‘We got really lucky’: Why California escaped another destructive fire season in 2022 California, as seen on firefighting crews and in the sky, is in for another long and hot wildfire season.
Palo Alto, California — As firefighters are preparing this weekend for the second wave of a firestorm that could threaten the state by the end of July as a year of blistering dry season wildfire seasons returns to California in 2022, it’s almost as if this season never actually happened.
In August, fires have scorched more than 1,000 square miles across Northern California, burning the town of Paradise, leaving it flattened and homeless and threatening to consume the famed San Francisco Bay Area, where the wildfires have killed 12 people in two weeks.
In the month of October alone, fires have scorched more than 3,000 square miles across multiple regions in the state. This month alone, fires have ravaged more than 1,000 square miles in Northern California, threatening lives and livelihoods.
The deadly wildfires have sent shockwaves across the country, as the state braces for the next year, in an ongoing battle with wildfire.
This week, the region’s firefighters are bracing for the worst in the country — more than 1,800 dead buildings and homes destroyed, and more than 2,000 firefighters and civilians injured.
The number of California firefighters injured by the fires is now at over 500.
It’s a fire season that could become the worst in the state’s history.
It would be if a new study of the fires and the region’s firefighters is any indicator of what comes next.
The study — from UC Berkeley’s Institute of the Americas, UC Berkeley’s School of Law and the UC San Francisco Center for Health and Wellbeing — looks into why this fire season has been so devastating in California, and how it compares to the two other catastrophic wildfire seasons in the state’s history.
The conclusion: California’s fire season was even more destructive than the two previous ones.
The study found that the deadliest fires, in terms of the deaths, are almost double those of the current season — in 2003, and 2007.
In 2006, there were 11 deaths, and in 2003, there were six.
This is a fire season that could become the deadliest in California’s history.
The study also made a key