Explainer: How this year's destructive U.S. West wildfire season came to be
(Reuters) - Dozens of conflagrations have raged across more than 5 million acres (1.6 million hectares) in Oregon, California and Washington state since August, laying waste to several small towns, destroying thousands of homes and killing at least 35 people.
The region’s increasingly dry and overgrown forests have become large-scale tinderboxes over decades while wildfires have become more frequent, more intense and more deadly. Here’s why.
IS THE PROBLEM POOR FOREST MANAGEMENT OR CLIMATE CHANGE?
U.S President Donald Trump blames poor forest management - mainly a failure to cull overgrown forests - for the increasing number and intensity of fires. The governors of California and Oregon - the states worst hit this season - say climate change is largely responsible.
Scientists say both factors are at work.
Starting in the early 1900s, wildfires were fought aggressively and suppressed, which led to a build-up of dead trees and brush in forested areas. That means more fuel for bigger, more intense and damaging wildfires.
But changes in climate and weather patterns — warming temperatures, periods of drought and erratic rains - also are causes.
“We don’t want to minimize the impact of climate because it’s significant already and because it’s growing in the future,” said Dan Cayan, a climate researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wildfire-explainer/explainer-how-this-years-destructive-u-s-west-wildfire-season-came-to-be-idUSKBN26600F