Why are fire seasons longer? — People
By Maya L. Kapoor, High Country News
Over three months in 2016, the Soberanes fire burned 132,127 acres of Central California’s coast, blazing through dry swaths of dense chaparral, mixed hardwood timber and redwoods. Costing $260 million to suppress, it became the most expensive fire in the country’s history.
And it wasn’t caused by lightning, which is relatively scarce in that part of the country, but by an illegal campfire in Garrapata State Park.
Human-caused climate change has meant more, and bigger, wildfires throughout the country. But as astute pyrologist Bruce Springsteen once wrote, “You can’t start a fire without a spark.”
According to wildfire research, the source of that spark is, more often than not, a person. What’s more, due to these human-caused ignitions, the country’s conflagrations have grown significantly larger and more frequent, while the overall fire season has tripled in length.