Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a $536 million dollar package to “take urgent action, build reliance in communities and help forest health.” But, like most government packages, it misses the mark.
The 2018 Paradise Fire, also known as the Camp Fire, destroyed 11,000 homes, damaged an area the size of Chicago, and killed 85 people. It’s become the deadliest fire in California’s history. It was in this fire that my family nearly died. My grandma was babysitting her grandchildren while the parents were at work. It was the grace of God that a neighbor told her to evacuate. Luckily, no one in my family died. Others in the town were stuck on a bus or trapped under fire retardant blankets at a gas station. After four hours, the entire town was reduced to smoldering ash.
Since the early 2000s, the wildfires have gotten hotter and stronger and have burned with a deeper intensity. This is not a problem Newsom’s $536 million dollar package can solve.
One of the largest problems with the package is that it promises to restore healthy forests and lands, but decades of mismanagement have created this colossal issue. Healthy forests are an ecosystem of growth, death, and composition. To have a healthy forest, diseased trees and underbrush need to be cleared so new growth can occur. A healthy ground floor is essential in the decomposition of tree stumps and logs, which can add dangerous amounts of fuel.
California has a unique ecosystem with multiple mountain ranges and massive trees. These large redwoods normally don’t burn, but drought, a bark beetle that killed millions of trees, and years of untouched forest land have created an environment primed for a fire. One of the ways to protect the land is by prescribed burns. For hundreds of years, native Californians practiced prescribed burns to clear the underbrush that adds dangerous fuel when a fire starts without human intervention.
Newsom claims to be taking early action to protect high-risk communities from the coming wildfire season, but it’s too little too late. The government is waiting until 2025 to double its current treatment levels from 250,000 acres to 500,000 acres. This needs to happen now, not in four years.
Another aim of the wildfire package is to create a market around the wood in California. The California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank is partnering with the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development to provide loans to companies in the forestry and agriculture-related fields. While this is a worthy cause, it takes an average of two to three years for a business to become profitable. These loans will not get rid of the problem Californians are facing this year. A record-breaking drought is on its way to California, and loans are not going to stop it and the ensuing wildfires.
Substantial funding increases have been promised for myriad departments, but it’s important to put those numbers in comparison to the financial cost of these fires. In 2018, the entire cost of the wildfires was $148.5 billion. That is roughly 0.7% of the United States’s entire gross domestic product. Last year, there were 58,950 wildfires. This year, fires are burning at more than double that rate. To say that this $536 million dollar package is going to do anything is a slap to the face of Californians. These departments are grossly underfunded and stretched thin but are being told to double their results.
Newsom must stop political pandering to have a shot at reversing decadeslong damage. Until then, Californians will fear the day they get a call saying they must evacuate, children will be imprinted with life-altering trauma, and lives will continue to be lost.
Taylor Hunt is a columnist with Lone Conservative.
