘you tried to get likes, follows, shares or video views in a misleading way.’”
• Suggestions for the best wildfire preparedness kit items from Wirecutter.
• This Post-Fire Playbook from the state of Colorado is meant to help communities plan for recovery after major wildfires to help navigate the “gap in guidance in terms of navigating the complexities surrounding post-fire rehabilitation.”
• Federal investigators confirmed that the fire that destroyed the town of Lahaina was started by downed power lines—a fire that was extinguished but rekindled in 60 mph winds later that afternoon. The Maui fire chief defends the actions of firefighters—they stayed twice as long as is typical to ensure the fire was truly out.
• It can be difficult to impossible to recoup firefighting expenses, according to state officials in Oregon. 
• Voting in California? This op-ed on Proposition 4 might help convince you to choose Yes on a bond measure to protect watersheds and better prepare the state for an era of megafires.  

Climate

Lotsa new science and a bright note about beavers 🦫

• Summer 2024 was officially hotter than last year’s, which was the hottest on Earth. Scientists now have reason to believe these past two years have probably been the hottest in 2000 years, or even, perhaps in the past 125,00 years. “These are geological trends that usually take millions of years or thousands of years to happen,” says Angel Fernández-Bou, a biosystems engineer at the University of California, Merced. “Now that [same] increase of temperature happens over decades.” 
• Climate scientists are wondering if the planet’s 2023-2024 heating trends are blips 🤞 or systemic shifts. “‘If this anomaly does not stabilise by August,’ [Gavin Schmidt, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies Director] said, it could imply ‘that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated.’”
• Over a third of the Amazon rainforest is struggling to recover from drought this spring, following four supposedly “one-in-a-century” dry spells in less than 20 years. “The signs of weakening resilience raise concerns that the world’s greatest tropical forest – and biggest terrestrial carbon sink – is degrading towards a point of no return.” (more about the Amazon in What’s Burning, below) 
• ‘The Earth is crying out for help’ as South America responds to wildfires across the continent. “‘We can see this is related to global heating,’ [Christian Rivera, an Ecuadorian paramedic said]. ‘As soon as we put out the flames in one place, they start somewhere else.’”
• Using tree ring data 🪵, a group of scientists reconstructed the position of the jet stream for the past 700 years. Their work, published recently in Nature, suggests that the jet stream position will start to ‘show enhanced sinuosity’: in other words, it will be wavier. This can ‘exacerbate and compound anthropogenically driven climate extremes.’
• Privately generated wildfire models may be incorporated into who gets insurance. Some consumer groups worry that these models may overestimate risk and would lack transparency. California’s answer: a public model.  
• I always love a good story about beavers 🦫 and the role they play in providing refugia from megafires. 

“If you ask most people in the Forest Service, ‘What tools do we have for the wildfire crisis?,’ they're going to be like, ‘A, prescribed fire and B, fuels reduction. But how do we get that third one in every conversation? Like, we're doing prescribed fire, we're doing fuels reduction and we're bolstering our wetlands.” — Ashley Hom

Firefighting

Casualties,injuries, political endorsements (or lack thereof), new interpretations of rules, exodus, and preparing for megafires

• Two firefighters were killed when a tree fell on their firetruck as they responded to a fire during Hurricane Helene. 🖤🖤 Three California firefighters were injured while en route to the storm. Fire resources are stretched very thin and this week the nation has returned to a readiness level of 5 (the most strained) as firefighters respond to multiple hurricanes while wildfires continue to burn across the West.
• In Los Angeles an injured Orange County firefighter—one of 8 hurt in a major rollover crash on their way home from fighting the Airport Fire—had a hero’s send-off as he left a hospital en route to a Colorado rehab center. Two of the firefighters remain hospitalized. Donations to help these firefighters with recovery can be made here.
• The firefighters union is declining to endorse a presidential candidate at the federal level, but some states are making their own choices. While we’re on the topic of politics, it was recently reported that during his presidency, Donald Trump hesitated to provide aid to areas he considered ‘politically hostile’ to him. 
• The US Forest Service is newly interpreting a rule about aerial nighttime wildfire supervision to mean that only a federally owned and operated aircraft may serve as a flight supervisor—day and night—severely hampering responses to several of the early September fires in Southern California at a time when firefighting resources were notably thin.
• Firefighters are leaving the Forest Service in large numbers: nearly half its permanent employees in the last three years. “As increasingly explosive fire seasons ravage the country, federal firefighters say their employer is exacerbating exhaustion by misclassifying their jobs.”
• As the planet warms, firefighters are increasingly working in extreme heat, which is taking a toll. (footage for that story by Sashwa Burrous and Justin Lewis. Sashwa is a filmmaker I’ve seen out on prescribed burns in Sonoma County who makes beautiful documentaries about prescribed burns)
• Here’s a spicy take on the nation’s preparedness for October’s wildfire season, from The Hotshot Wakeup. There has been considerable confusion about payroll funding just as fire weather in the West and hurricanes in the Southeast need more resources than ever. “...A PL4 [PL5] nationally in October with fires ripping 50,000 acres is a little eye-opening.”
• One California town planned ahead for megafires, and won, through a mix of rigorous preparation, strategy and community engagement. “…Mitigation experts say it takes connections and continued, active participation between everyone to develop defensive strategies that will work.”
• Fire teams in Australia are using immersive, interactive systems to train firefighters in virtual environments so that they can be better prepared for extreme fire events, which have doubled over the past decade. 
• If you remember reading about the massive accidental spill of PFAs-laden firefighting foam in Maine, you might appreciate this update: water samples in the area are so far showing low results for potentially dangerous chemicals. 
• Beneficial fire is shown to work in California, but there are many barriers.

Firetech

Fire from space, Watch Duty, Pano and smoke sensors for Silicon Valley

• Tech giant Google announced their collaboration with the US Forest Service to develop FireSat, a purpose-built satellite constellation that will be dedicated to detecting and tracking wildfires. 
• Watch Duty CEO John Clarke Mills talked with NPR about wildfire and the gap that the app is filling. 
• Austin Energy is implementing Pano AI wildfire detection cameras.
• Silicon Valley communities have installed fifty AI enabled N5 sensors to detect smoke.

What’s burning?

Portugal, Greece, The Amazon (where it is spring), Wyoming, North Dakota, the American West

• In Greece two people died. 
• South America is burning, including Brazil, where the world’s largest wetland is on fire amidst a dry spell that “indicates a ‘critical slowing down’ of this globally important ecosystem.” Forty-two firefighters are working to defend 635,000 hectares, or about 1.6 million acres, and a missing firefighter’s body 🖤 was found about 1 km from the closest line of defense. 
• “Unprecedented” fire in Wyoming. “The temperatures we’ve been feeling don’t feel like October. The dryness we have does not feel like October. The relative humidities being so low don’t feel like October,” Bighorn National Forest Supervisor Andrew Johnson said at a community meeting about the fires. 
• “Historic” fire in North Dakota, where one person has died 🖤. “I’ve fought fires for 27 years across the nation, including international, and can honestly say I’ve never seen anything like this,” North Dakota Forest Service Fire Manager Ryan Melin said in a statement. “Historic day, historic damage; unprecedented response."
• In Portugal firefighters are protesting poor working conditions and low pay. It’s also said that eucalyptus plantations that serve as sources for toilet paper 🧻 and tissues fueled the recent explosive fires that killed 9 🖤. 

“I’m a big defender of the eucalyptus as a species because it’s the only one that currently allows us to monetize the investment in the forest. But we need to correct some mistakes and excesses of the past, namely the lack of respect for environmental values.” — Luís Sarabando, technical director of the Lower Vouga Forestry Association

Thank you for being on this fire news journey with me. I hope you find comfort where you can and are inspired to action where you can’t—either way, being informed makes for places that are full of possibilities.

Andrea