Commentary: Perspectives on LA wildfires from Maine and Alabama

This column appears every other week in Foster’s Daily Democrat and the Tuskegee News. This week, Guy Trammell, an African American man from Tuskegee, Ala., and Amy Miller, a white woman from South Berwick, Maine, write a column about the wildfires in the West.

By Amy Miller

When Hurricane Sandy flooded streets in lower Manhattan in 2012, my parents on 55th Street barely felt a ripple beyond what they read in the news. The realities of how climate was affecting thousands of people was not their reality on the 21st floor of a building five miles away.

Today, from my perch in Maine, I hear about the wildfires in California and the news seems surreal. I feel like I am reading a book in that new genre called Cli-Fi. Except that I am not. Except I read that same book last year, and the year before, and it is not fiction at all.

Except I have cousins and friends in southern California who live and work in schools and offices where they are breathing the smoke and wondering if they too will have to leave their homes.

A local planner told me southern Maine is one of the places attracting climate refugees, people who want to live somewhere with less chance of a heat emergency, drought or wildfire. My corner of the world remains more protected than places like New Orleans, which sits below sea level, or Kiribati, a Pacific nation of 100,000 people and coral islands that have already begun to disappear.

But even here we have seen the writing on the wall. 

Maine’s coastal zones flooded last year, causing millions of dollars in damage and proving we are not immune. My insurance company told me I had to buy flood insurance for the first time for an inland camp on a lake near Bangor.Rotary International, a devoutly non-political organization with 1.4 million members in 200 countries, recently adopted climate change and the environment as one of its seven focus areas, along with fighting disease, maternal health and water hygiene. The organization, not prone to controversial issues, added this focus change as part of its mission in 2020.

“Rotarians understand that the whole world is their backyard,” says the organization’s website. “They can see the effects of climate change in communities they care about, and they haven’t waited to take action.”

Former International Rotary President Barry Rassin has said about 95% of the membership support the decision.

“As a humanitarian organization, we’re obligated to talk about it,” said Rassin, whose own island nation of the Bahamas is vulnerable.

“I’m not talking politics; I’m talking about our world and how to make it a better place,” Rassin has said. “We’re in a position where, with all the people Rotary has around the world, we can make a difference. If Rotary is going to be relevant, then we’ve got to be looking at the environment.”

By Guy Trammell Jr.

In 1895, fire destroyed Tuskegee Institute’s dairy barn, along with its herd of cows. After that, school architect Robert R. Taylor created fireproof buildings, using less ornamental wood and more earthen brick.

In 1917, two brick barns were constructed, each with steel windows. Another campus fire in 1918 destroyed the Slater Armstrong Boys Trades building. It was rebuilt and became Margaret Murray Washington Hall for girls’ trades. All the 1928 Wilcox Boys Trades buildings were mostly masonry.

Fire needs three things to exist: heat, oxygen and fuel. Take away one of these and the fire is gone. 

The current California wildfires have wreaked disabling devastation on an unbelievably massive scale. Neighborhoods with 50 or more years of residents’ investment – raising families and making precious memories – were horribly decimated in an instant, leaving shock, despair and debilitating sorrow.

All the neighbors and friends who normally pitch in to help each other are left powerless because they face the same losses. The magnitude of destruction is overwhelming. 

Wildfires are natural in North America, and are required for certain trees to germinate. They also are a clearing mechanism for dominant plants, allowing other species to emerge and feed specific animal life. The Mvskoki Nation deliberately used wildfires to clear underbrush for hunting. 

Discarded cigarettes, arson or downed power lines cause 25% of wildfires. However, more wildfires and more destructive wildfires are fueled by human-caused climate change that generates hotter temperatures, creates drought, and produces more dry, dead vegetation. 

In 2022 and 2023, Los Angeles had extraordinary rainfall, reaching over 52 inches downtown. 2024 had eight months of drought. 

2021 – 2,568,948 acres destroyed by wildfires

2022 – 362,455 acres destroyed by wildfires

2023 – 324,917 acres destroyed by wildfires

2024 – 1,050,012 acres destroyed by wildfires 

Los Angeles’ ferocious 80 to 100 mph Santa Ana winds send clouds of burning embers for miles, igniting more blazes. These hurricane-strength winds prevent use of water dropping helicopters to douse large areas of fire, and neither firefighters nor urban water infrastructures are adequate to attack vast acres of wildfire.

One man saved his home and others with a 2-inch hose pump, his pool, and fire retardant gel he spread over exterior walls. Others had fireproof exterior walls and vegetation-free barriers around their homes. Farmers hire out ruminant goats that make land fireproof simply by eating. 

We have created our own environmental crisis, but if we stop and think, solutions can be found.