With several large blazes burning up and down California, the 2024 wildfire season is officially underway – and it could be a bad one.
After two straight years of subdued wildfire activity, Californians could be lulled into a false sense of security. KNX Chief Correspondent Charles Feldman asked fire advisor Luca Carmignani why we keep failing to adequately prepare for fire season.
He said that while we know where the potential dangers are – like power lines and roadside ignitions – it takes time to fix them.
“We are thinking about maybe burying underground the power cables. That could be a solution, but that’s not easy to implement, you know, because it takes time to update those infrastructure,” Carmignani said.
While utilities have been working for decades to upgrade their infrastructure, Carmignani said there are “thousands of miles of power lines” to tackle.
As for the idea of using state funds to move residents out of areas that are highly fire-prone, Carmignani noted that it’s not easy to displace entire communities that “had already been built without fire risk in mind.”
“It's also so important to keep in mind that fire is part of California's ecosystem,” he added. “We have to learn how to live, you know, with fire.”
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The National Interagency Fire Center predicts 2024 will be a more intense fire season than usual for the entire North American continent.
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