California will set more fires to try to stop wildfires
LOS ANGELES — California’s seemingly endless cycle of wildfires is prompting authorities to make plans to set more “controlled burns” to thin forests choked with dead trees and withered underbrush that serves as kindling to feed monster blazes that force entire communities to flee, destroy homes and take lives.
Fighting wildfires that burn out of control is extremely expensive and even when authorities make mammoth efforts to put out the blazes, they can still cause expensive property and infrastructure losses when the flames reach populated areas. In October, thousands of California homes burned and 44 people died from wildfires in the state’s most renowned wine region north of San Francisco.
This week, while a fire northwest of Los Angeles still raged after destroying more than 700 homes, the U.S. Forest Service and the state fire agency warned that the threat will remain high even after that blaze is put out because of an estimated 129 million trees that died in California over the last year from drought and beetle infestation.
“It’s fuel just waiting to go up in flames,” said Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.