Five years ago, California was suffering from the camp fire, which is the most massive fire in the country in a century. The state lawmakers responded by assigning the new construction requirements to protect homes in high -risk areas, but by their final date in January 2025, the ministry responsible for the rules was not written by. After that, the spaces of Los Angeles rose in fire, killing dozens of people and destroying thousands of structures.
In early February, Gavin News, the Democratic Governor in California, ordered the State Council of Forests and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, to end the long regulations. The executive order of Newsom also issued instructions to the Marshal Fire Fire Office to create updated fire maps, which have not been reconstituted to the areas managed by local governments since 2011.
On Monday, Cal Fire released the final batch of this update Maps of the dangerous areaThat shows that 5.1 million people – 1 in 8 California population Live in the most dangerous areas. It is a reflection of the effect of climate change on the state, as it can create a brushing and dry weather landscape in extensively, even in the winter.
“We live in a new fact of extremism,” said in his statement to announce the matter. “The sincerity of science – your damned eyes: the mother nature changes the way we live, and we must continue to adapt to these changes.”
Cal Fire’s refreshing maps show a significant increase in areas that are dangerous: high -end “and” very high “risk areas have grown by 168 percent since 2011. Partially because the computing power has improved in the past 14 years, but also because the more detailed data on weather patterns, vegetable and fire behavior made maps more powerful.
“In comparison with the last model, we are able to determine the accuracy of the extent of the travel of embers and ignite the vegetation,” said Frank Beglo, deputy director of alert and mitigating society in Cal. He said there is another implicit change in data is the changing climate.
“The drought periods have become the most dry and more durable, even in places that rarely dry enough for forest fires,” said Daniel Soyen, California’s climate scientist. Since these arid periods are increasingly overlapped with stormy periods, Sueen says that the possibility of increasing the spread of catastrophic fires. “The risks today are higher and extend beyond that to populated areas.”
Swin says that the effects of a warmer and thirsty atmosphere are felt all over the world, as forest fires burn thousands of acres and kill dozens of people South Koreaand JapanAnd Chilean Last month. The fire also caught on parts of North Carolina stateand FloridaAnd Oklahoma In recent weeks. In 2024, researchers from the University of Tesmania in Australia found that the intensity and frequency of the most extreme forest fires on Earth Doubling In the past two decades.
Other factors that prepare California for burning include a phenomenon known as Weather Whiplash, followed by years of abundant rain, allowing plants to grow a lot before drying, providing more fuel for forest fires. “It is a dangerous factor that is not appreciated in the warming climate,” said Swin. “It is definitely related to what happened in Los Angeles last winter, which was the most beginning of winter in the winter immediately after two years of very wet winter.”
New maps also have larger risk areas because they include two new categories: “moderate” and “high” areas. Cal Fire will be required to adhere to the new construction rules, such as fire -resistant windows and alignment. Those who are in the “very high” area will be asked to keep a 100 -foot circle around their property free of flammable brush and dead trees. New neighborhoods in this region will be required to include multiple evacuation methods, sufficient water supplies and compact vegetable gaps that can prevent fire from spreading.
“These maps are particularly concerned for the new construction, including the houses that were burned at Los Angeles fires,” said Gregory Peres, a professor of urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. according to Reporting in the Washington Post33 per cent of burned houses in Altadena, which is alive in Los Angeles, demolished by January fires, is now in the “high” or “very high” dangerous areas. “We must be able to make some major reforms that we were not ready to do before,” he said.
Although the words are often used in exchange, the Bijelow said that the agency sees a decisive difference between “danger” and “risks” – and maps only indicate “danger” levels. He said that the danger is something that can change quickly over time, such as whether or not the house owner increases. The risks are determined based on the long -term weather and landscape factors outside the control of homeowners. “These maps do not predict the place of fires. Do not predict the size of the fires; he just says that there is a high possibility that there will be a fire in an area.” He says that with the steel of the right homes, it is possible to live in a very highly dangerous severity area but not close to the risk of zero.
“Start taking action in your home and around it, regardless of the area in which you may be,” he said. “No one lives near or around a calm area that his guard should fail.”
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