“Firefighters on the scene told the Times that “members of the crew were told not to take video of the incident.” When the two firefighters were detained, the rest of the crew was “denied the chance to say goodbye.”
“I asked them if his (family) can say goodbye to him because they’re family, and they’re just ripping them away,” one firefighter told the Times. A federal officer responded by telling him “to get the (expletive) out of here,” or he’d make him leave.”
“On Wednesday, The Seattle Times reported federal law enforcement had arrested “two people fighting the Bear Gulch fire on the Olympic Peninsula.”
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Out of 44 crew members onsite, “two individuals were found to be present in the United States illegally, one with a previous order of removal. The two individuals were arrested and transported to the Bellingham Station on charges of illegal entry.”
The arrest was a reversal of federal policy under two presidents. “Absent exigent circumstances, immigration enforcement will not be conducted at locations where disaster and emergency response and relief is being provided,” the Department of Homeland Security announced in 2021, during Joe Biden’s presidency. And in August 2018, under Trump, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) declared it would “suspend routine immigration enforcement operations in the areas affected by” wildfires in northern California, as well as “evacuation sites, or assistance centers such as shelters or food banks.”
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“Hispanic immigrants play a pivotal role in wildfire response,” Reason’s Jeff Luse wrote this week. “Federal officials showing up to job sites and removing these workers from privately contracted crews will very likely delay wildfire response times and put more Americans at risk.”
CBP did not reveal the nationality of the two people arrested. Regardless, it’s especially ironic to arrest two firefighters for immigration offenses while they actively fight a wildfire that, as of Wednesday evening, was only 13 percent contained.
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there is considerable evidence the Trump administration is simply rounding up as many potential deportees as possible, regardless of the actual danger they pose.”
“Human-caused climate change made the Los Angeles-area fires more likely and more destructive, according to a study”
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“The study — from an international group of 32 climate researchers — shows how climate change fits into the myriad factors that made the multiple blazes one of California’s most destructive and expensive wildfire disasters on record.”
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“The scientists found that low rainfall from October through December is now more than twice as likely compared to the climate that existed before humans began burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal and gas for energy.”
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“the LA fire season is becoming longer, with “highly flammable drought conditions” lasting about 23 more days now than during the preindustrial era.”
“Forest Service Chief Randy Moore will retire effective March 3, according to an email sent to agency staff Wednesday and viewed by POLITICO.
Moore wrote in his staff email that the past several weeks have been “incredibly difficult” due to the Trump administration’s mass layoffs, which have led to 3,400 Forest Service employees — or 10 percent of agency staff — being fired.”
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“Lawmakers and officials from Western states have warned that President Donald Trump’s cuts to agencies like the Forest Service and funding freezes will threaten critical prevention and mitigation work, leaving the region woefully unprepared for the coming wildfire season.”
Trump seems eager to help red states with natural disasters, but not California, seeming to not understand the extent that weather made California particularly susceptible to hard to stop fires.
“In some contexts, those policies do make the damage done by wildfires worse. They’ll certainly complicate Los Angeles’ recovery efforts.
But the connection between bad land use, insurance, and environmental regulations and the damage done by the current Los Angeles fires to people and property is more tenuous.
On closer inspection, this appears to be a severe natural disaster with natural causes. Bad public policy has played only a marginal role.”
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“there’s also only so much fuels reduction can do to reduce wildfire risk in the conditions that led to Los Angeles’ current fires: exceptionally strong seasonal Santa Ana winds that reached hurricane levels of intensity.
“If you have strong winds, embers fly away miles ahead of the fire,” says Carmignani. Clearing a few hundred yards here or there can provide firefighters with areas to operate. But it isn’t going to stop the fire from spreading to new areas when winds are that high.
If the four-lane Pacific Coast Highway wasn’t enough of a fire break to prevent beachside Malibu homes from burning down, one wonders what would be.”
“Across the country, wildfires are getting worse. In addition to the billions of dollars in damage from destroyed homes and infrastructure, these fires are increasingly deadly: Every year, wildfire smoke contributes to thousands of deaths in the US alone, not to mention other health impacts like reduced lung function and increased risk of dementia. And climate change makes extreme wildfires all the more likely as landscapes become warmer, drier, and more flammable.
All of this means that understanding how to control wildfires is more important than ever.
For Yamamoto, fire is a way of connecting with his tribal community and land, but he has bigger ambitions, too: He wants to organize major collaborative projects — between different states, sovereign Indigenous nations — that would spread fire across arbitrary property lines.
One of the barriers to effective fire management is the tangled web of property ownership across the country. Good fire mitigation techniques — like clearing flammable understory on corporate-owned land — aren’t as effective if the family land next door doesn’t do the same. To truly confront out-of-control wildfires and climate change, fire management will have to transcend those lines, which means understanding the land we live on as a shared responsibility, rather than a collection of individual properties.
“Fire doesn’t recognize property lines, right?” Yamamoto said. “That’s a very human construction.””