I know you’ve heard this story a hundred times. How I’ve not gone outside in the last two days because of the smoke, but that isn’t what I want to talk about right now. I want to talk about the direct impact of the wildfires. On the communities that they are actually impacting, not about the side effects. I want to look into how these wildfires have impacted our local businesses, and how fast towns affected by fires from previous years have rebuilt, if they did at all. But before I do that, I just want to take a second and compile a list of all the wildfires right now, because I think seeing it in this format just drives home the overwhelming scale of these fires.
- North Fire Complex/Bear Fire- 247,358 acres burned
- Creek Fire- 175,893 acres burned
- Bobcat Fire- 23,890 acres burned
- Dolan Fire- 111,382 acres burned
- Fork Fire- 2,500 acres burned
- El Dorado Fire- 12,610 acres burned
- Woodward Fire- 4,905 acres burned
But this list is just in California. In Oregon, current fires might lead to the, “greatest loss of human life and property due to wildfire in our state’s history.” Just take a moment and think about that. But, back to the point, this means a tremendous amount of rebuilding, and I want to examine what that might look like, how long it will take, and if there is an exodus of people leaving after enormous wildfires. Let’s start by examining the Camp fire, which swept through the town of Paradise and tragically claimed 85 lives, while costing over 2 billion dollars just to remove toxic debris. But there is yet one more shocking statistic that took me a while to absorb when I read it: Out of the 11,000 homes the fire destroyed in Paradise, only 11 have been rebuilt (as of November 2019). But there’s more. The town went from a population of about 26,000 to an estimated 3,000 in 2019. Wow. And no wonder, when you go through those traumatizing experiences, you don’t want a chance in hell of ever doing that again. And I don’t see that number jumping up anytime soon- I mean, who would want to move to a place where you fear for your home and health every single year- that kind of stress is unhealthy and unpleasant. And there are literally reminders around every corner:
a burnt McDonald’s. Yeah, these communities were pretty devastated, and the numbers show that they probably aren’t getting back to their previous glory anytime soon, due to there susceptibility to wild fire and the traumatic memories that they induce. It’s a sad thing to watch, but Climate Change is making it a reality.
