Wildfires and Climate Change, what can we do?

Ivan Chukarov, Chris Clark, Amelia Midgley, Jeffrey Trainor

The devastating Camp fire in California that raged in November of 2018 has left more than 70 people dead and more than 1,000 people missing. In Butte county, the Camp fire has destroyed 12,784 structures, including 9,891 homes (Holpuch & Anguiano 2018). The emotional and physical stress these large wildfires put on residents of burned areas is unimaginable. Lilly Batres, a 13 year old resident of Magalia, a town affected by the California Camp wildfire, was evacuated to a shelter nearby.  Lilly doesn’t know whether her home is still standing and while she seeks refuge at a camp, she cannot grieve in privacy. To Lilly, the camp is “cold and scary”,  and even to some extent she feels like “people are going to come into our tent,” she explains (Anguiano 2018). The Camp Fire is not the only fire that has burned massive plots of land in 2018. The Carr and Ferguson fires in California, burning more than 80,000 hectares, and in Oregon and Colorado have orched more than 100,000 hectares collectively (Selby 2018).   Continue Reading