Timing the blazes between soggy storms, California State Parks workers and volunteers stage prescribed burns of piles of collected brush, branches and limbs to reduce the danger of uncontrolled fire and to make the forest more healthy.
Wildfires
Posted inLatest News
More than 2 million acres of local land in California designated as ‘high’ or ‘very high’ fire danger areas
In some areas, hazards have surged. Buildings in the highest hazard zones will be subject to the strictest fire-resiliency rules. New Bay Area maps are coming later this month, with new Central Coast maps due in March.
Posted inLatest News
Prescribed burns planned Wednesday at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park
Prescribed burns will be conducted at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park on Wednesday between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. The burns will take place in the Old Growth Redwood Loop and along Pipeline Road.
Posted inLatest News
As California’s fire season grows, state senators push for more year-round firefighters
Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire proposed that state firefighters work full time in place of the seasonal workforce the agency currently staffs for nine months each year.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
Fire insurance – it’s getting harder to get, and keep, even in urban areas of Santa Cruz County
It’s getting tougher for Californians to get and keep fire insurance, writes Lookout politics columnist Mike Rotkin, and it’s not just people living in fire-prone, forested areas like Bonny Doon and the Santa Cruz Mountains. “People living in downtown Santa Cruz and on the Westside and Eastside have recently been shocked to discover that they need to find a new home insurance company – and that they need to do so in a hurry,” he writes.
Posted inPolitics & Policy
Why Trump’s conditions on L.A. fire aid put California Republicans in a tough spot
All the talk about attaching conditions to California’s federal disaster aid have placed the state’s Republican members of Congress in a quandary: Do they fight for speedy, unconditional relief dollars for wildfire victims in their home state? Or do they fall in line behind President Donald Trump?
Posted inLatest News
Trump is bound for L.A. — threatening to withhold fire aid and keeping Newsom out of the loop
The Trump administration apparently opted not to coordinate at all with Gov. Gavin Newsom while planning the president’s planned Friday visit to fire-ravaged Los Angeles. Just how awkward will this be?
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
My daughter and grandson had to evacuate during the L.A. fires – we are all one when it comes to worrying about fire risk
Lookout columnist Claudia Sternbach’s daughter and grandson live 10 miles from Altadena and had to evacuate during the fires that started Jan. 7. Sternbach watched the tragedy unfold on TV and on her phone and felt powerless to help her small and only remaining family. She lost her husband to cancer last February and has been considering moving to be closer to them.
Posted inLatest News
Private firefighters are increasingly popular with insurers. But do they pose a risk?
A growing and controversial ecosystem of private firefighting companies have seen themselves thrust into the spotlight as some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Los Angeles have gone up in flames. It includes firefighters directly contracted with government agencies as well as those who work for insurance companies and directly for rich families and developers.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
We need comfort, not conflict, amid L.A. fires: Here’s a lesson in nonviolent communication for Trump, Musk and more
Santa Cruz therapist Lisa Herendeen is stunned by the harsh rhetoric and blame game circling the Los Angeles fires. What we need is empathy, she writes, and leaders who understand the merits of nonviolent communication. She just finished a training on this and she applies nonviolent communication skills to the political moment – and to the angry language she hears coming from Donald Trump, Elon Musk and others. Where are our leaders, she wonders. She longs for public rhetoric that raises us all up. She is even nostalgic for the Terminator.