Insured losses from fires in Northern California have topped $1 billion and are expected to rise "dramatically," state insurance officials announced Thursday.
By Molly Taft
The deadly wildfires ripping through Northern California are just the latest in a season of record-defying natural disasters across the country. As the death toll passes 40, reports of Californians hiding in pools as their houses burn and scenes of devastated homes and vineyards add to 2017's apocalyptic picture of how climate change is impacting America today.
As the Trump administration guts environmental protections and undermines science, California is one of the states leading the way on climate action. Ironically, experts agree the state can expect devastating fires like the ones in Napa to become the new normal. Drier and drier conditions and creeping temperatures in the American Southwest, definitively linked to climate change, serve to create tinderbox conditions for massive, catastrophic fires to explode.
As raging wildfires in California scorch more than 200,000 acres—roughly the size of New York City—more than 11,000 firefighters are battling the blazes, and a number of them are prisoners, including many women inmates.
By Andrew Amelinckx
The fire the Hendels barely escaped was part of the Northern California firestorm that has so far claimed 40 lives—including one of their neighbors, Lynne Powell—destroyed countless homes, and caused billions of dollars in damage.
"Later that morning when we had outrun the fires I cried, sure that I had sentenced Odie to death, along with our precious family of bottle-raised goats," Roland Hendel wrote in a recent Facebook post.
With aid from easing winds, the 11,000 firefighters beating back the Northern California wildfires are making "good progress," as the number of major blazes dropped to 15, the state's fire agency Cal Fire announced Sunday.
But as Cal Fire noted‚ "Sadly, the death toll has risen to 40 people."
Firefighters continue to battle against 17 wildfires that have burned more than 220,000 acres in California, Cal Fire announced in a Friday update.
The death toll from the Northern California blazes has risen to 31, the deadliest week for wildfires in the state's history.
By Dan Nosowitz
Authorities have reported at least 23 people have died as a result of the fires, and dry conditions and powerful winds indicate that they're far from quenched.
This part of California, starting about an hour drive north of San Francisco, is one of the country's most important agricultural zones. Napa and Sonoma are home to thousands of grape growers and hundreds of wineries worth tens of billions of dollars per year, and there's also a thriving dairy industry (cows, goats and sheep), as well as some vegetable growers. Sonoma County alone has nearly 75,000 head of cattle. Further up the coast into the slightly cooler and more forested Mendocino County, there are thousands of cannabis farms.
Firefighters continue to battle the unprecedented wildfires ravaging Northern California.
As of Wednesday, the fast-moving blazes—aided by high winds and low humidity—have burned nearly 170,000 acres and destroyed at least 3,500 homes and commercial structures since the outbreak started Sunday.
By Gary Griggs and Charles Lester
The California coast is an edge. It's the place where 1,100 miles of shoreline meets the largest ocean on the planet. Many different forces collide there, and a lot of exciting things happen. The coast is a geological edge, zippered to North America by 800 miles of the San Andreas Fault and battered by the Pacific Ocean.
It's also a social, political, cultural, spiritual, economic and technological edge. It is where the most populous state and sixth-largest economy in the world is exposed to wind, waves, tides, El Niños, earthquakes and tsunamis. These forces made California's coastline rugged, beautiful and beckoning.
