00:00Fires are getting bigger, and the effects on our forests are dire.
00:06But increasingly, there's a growing concern for human safety as well, particularly as
00:11we continue to push deeper into the forests.
00:15Somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 or 30 million homes have been built in the wildland
00:20urban interface in the last 25 years.
00:22That's the interface like we're seeing between homes and forests.
00:26We're putting infrastructure into these areas at a very rapid pace because people want to
00:35build their homes in the forest.
00:37They want to be close to nature.
00:39There's a legion of retiring baby boomers who are now moving to smaller rural communities
00:46that give them the opportunity to access the out-of-doors.
00:50Since 1980, 40% of the homes constructed in the United States have been built in such
01:00areas in what fire scientists call the wildland urban interface.
01:07The problem it creates is that when you build a nice house in the woods, if a fire comes,
01:14you're sort of expecting the local government or the state government or the federal government
01:20or some combination of the three to try to help save your house.
01:25Luckily, the Forest Service had gotten very good at stopping fires.
01:30From the 1930s until 2002, there were very few large forest fires and nothing we would
01:35now call a megafire, but every year without fire or mechanical clearing only increases
01:41the fuel load.
01:43The forests and the new communities in them were becoming a ticking time bomb.
01:48In 2018, that bomb went off.
01:57The deadliest fire in California's history hit the rural town of Paradise, California.
02:0386 people perished and the town was destroyed.
02:06It was a wake-up call for everyone living in fire-prone areas.
02:10The government was forced to respond.
02:13This was a new kind of emergency.
02:15It required much faster action than deliberately slow laws like NEPA and the Endangered Species
02:20Act could accommodate.
02:23The question was, we can't wait for processes to slow us down, and how do we treat the preventative
02:31action like an emergency and with the pace of an emergency?
02:36So Governor Newsom put out emergency declarations that enabled us to change our environmental
02:42practices.
02:43He waived CEQA, the environmental law, and also directed Cal Fire to go into emergency
02:49operation mode to execute emergency fuel breaks throughout the state.
02:55This was not an academic exercise, but a crucial requirement for communities.
03:00Paradise was only the beginning.
03:02Every year since, the fires have gotten bigger and more destructive.
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