The massive Calf Canyon Hermits Peaks Fire in New Mexico is now officially the state’s largest wildfire. It eclipses the 297,845-acre Whitewater-Baldy Fire Complex from 2012. Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak was listed at 298,060 acres by fire officials Monday morning.
Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak fire is a wildfire that has been sparked by unpredictable winds and is growing faster than ever. It has already claimed more land than was lost last year in New Mexico.
The Southwest’s spring is a busy season for wildfires, even before the monsoons arrive at the Fourth of July. This year, however, large fires started igniting in the area at least a month earlier than usual due to an extended drought, made worse by climate change.
Scientists now believe that the West is suffering from its worst drought in over 1,200 years.
Park Williams, an assistant professor of geography at UCLA, says, “From a fire standpoint, the dice are now loaded in preparation for another big fireyear in 2022.” “It is likely that 2022 will go down as another year that reminds of us that fire is always inevitable.”
Williams is currently studying the effects of the 23-year-old megadrought in western America by looking at volumes of tree rings and other data taken from remote forests. Scientists know that droughts such as this were not uncommon in the West. Because it was so wet, scientists believe that much of 20th century was an anomaly.
This time saw an explosion in wild ecosystems that depended on periodic fires. The United States government also had a policy to stop nearly all new wildfire ignitions.
“We did an amazing job for 100 years of stopping fires. Williams states that despite all our efforts, the West is losing control over the fire regime. “There are too many trees, it’s too hot and things are drying out. We’re getting lots of fire.
Fire scientists foresee another expensive, devastating, and smokey summer. There is little to no evidence that things will improve over the next few years. Experts warn against calling the current crisis, where 10 million acres or more are being burned in the lower 48 every year, unprecedented. Look back to the first half of the 20th Century, and the number of acres that were burned was much greater.
“These fires can be more dangerous because there are more people around them, which can lead to more deaths.” Lincoln Bramwell is the chief historian of the U.S. Forest Service.
Megafires have been used in recent years by the scientific community and news media to describe fires such as Calf Canyon-Hermits Peak, or the 2018 Camp Fire, which decimated most of Paradise (California). Bramwell and other historians are a little hesitant about this, as it implies that they are unprecedented when in fact they aren’t. For example, I1871 was the Peshtigo Fire which raged through Wisconsin’s forest and killed around 1,200 people. A series of wildfires, known as the Great Burn, burned 3 million acres from southeast British Columbia to western Montana in 1910.
Bramwell states that before the U.S. government became so adept at suppressing wildfires, twenty-three million acres of West Coast forests were burned.
He says, “Culturally, we have a hard-time understanding that because we kind of expected it not to happen.” “And if it does, there are many resources that will help to save the day.
Climate change is the key to making these modern fires worse. These mega droughts were not experienced at a time when the atmospheric temperature was rising from human activity. Climate change has made it hotter and longer to fire season in much of the west. There is a lot of uncertainty as to what the future holds. However, most fire fighters on the ground are anticipating the worst and trying manage expectations.
Boulder, Colo. has seen many close calls in this unusually hot, dry, and windy spring. Brian Oliver, Boulder’s wildland fire chief says that firefighters cannot stop wildfires.
He says, “I liken it to fighting a hurricane.” “We don’t mobilize a force in order to turn around a hurricane. We get everyone out of the way, then we try and come back in to clean up.”
Even if a wildfire is put out quickly, it just fuels the ground for the next one. Park Williams, a UCLA drought expert, says that the country’s history and success in putting out fires has helped us to a corner even as western drought continues.
Williams states, “Unfortunately we are finding that many of these places we have invested a lot in protecting and a lot in human capital into living in, are becoming very unsafe because of the rapidly increasing fire risk.”
