PD Editorial: Preparing for fires amid climate change

California’s fire season is uncommonly intense - and it’s still early.

More than 700,000 acres have burned across the state, including the ferocious wildfires now burning in Lake County, the Gold Country and the Sierra foothills east of Fresno.

That’s about 40 percent more acreage than average for mid-September, according to state emergency services officials.

But it’s more than statistics. Talk to firefighters on the front lines, and they will say that many of this year’s fires are erratic, racing across rugged terrain with extraordinary speed, chewing up dry fuel and defying computer models designed to predict their path.

“We’ve had fires in California since the beginning of time,” Mark Ghilarducci, the director of the state Office of Emergency Services, told the New York Times. “But what we’re seeing now that’s different is the extreme rapid spread of the fires and the extreme volatility.”

Hundreds of homes and businesses are gone, reduced to ashes, thousands of people are displaced. Our hearts go out to the victims, many of them retirees or middle-income workers who can’t afford pricey housing in Sonoma and Napa counties.

We fear there will be more, as California’s fire season typically peaks in the fall.

Why is this year so disastrous? In a word, the drought.

Four dry winters have dried out trees and brush, leaving them dangerously susceptible to fire. Fuel ignites easier and burns hotter, enabling wildfires to grow rapidly and in unexpected ways.

Here’s a question to ponder: Is this the new normal?

In other words, are savage wildland fires a product of climate change?

The usual suspects are working hard to drown that idea with misdirection. An editorial in the Washington Times noted that careless humans cause most wildfires, adding that “blaming global warming, or capricious ‘climate change’ - sometimes it’s hot and sometimes it’s cold, and sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t - is tempting for the environmental extremists.”

Nice try, but the question isn’t what sparks a fire. It’s what created the conditions that are making wildfires so intense and unpredictable.

With the question properly framed, it isn’t difficult to identify factors far removed from unattended campfires and discarded cigarette butts.

California experienced its hottest year on record in 2014 and, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information, a federal agency that tracks climate data, the Golden State is headed for yet another record this year.

A study published Monday in the journal Natural Climate Change concluded that the Sierra snowpack - one of the state’s primary water sources - is the smallest in more than 500 years. Another recent study found that soil and trees are losing moisture because of rising temperatures and declining rainfall.

Climate scientists believe dry conditions and drought will become more common in California and throughout the western United States. Less snow, less rain - less moisture - means more dry fuel to burn and, in turn, more severe fire seasons.

As Gov. Jerry Brown warned Monday, “This is the future.”

We need to be prepared. For those who live in California’s rural areas, it means redoubling efforts to defend their property from wildfire. Policymakers must ensure that forests are managed properly, development is carefully monitored in areas at risk of wildfire and firefighting resources are maintained. Cal Fire says it has adequate resources, but federal agencies often are forced to tap into fire prevention money to pay for fire suppression. That needs to change, just as fire season is changing all around us.