Thread: The USA knows how to prevent megafires, they just don't do it

Towns wiped out, dozens killed , hundreds of thousands flee. Wild fire horror.

Towns wiped out as 'unprecedented' wildfires scorch USA west coast

Authorities have warned of mass fatalities as the largest firestorms on record ravaged the states of California and Oregon amid a deadly summer of wildfires.
Deadly infernoes raging across Oregon have kept half a million people under evacuation alert as weary firefighters took advantage of improved weather to go on the offensive against the blazes.

Dozens missing as record 'firestorms' ravage California and Oregon

The crisis in the skies of San Francisco.

We now monitor the air-quality index, consulting it like the weather, multiple times a day. A.Q.I.—a measurement, established by the Environmental Protection Agency, that denotes the level of air pollution, using a scale from zero to five hundred—has become the determining factor for pandemic-safe social gatherings, telling us whether it’s safe to walk our dogs, exercise, or talk outside

On Thursday, the A.Q.I. map looked like a cluster of ripening grapes; the nearest clear air was in Nevada. The orange light receded; instead, the city was a dull white. Friends in Portland packed go bags. Group text messages fluttered around the question of whether those with small children should leave and where they might go. People noted their headaches, sore throats, and itchy eyes. By Friday, towns and communities up and down the West Coast had been incinerated. Twelve people in California were reported dead. Fires in Oregon had consumed nearly a million acres, and thousands had been evacuated, with a half million more awaiting the order.

Some are saying that these crises are too much to bear; that the collision of public-health issues is unsustainable; that California will soon become uninhabitable; that people will flee. But the state has always offered its residents reasons to leave: earthquakes, drought, heat, fires; political and economic cruelties. A certain degree of volatility is part of the pact. It seems just as likely that people will adapt, as they always do, until adaptation, by will or necessity, turns into retreat.


The Crisis in the Skies of San Francisco | The New Yorker