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Half Their Land Burned in a Decade: The California Counties Constantly on Fire
The Park fire started in late July outside Chico, Calif., and in just 10 days exploded to become the fourth largest in the state’s history.
A map shows the perimeter of the Park fire as of Aug. 12, 2024. It stretches across Butte County and Tehama County in Northern California.
Three years before, the Dixie fire grew so large that it became the first fire to leap over the Sierra Nevada mountains.
A map shows the perimeter of the Dixie fire in 2021. It covers much of northern Plumas County, to the northeast of Butte County.
In 2020, the North Complex fires, sparked by lightning in Plumas National Forest, destroyed more than 2,300 structures and killed more than a dozen people.
A map shows the perimeter of the North Complex fires in 2020.
And in 2018, the Camp fire razed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people, becoming the state’s deadliest fire to date.
A map shows the perimeter of Camp fire in 2018, which spread mostly in Butte County.
These four historic California fires burned in Butte County, which, along with neighboring counties near the foothills of the Sierras, has in the past decade seen much of its land engulfed in flames.
A map shows perimeters of all wildfires since 2014.
Since 2014, fires have burned through nearly forty percent of Butte County, according to a New York Times analysis of wildfire perimeters. An even larger share has burned in two neighboring counties, Plumas and Tehama, and in counties farther to the west, including in the heart of wine country.
Sources: National Interagency Fire Center and Cal Fire. Note: A fire’s perimeter is defined as its entire outer edge or boundary, but that does not necessarily mean that the entire area within the perimeter was completely burned. Counties are shown with their relative sizes.
By The New York Times
Fires, of course, don’t know or stick to county lines. But calculating the share of counties affected by wildfires can provide insight into the growing wildfire risk statewide and across the American West.
The area that burned in Butte and Plumas Counties is more than four times as large as the area that had burned in the previous decade, the Times analysis shows, and the area burned in Tehama is more than five times as large. Over the past decade, most California counties have seen double the area burned compared with the area burned in the previous decade.
It’s not necessarily the case that more large fires are burning now than in previous decades, but the ones that do ignite are charring through much more land, according to Tirtha Banerjee, a professor and wildfire researcher at the University of California, Irvine. “What that says to me is that fires are getting more intense and more severe, and behaving in more unexpected ways,” he said.
A warming climate has fueled bigger and hotter wildfires, with increasingly intense spells of heat and drought turning forests into tinderboxes. The fire season arrives earlier in the year and lasts longer.
In California, decades of fire suppression policies have exacerbated the issue, leaving behind overgrown thickets of vegetation. Much of the area in the Park fire’s path, for example, hadn’t been burned for decades or longer, said Taylor Nilsson, the director of Butte County’s Fire Safe Council. That allowed large amounts of dense vegetation to accumulate, providing ample fuel for the fire.
Climate change and forest management are not the only risk factors. There is inevitably a bit of luck involved: High wind speeds can enable fires to spread farther and more rapidly.
All fires also require a spark in order to ignite. The movement of people into fire-prone areas near forests, grasslands and shrublands has bent that element of luck, making it more likely that a fire will spark.
While lightning caused several recent wildfires of historic proportions, human activity is the source for a vast majority of ignitions in the U.S. Of the 20 largest wildfires in California, seven were caused directly by people, and three by damaged power lines.
People were responsible for many of the state’s largest wildfires.
Source: Cal Fire Note: Data accessed on Aug. 12, 2024. The Park fire is still active, and its acreage count is not final. Acres burned for the Rush fire includes areas in California and Nevada.
20 Largest Fires in California History
Fire
Year
Acres
Official cause
Counties
1
August Complex
2020
1,032,648
Lightning
Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, Tehama, Glenn, Lake and Colusa
2
Dixie
2021
963,309
Power lines
Butte, Plumas, Lassen, Shasta and Tehama
3
Mendocino Complex
2018
459,123
Human related
Colusa, Lake, Mendocino and Glenn
4
Park
2024
429,259
Arson
Butte, Plumas, Shasta and Tehama
5
S.C.U. Lightning Complex
2020
396,625
Lightning
Stanislaus, Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa and San Joaquin
6
Creek
2020
379,895
Undetermined
Fresno and Madera
7
L.N.U. Lightning Complex
2020
363,220
Lightning and arson
Napa, Solano, Sonoma, Yolo, Lake and Colusa
8
North Complex
2020
318,935
Lightning
Butte, Plumas and Yuba
9
Thomas
2017
281,893
Power lines
Ventura and Santa Barbara
10
Cedar
2003
273,246
Human related
San Diego
California’s wildfire history is punctuated by both “good” and “bad” fire seasons, but the overall size of burned areas has trended upward. In recent decades, quieter fire seasons have been followed by explosive and destructive ones. Often, a small number of extraordinarily large fires account for much of the area burned in a year.
Source: Cal Fire Note: Data accessed on Aug. 12, 2024.
By The New York Times
Acres Burned by Wildfires in California
This year, the number of acres burned by wildfires has more than doubled from the previous year. Two years of wet winters in 2022 and 2023 likely contributed to vegetation growth and the buildup of fuel, said Alex Hall, the director of the Center for Climate Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Intense heat in the weeks before the Park fire sparked — most days in July in Chico climbed over 100 degrees Fahrenheit — greatly accelerated the drying process.
There are still several months left in this year’s fire season. On Aug. 1, the National Interagency Fire Center, which helps to coordinate federal fire response, issued new warnings about fire risk for this season, saying that it expects much of California and the Western United States to be under significant threat through at least the end of September.
Ireland needs to build 20,000 more homes a year than planned to keep up with a growing population and pent-up demand, the central bank has warned, saying that will require €6.5bn-€7bn in development finance.
Failing to fix Ireland’s housing crunch will drag on the nation’s competitiveness, the bank said.
Ireland, which is grappling with a chronic housing supply and affordability crisis, has boosted homebuilding: According to official data, 32,695 dwellings were completed last year, up 10 per cent on 2022, and the government is targeting 33,450 this year.
But the central bank says 52,000 a year are needed. Planning bottlenecks and a lack of skilled construction workers were compounding the problem.
JD Vance defended his comments about Haitian immigrants eating pets during a Tuesday rally, saying that “the media has a responsibility to fact-check” stories – not him.
The rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, came two days after the Ohio senator told CNN host Dana Bash it was OK “to create stories” to draw attention to issues his constituents care about, regarding inflammatory and unfounded claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, had eaten residents’ pets.
The comments, in which he appeared to say that politicians can brazenly lie, drew immediate rebuke. But during his rally, Vance defended them and claimed that numerous constituents had told him “they’d seen something in Springfield”.
“On top of it, if there are certain people who refuse to listen to them, who refuse to take their concerns seriously,” he said, “that’s when it’s my job as United States senator to listen to my constituents.”
Vance took questions from reporters but knocked the press repeatedly, a line of attack that brought the crowd to their feet.
“When I said – and the media always does this, they’re very dishonest – when I say that I created a story, I’m talking about the media story, by focusing the press’s intention on what’s going on in Springfield,” said Vance.
During his speech to a crowd of several hundred people, Vance spoke at length about immigration, invoking a crime committed by an undocumented person in the town of Prairie du Chien that Republicans in the state have already seized on to bolster Republican claims about immigrants committing violent crimes. In fact, research shows immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than people born in the US.
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“Every community is a border state,” said Vance. “The problems that Kamala Harris has imported through that American southern border have now gone nationwide.”
He also blamed the vice-president for the recent apparent assassination attempt at Mar-a-Lago.
“The American media, the Democrats, the Kamala Harris campaign, they’ve gotta cut this crap out or they’re gonna get somebody killed,” said Vance, alleging that Democrats, who have highlighted Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric and attempts to overturn the 2020 election, are to blame for the two apparent assassination attempts that Trump has faced so far during his 2024 campaign.
Vance described a chaotic, dark, and violent vision of the US under a Harris presidency.
“We are closer, in this moment, to a nuclear war, or a third world war, than at any time in our country’s history and we have the chaos and incompetence of Kamala Harris to thank for it,” the Republican vice-presidential nominee said during a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Vance’s message, especially on immigration, was well-received by the crowd.
“You don’t know who’s coming across that border. You don’t know the violence or the background of those people,” said Victoria Bischel, who owns a farm and a real estate business and appreciated Vance’s comments. “I believe in immigration. I believe in legal immigration […] I don’t hop over the fence to Saudi Arabia and decide that I want to live there.”
The acting director of the Secret Service told former President Donald J. Trump that significant additional security arrangements and planning would be needed if he wanted to continue safely playing golf, according to three people with knowledge of their conversation.
The agency’s acting director, Ronald L. Rowe Jr., made the recommendation at a meeting with Mr. Trump on Monday afternoon in the former president’s office at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and home in Palm Beach, Fla.
The meeting came just 24 hours after a second apparent assassination attempt on the former president in the span of just two months. And it also comes at a time when, behind the scenes, tensions between the Trump campaign and the Secret Service have been escalating.
Mr. Trump asked Mr. Rowe whether it was safe for him to keep playing golf, one of the people said. Mr. Rowe discussed the difficulties of securing sprawling golf courses near public roads and said that some of Mr. Trump’s courses were easier to protect than others, one of the people said.
It is unclear what changes Mr. Trump will make to his golf schedule after the meeting, and some people in Mr. Trump’s orbit are frustrated at any notion he might have to cut back on his weekly activity. They questioned why President Biden was able to visit open beaches but Mr. Trump should have to restrict his golf, especially given that other former presidents regularly play the sport.
However, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden do not receive the same level of security. One of them is a sitting president and one is a former president. Mr. Trump’s level of Secret Service protection reduced after he left the White House. But since the first attempt on Mr. Trump’s life in July in Butler, Pa., both Republican and Democratic lawmakers have raised concerns about the former president’s protection, given the current intensity of threats. Mr. Biden has called on the Secret Service to provide whatever additional resources are required to keep Mr. Trump safe.
Golf remains more than a pastime for Mr. Trump — it’s a major part of his identity as well as a way of socializing and a release valve as he faces a presidential campaign and ongoing legal woes.
The authorities said the suspect in the latest case, Ryan W. Routh, hid for 12 hours on Sunday near the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. After a Secret Service agent spotted Mr. Routh poking the barrel of a gun through bushes on the course’s perimeter, that agent opened fire, leading Mr. Routh to run to his car, officials have said.
Mr. Routh left behind a semiautomatic rifle, a scope, two backpacks and a Go-Pro camera, which suggested he planned to film an intended shooting, officials said. The police pulled him over on the side of Interstate 95 about 45 minutes after a witness, who saw him fleeing, photographed his license plate.
In their meeting on Monday, Mr. Rowe told Mr. Trump that it was difficult to secure his sprawling golf courses because they have so much open space, one of the people briefed on the meeting said.
The courses are close to public roads and the fact that photographers, using long-range lenses, can often capture Mr. Trump on his greens and fairways suggest that a skilled gunman might be able to get a clear line of sight on him. Mr. Trump raised some of these concerns himself in the meeting with Mr. Rowe, one of the people with knowledge of the meeting said.
Mr. Rowe told Mr. Trump that the Secret Service views the golf course at Joint Base Andrews as easier to secure than some of his courses, because it’s a military course, two of the people said. Barack Obama frequently played there during his presidency.
Given Mr. Trump’s campaign schedule, which is expected to be busier as the November election draws near, it is unclear how much golf he will be able to play in the final 49 days, an adviser said.
A campaign spokeswoman, Danielle Alvarez, declined to comment on Monday’s private briefing. She noted Mr. Trump’s Sunday post on social media, in which he praised the Secret Service and law enforcement.
“It was certainly an interesting day!” Mr. Trump wrote on his social-media platform Truth Social, adding in all-caps, “The job done was absolutely outstanding.”
In a private conversation shortly after the assailant disrupted his game, Mr. Trump told Senator Lindsey Graham that his Secret Service team had been “awesome,” Mr. Graham, Republican of South Carolina, later recalled.
But while Mr. Trump has repeatedly praised the agents on his personal detail since the first assassination attempt in July, his team has complained that the agency has not provided the former president with the level of resources the campaign has requested.
A spokesman for the Secret Service said that Mr. Rowe declined to comment on private conversations involving someone the agency protects.
Mr. Trump owns or leases a number of courses, including three in Florida, as well as one in New Jersey, one in Westchester County in New York, one in Sterling, Va., two courses in Scotland and one in Ireland, and a new one in the Middle East. He plays every week and takes great pride in it, describing it as his main form of exercise.
Aides to Mr. Trump have described golf as an important form of relaxation for him. When he was cooped up in a Manhattan courtroom for his hush-money trial earlier this year, his advisers were eager for him to spend as much time as possible outdoors on his golf courses.
As president, Mr. Trump often used his Virginia club, and sometimes took lawmakers out on the golf course with him. Since leaving the presidency, Mr. Trump has played his courses with sports figures, donors and supporters, and mingles openly with people in the club dining rooms. The golf courses have been one of Mr. Trump’s steadiest streams of income.
After the first assassination attempt in July, when a 20-year-old man, Thomas Crooks, came within inches of killing Mr. Trump at a rally in Butler, Mr. Trump told allies that the Secret Service had concerns about him playing golf. But Mr. Trump continued to play.
The Secret Service has come under harsh scrutiny over security lapses that allowed Mr. Crooks to crawl onto a warehouse rooftop at the July 13 rally in Butler and fire off eight rounds at Mr. Trump, wounding his ear and killing a spectator in the crowd behind him. The agency appears to have narrowly averted another shooting at Mr. Trump on Sunday by posting agents ahead of the former president to scout out his next holes on the golf course. Agents were able to spot and shoot at the would-be assailant before he could fire his own weapon through the shrubbery.
The alleged assailant, Mr. Routh, has been known to U.S. authorities in recent years. A contractor and occasional social activist, Mr. Routh has a significant criminal record, including a 2002 conviction in North Carolina for possessing a weapon of mass destruction, which court records describe as explosives with a blasting cap and detonation cord.
Mr. Trump has also been the target of foreign assassination plots, particularly from Iran. U.S. officials obtained information about an Iranian plot to assassinate Mr. Trump in the weeks ahead of the Butler rally, although the plot did not appear connected to the shooting that took place.
The former head of the Secret Service, Kimberly A. Cheatle, resigned her post amid widespread criticism of the agency over the Butler attack.
The acting director of the Secret Service, Mr. Rowe, said in a Monday news conference that “the protective methodologies of the Secret Service were effective yesterday,” but he also made it clear that the agency did not search the golf course’s perimeter before Mr. Trump began his round.
“The president wasn’t even really supposed to go there,” Mr. Rowe said. “It was not on his official schedule.”
But it is well-known that Mr. Trump frequently plays golf at his course in West Palm Beach when he’s staying at Mar-a-Lago. It remains unclear why no perimeter search was conducted.
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