How did the Park Fire Get So Explosive and Powerful?

Aug 5, 2024

By far the biggest of the 50 wildfires now burning in the Western U.S. is the Park fire. Officials say the fire began on July 24 when a man pushed a burning car into a ravine near Chico, California. In less than a week the Park fire had already become the fifth largest fire in California history. It scorched an area 12 times larger than the city of San Francisco. It destroyed 200 structures and forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes. And it’s far from done. Experts say that it has the possibility of becoming the biggest fire in California state history.

Certainly, climate change has contributed to the fire’s explosiveness. The extreme heat in June and July followed a very wet winter and spring that allowed vegetation to grow quickly. The “whiplash” between very wet conditions and extreme heat is how climate change is impacting California.

But also, greatly contributing to this fire’s ferocity and reach has been a huge buildup of dead vegetation over a period of many, many decades. This huge amount of dead vegetation provides the fuel that allows the fire to grow and burn for many weeks and even months.

This huge build-up of dead vegetation is not “natural.” It is due to a longstanding policy of fire suppression by the U.S. and state governments. This policy serves the interests of the capitalist class, because it safeguards their investments in timber, mines, as well as real estate development in fire-prone areas.

But fire suppression goes against the natural environment. Frequent wildfires fit with the particular climate of most of California and the Western U.S., in which it rains only during a few months of the late fall and winter. During the rest of the year, vegetation dries out and bakes under the sun, becoming potential kindling.

In this environment, fires play a much-needed positive, housekeeping role. They clear out dead underbrush and aging foliage. The ashes fertilize the soil. Over thousands of years, plants and animals have adapted to these frequent fires. They spread new seeds and enable biodiversity.

Before California was colonized, it was not unusual for more than one-eighth of the state to burn every year. Indigenous tribes were skilled in the use of low-intensity wildfires to shape the environment, to clear out and fertilize land to grow food, to hunt wild animals, or even to reduce the number of insects.

When the U.S. federal and state governments began suppressing these fires on the orders of the capitalist class, it did not stop the fires from breaking out. It just let the amount of dead vegetation build up a huge amount, so that when fires did break out, they were bigger and more deadly … way before climate change had begun to take hold.

Over the last couple of decades, government officials promised repeatedly that they would change their policy and begin to implement controlled fuel burns over big expanses of the West to begin to reduce the centuries old build-up of dead vegetation. They doubled down on those promises after the 2020 Camp fire destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people in the midst of the worst wildfire season in California history. But last year, the state of California only removed plant material from 54,000 acres and conducted about 37,000 acres of prescribed burns … in a state where there are 30 million acres of forest land.

Politicians in California now claim that they have set a goal of treating one million acres of land per year beginning in 2025 by removing dense vegetation with machines or by prescribed burn. They even say that the Park fire “might” provide “more motivation” for state agencies to reach this goal.

Another empty promise? Probably, given the ongoing pressures of the various capitalist interests out to protect their profits and wealth, no matter how bad a catastrophe they cause.