+ The Camp Fire, which leveled the Sierra foothills town of Paradise (pop. 27,000), is now the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in the history of California. As of Friday morning:
+ 63 people are dead
+ 630 people are missing
+ 11,000 structures have been destroyed, including nearly 9,000 homes
+ 52,000 people have been evacuated
+ 140,000 acres have burned.
+ The forests burned in Camp Fire were so parched by prolonged drought they were described by ecologists as “sucking water from the air.”
+ Of the 10 most destructive fires in California history, 9 of them have ignited since 2000.
+ The last five years of California fires…
+ According to the Ecologist-in-Chief, if only there was more clearcutting of forests and raking of leaves, the California fires (many of them raging in coastal chaparral habitat–what’s left of it amid the subdivisions, malls and highways) wouldn’t be happening…
+ Trump’s a buffoon, but what’s the corporate media’s excuse? In it’s non-stop coverage of the California wildfires, the national news networks have mentioned climate change in less than 4 percent of the total coverage.
+ The Woolsey Fire near Malibu roared across the best mountain lion habitat in southern California. Most of the adults likely escaped, but many of their cubs probably didn’t…
+ The Woolsey Fire jumped the freeway and scorched Bell Canyon in the West Hills area of LA, where I scrambled up El Escorpión Peak with the late Galen Rowell…