NATURAL PERSPECTIVES: A perfect firestorm

Mother Nature cooked up a recipe for the perfect disaster. Take the wettest season in 121 years during the El Niño season of 2004-05 that grew lots of potential fuel in the wild lands. Add the record-breaking drought of 2006-07 with only 2 inches of rain. Drop the humidity into the single digits, ratchet the heat to 100 degrees, and stir well with winds up to 100 mph.

Poof! Seventeen separate fires ignited in Southern California, from Santa Clarita to San Diego. More than 350,000 acres burned. More than half a million environmental refugees fled the firestorm. More than 1,250 families lost their homes. And that’s just the situation at deadline on Tuesday.

We’re affected by the fires whipped up by these severe Santa Ana winds. The dust and ash in the air affects everyone. Microscopic particles called PM10 and PM2.5 get into our lungs and even our bloodstreams. This particulate matter can set off a pattern of inflammation that can trigger asthma and heart attacks. The elderly and small children, in addition to anyone with heart or lung disease, are at the greatest risk for injury from poor air quality.

In addition to the damage to our health, many people in town know someone in the affected fire areas. We have friends in Santa Clarita and family in San Diego who have their cars packed and are ready to evacuate at a moment’s notice. Our friends Paul and Sue Hertzog live between the Buckweed and Magic fires. They can see flames from their house, but for now have not been ordered to leave.

Our son Scott and daughter-in-law Nicole live in the Poway area. In 2003, they climbed a nearby hill and nervously watched the flames of the Cedar fire move toward their neighborhood. Then the wind shifted, and they were spared. Now they find themselves in the path of fire once again.

A huge area from Escondido to Ramona to Poway was evacuated Monday. The evacuation line went to the street right below Scott and Nicole’s house. One of their friends called as she was evacuating to say she saw a mutual friend’s house on fire. That fire is still on the move, and residents from Del Mar and Carlsbad are being evacuated as we write.

Scott and Nicole made plans to leave if necessary, taking the twins, their cat, pictures, computers and important papers. Their first plan was to go to Nicole’s dad’s house east of San Diego, but his neighborhood received evacuation orders Monday night. This is the second time he has been rousted from his home by fire. The 2003 fire burned trees to the right and left of his house, but his home was spared.

The fires that ignited this week have already caused more damage than the record-breaking fires of 2003. Many of these current fires are still not contained, so the damage will continue to mount. Predictions are that evacuations will number 750,000.

Fortunately, the weather is forecasted to relent, and increased fire-fighting resources are being brought in to combat the multiple conflagrations. An end to the current disaster is in sight.

You’re probably tired of hearing us say this, but global climate change is causing the weather to get worse — more severe and more unpredictable. Every week, we see one environmental disaster or another affecting people somewhere in the world. The people fleeing these assorted droughts, floods, fires, hurricanes and cyclones are environmental refugees.

With coming global climate change, we’ve been expecting such things to happen. We had hoped that mass-scale evacuations from nature-wrought catastrophes would be well off in the future. Unfortunately, the future is here and it’s not pretty.

Human tragedy is only the tip of the iceberg. As climate change puts more stress on the environment, the plants and animals that live in it are at greater risk. We see bark beetles ravaging the pines in our local mountains such as Lake Arrowhead, Running Springs, Big Bear and Idyllwild. Under drought conditions, the pines are unable to fight off the beetles and they die. Then fires rip through the drought-stressed forests like a hot knife through butter.

Global climate change definitely affects us. Fire season comes earlier, lasts longer and is more intense. Weather experts are predicting a 20-year drought for Southern California as part of this changing global pattern. Our pine forests are not going to rebound any time soon. The winds will continue hot and strong in the future and fires will continue to erupt. People will continue to move into the chaparral and mountain habitats, putting themselves at risk.

As our wild lands shrink to isolated pockets surrounded by subdivisions, wildlife will have fewer and fewer places to live. It’s pretty easy to see why scientists are predicting that one quarter of all the world’s plants and animals are going to be in danger of extinction by 2050. As a society, we really need to limit development of these wild areas.

Al Gore said it would be like this. Unfortunately, he’s turning out to be right. The truth is very inconvenient. Some doubters still don’t believe in global climate change. But we’ll bet that none of them are on the fire lines.

VIC LEIPZIG and LOU MURRAY are Huntington Beach residents and environmentalists. They can be reached at vicleipzig@aol.com.