Fires: California’s Five Plagues
DECRYPTION – Global warming, jurisdictional problems, galloping urban planning, poor forest management, Covid-19 … The Golden State is accumulating handicaps in its fight against forest fires.
With around 40 fires currently raging in what is shaping up to be a record-breaking season for California, Le Figaro looks back at the challenges facing America’s richest state today.
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Increasingly numerous and gigantic fires
Fires are part of the natural cycle of the forests of the American West. Sequoias, which are its emblem, need their flames to reproduce. It is thanks to this heat that these giant trees can release their seeds. But the fire season starts earlier and earlier each year and ends later and later. In addition, in recent years they have reached Dantesque proportions. California, like the region as a whole, is caught in a devastating vicious circle: an exceptional drought, characterized by abnormally high temperatures, beating record after record; increasingly scarce precipitation; abnormally dry vegetation, which provides prime fuel and ignites
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