Wildfires are mainly a problem for Westerners, aren’t they? Hardly! The USDA Forest Service’s wildfire risk map shows Southern California is a persistent hot spot. Our friends’ home in Altadena survived the Eaton Fire earlier this year, and few homes were as lucky in the Palisades. But the danger doesn’t end there—states to the north and east, as far as Texas and Oklahoma, now face growing risks.
The reasons vary. In some places, it’s the urban–wildland interface pressing against expanding suburbs. In others, dense forests, dry brush, and parched grasslands create tinderbox conditions, especially when strong winds sweep through. Rising temperatures and prolonged droughts driven by climate change only add fuel to the flames.
Easterners can no longer afford to be complacent. Florida, New Jersey, and the Appalachian Mountains—especially in Kentucky and West Virginia—are increasingly vulnerable, though for different reasons.
Our own home in the Allegheny Mountains offers little defense against fire. The tin roof might help, but the house itself is mostly wood, standing in a small clearing surrounded by a forest of mixed hardwoods and red spruce. Rotting logs and fallen leaves carpet the ground. There’s just one escape route by vehicle—a long, snaking driveway that winds through the woods to a country road.
You might wonder if we sleep easily at night after watching wildfire news from elsewhere. Strangely, we do. Neighbors reassure us that “a fire won’t go far here—the forest floor stays moist.” But the present is not a simple extrapolation of the past. The landscape is not the same as before the great logging boom that ended a century ago, and the climate is changing fast.
We see many signs: invasive plants pushing into higher elevations; winters that once guaranteed deep snow from November to March now fickle and shorter; creeks and springs that ran year-round now dry by late summer. With little rainfall since midsummer (a repeat of last year), wells across the valley have gone dry, so homeowners must truck in water to refill underground tanks.
Meanwhile, from the comfort of a White House or the manicured greens of a golf course, the “Commentator-in-Chief on Climate” calls global warming “the greatest con-job ever perpetrated on the world.” Science and our perceptions are denied again. Ho hum.