Danny Fortson reports from Berry Creek, a devastated community on the front line of a climate catastrophe.
Atop a tangle of twisted metal and charred wood, piles of ash and blackened home appliances, a wire mesh screen door lies at an awkward angle. "That was the front door," says Tanya Hanson, gesturing to what was once the threshold of her three-bedroom home.
The 52-year-old's house was levelled by one of the hundreds of wildfires that have ripped through California in recent weeks. Hanson is one of the first few residents to be allowed back by fire crews to examine the remains of her home, just beyond a police roadblock, in Berry Creek, a rural community in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
As I join her, having gained access through the roadblock with my press pass, she reconstructs in heavy words her "little slice of heaven". Here was the garage, and the horse stalls, and the dog kennel. There was the deck with a view over Lake Oroville. "My husband and I spent almost every night up on the deck, looking out on to the lake," she says. "Now we have to start over. Again."
In 2018 fire destroyed the town of Paradise, which lies about 24km away as the crow flies over a set of heavily wooded hills. It was the deadliest fire in California's history, killing 85 people. Tanya's family, which includes her husband and 16-year-old daughter, Page, lost their home. So did her mother, who stands in the shade looking shellshocked as Tanya explains what it was like to have their home burn down twice in two years.
"I think it's worse this time," she says. "We worked so hard to get our lives back. With Paradise, we lost our community, we lost our schools, we lost our neighbours. It's just devastating. We never thought we'd be in this position again."
This time around the Hansons had felled trees to create a perimeter around their new home. It didn't matter. When the sheriff knocked on their door on the afternoon of September 8, ordering them to leave, she says: "I had a sinking feeling. I knew we wouldn't be able to come back home." Her husband stayed, hosing down the house, the cars, the fence. "He left at midnight and the whole house was on fire," she says. A few feet away lies a melted garden hose, a testament to his efforts.
Stories like the Hansons' are not hard to find in California. It has been the worst fire season on record — and there are several weeks of it to go. More than 4.1 million acres have burnt this year — double the amount scorched in 2018, the previous record. As I write, firefighters are battling another 26 blazes that have left behind hellscapes of melted cars and skeletal forests of black, leafless trees. More than 100,000 people have been evacuated and 31 have died.
Nowhere has been hit harder than Berry Creek. The sparsely populated community of 1,200 has lost 15 people to the so-called Bear Fire. And it is not just California. Up the coast in Washington, more than 500,000 acres have been scorched — the state's worst year on record. An estimated 500,000 people in Oregon were evacuated — almost one eighth of its population. Acrid smoke has blotted out the sun for weeks across swathes of the American west. Hundreds of miles from the blazes, hazardous air quality forced school closures. Ash falls like snowflakes from dull, cloudless skies.
For most, the conflagrations are a visceral, undeniable sign of climate change. They were preceded by the hottest August on record — the temperature in southern California's Death Valley hit 54C, one of the highest recorded on Earth — which sucked the moisture from plants just in time for a freak dry lightning storm in mid-August. More than 11,000 lightning strikes ignited at least 500 blazes.
For others, including President Trump, the tragedy is the result of good old-fashioned mismanagement. Trump blamed the state, a Democrat stronghold, for decades of fire suppression and not thinning forests, while glossing over the fact that the federal government looks after 57 per cent of California's forests. State authorities oversee 3 per cent, while the rest is in private hands. At a tense meeting with state leaders in smoke-choked Sacramento, Trump pushed back on the suggestion that climate change was to blame. "I don't think science knows, actually," he said. "It'll start getting cooler. You just watch."
Like so much else in Trump's America, the argument has been stripped of nuance. According to experts, it is down to a combination of factors: poor forest management, rising temperatures and ill-conceived development. Scientists warned that a failure to agree on the causes will hamstring mitigation efforts, and the consequences will, almost assuredly, be tragic. Wade Crowfoot, California's natural resources secretary, pleaded with the president: "If we ignore that science, and sort of put our head in the sand and think it's all about vegetation management, we're not going to succeed together."
California's seven largest wildfires, by acres burnt, have all occurred in the past three years — and four have ignited since August. Matt Hurteau, an ecology professor at the University of New Mexico who specialises in climate change's influence on forests, says: "This is just the beginning."
They called it the "Big Blowup". It was August 1910, and more than 1,700 wildfires exploded across the mountains of Idaho and Montana. No clear cause was ever determined, but it had been unusually dry and hot, and high winds turned the conflagrations into a firestorm that burnt more than three million acres and killed 85 people. Smoke wafted 3,220km to the east coast. Soot alighted on glaciers in Greenland.
The experience was seared into the minds of the men running the fledgling US Forest Service. "Wildfires became the enemy," says Hurteau. The Forest Service created the "10am policy" — its goal: to extinguish any wildfire by 10am the day after it was detected. That zero tolerance approach was a dramatic departure from what had gone before. Native Americans regularly set controlled fires to thin forests and rejuvenate land. Lightning-ignited blazes were allowed to run their course.
The Forest Service flipped that approach on its head. The 10am policy stayed in place for decades before it was refined, though it remained a guiding principle. The result: an unnatural environment that, in effect, has piled up a century's worth of kindling. "The forests are way denser than they were back then," Hurteau says. "There's a lot more energy tied up in vegetation in the forests."
This is where climate change comes in. California suffered a drought from 2012 to 2016 that created, in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains, a "massive tree mortality event", Hurteau explains. More than 100 million trees died.
In Oroville, the closest city to Berry Creek in northern California, the mercury hit 47C one afternoon in June this year — the hottest day in its history. The blaze that would swallow Berry Creek started on August 17, in the middle of another streak of days with unusually high temperatures. It was sparked by one of the thousands of lightning strikes that occurred in the early hours of that morning.
Berry Creek is unusual in that it lost so many of its people. But it is also typical of what is becoming an annual cycle of tragedy up and down the state.
Not much was done initially to contain the Bear Fire. It was just one front of the North Complex Fire, a group of blazes that eventually merged to consume more than 300,000 acres, equivalent to almost three quarters of Greater London. And it was burning in remote wilderness, so resources were sent to other parts of the state, where people and property were in more immediate peril.
Berry Creek was exposed. Then, on September 8, the wind shifted. Gusts of up to 60mph whooshed through the Feather River Canyon. Flames that authorities hoped would simply burn out in the Plumas National Forest jumped the river and raced towards Berry Creek, Feather Falls and other mountain hamlets. Rick Carhart, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, the state fire department, called it a "wall of fire" that consumed an estimated 2,000 acres per hour as it barrelled towards the home of Mikey Spradlin.
The 42-year-old was asleep when his father, Bill, woke him just before 10.30pm on September 8 and told him they had to get out — fast. Spradlin scrambled out of bed. He was stunned by what he saw — an unnatural orange glow that lit up the sky — and by what they heard. "It was just a big roar," Bill recalls. "Never in my life have I ever heard anything like that."
This was a common refrain from many people I spoke to. Before they saw the fire they heard it. One described it as sounding like a freight train; another said it was like a jet engine.
Spradlin pulled his trousers on backwards — a fact he realised later when he went for his wallet — and frantically piled as many belongings as he, his son and his father could fit into the back of a pickup truck. They sped down the mountain as the flames rushed forwards. The Spradlins slept that night in their truck, with their three dogs curled up on the back seat. Spradlin, who spent 30 years in Berry Creek, was suddenly a refugee. When we speak, he has been staying at a motel for a week; his father has been living in his truck with his dogs.
The first stop at the bottom of the road from Berry Creek is the Lakeside Market, a petrol station and grocery store. Next door is an off-licence, a thrift shop and a bar, all connected by a large car park that in the days after the fire turned into an informal gathering point for the displaced. I went there before heading into the fire zone.
Mikey Spradlin had showed up to commiserate, and to get information and a change of clothes from an impromptu donation station that sprouted up across a few parking spaces. Over the course of the day a few boxes of second-hand clothes bloomed into an expanse of food, soap, shoes and other essentials. Dozens of people, looking dazed and sleep-deprived, picked through the piles, clutching supplies under their arms. "I'm gonna go see if I can get me a few shirts," said Spradlin.
Even that small mercy, however, was fleeting. Handing out second-hand clothing, the volunteers were informed, violated Covid-19 safety guidelines, so whatever was left at the end of the day would be thrown away. Tempers flared. Frank Martinez, a volunteer, said: "If we don't get people in here to help these people, that mountain is going to die. They're sleeping in their cars. They're getting vouchers for hotel rooms that have blood spatters from heroin addicts. We can't have that. We can't have women and children or anybody in that situation."
A tragedy wrapped in a pandemic.
All but a few residents were barred from returning to Berry Creek, where fire crews were ensuring properties were safe before reopening the area. Locals who had been turned away at the roadblock were furious. Dennis Welsh, 64, lost his home. "They treat us like a mushroom in a basement. Throw crap on us," he fumed. "The enemy is right here," he added, pointing to nearby police. Another ranted: "I'll sign a paper that says, 'If I die up there, you're not liable.' I'm gonna die up there anyway."
Complaints were not enough to get past the police. But my press pass was. Spradlin gave me his address and asked if I might look in on his property, to see if anything survived. "If you could take some pictures, that would be great," he said. "There's some stuff up there that we can't replace."
The fire zone is eerily still and monochrome, like walking through a black-and-white photograph. Everything is a dull grey or black. Frozen rivulets of melted aluminium trail from deformed cars. Incinerated electricity poles leave miles of power lines draped through trees like Christmas tinsel. An occasional smouldering tree stump lazily billows smoke.
Mark Sweeney and his small crew of firefighters are walking from one property to the next, tagging unstable trees that need to be cut down, or damaged propane tanks to be removed. He leans on his shovel and explains: "It came through here fast and hot. If you look at all these trees, the way the whole thing was charred and torched, everything in here was on fire."
It becomes clear why Berry Creek, not so much a town as a scattering of trailers and houses nestled in the trees off a long mountain road, bore such a heavy death toll.
It is remote. Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility company that filed for bankruptcy last year as a result of legal bills from the 2018 fires caused by its faulty equipment, pre-emptively shut down the grid in the area the night before to reduce the risk that downed power lines could ignite new areas. This left homeowners with no defences, as most rely on wells that are useless without electricity to power their pumps.
Some residents were inured to the danger after weeks of exposure to raining ash and smoky air from far-off blazes. Others were lulled by an update that went out at noon on September 8 on the sheriff's Facebook page: "There is no fire currently in Butte County."
The evacuation order came just three and a half hours later. Officials went door to door to warn as many people as possible. A fire truck blared its siren past properties it couldn't reach. Yet many did not get the message — mobile coverage is spotty — ignored it, or just had bad luck.
Signs of the sheer speed of the blaze were everywhere. The remains of one man were reportedly found just feet from his car. Another, Jacob Albright, 72, owner of the Miner's Ranch Saloon next to Lakeside Market, made it into his vehicle but was unable to outrun the flames. A dog, reduced to fur and bone, its head rested on its front paws, was curled up in the back seat of a burnt-out pickup truck.
Jordan Bates came down the mountain that day to take a neighbour to hospital. "The fire has been burning for days, so the smoke didn't bother us," she says. "We didn't think it was right by us. When I tried to go back up, the road was blocked. I was gone maybe an hour."
Matt Hurteau is not surprised by such stories. Fires like the one that destroyed Berry Creek are self-perpetuating, he explains. As the hot air rises, the fires pull in cool oxygenated air, like a giant convection oven. "They create their own wind events," he says, turning a normal forest fire into a travelling inferno, a "wall of fire".
When I arrive at the Spradlins' property, the family's trailer is a pile of ash; Bill's speedboat a melted mass but for the engine. Two things somehow survived: a tyre swing and a simple metal fishing trawler. Everything else was destroyed.
"Gone, huh? Wow," says Spradlin, when I tell him what I found. "Well, we'll look for something to rent down here and then get back up there and start rebuilding."
Would he not consider going somewhere else? He shakes his head. "I been there too long," he says. "We've got fire insurance, thank goodness."
Spradlin's plan puts him at the heart of an increasingly bitter conflict raging not just in California but around the world. Who foots the bill when fires, hurricanes, floods and other disasters, made worse by a warming planet, destroy homes and properties? How do you balance people's desires to live where they want against the growing ambivalence from both government and industry to underwrite those decisions?
Bob Frady awards a grade to every address in California. An "A" means virtually no fire risk; an "F" is for properties that are likely, sooner or later, to burn. Spradlin's home, unsurprisingly, was an F.
Frady says the recent destruction was "devastating but not surprising". In fact it was entirely predictable. "We've tracked the four biggest fires this year, and 95 per cent of the homes that were destroyed were in F zones," Frady explains.
His company, HazardHub, uses algorithms to model risks that insurance companies use to decide where to offer coverage and how much they should charge. Or, for areas like Berry Creek, whether they should offer any coverage at all.
As wildfires have grown more ferocious, the insurance industry has begun to pull back in California, cancelling policies for long-covered homes or refusing to serve areas that evolving fire models warn are risky. The trend has reached crisis level.
For most people their home is their most valuable asset. Without insurance, however, banks won't offer mortgages, which turns homes into dead assets no one will buy and leaves their owners stranded in risky areas.
Ricardo Lara, California's state insurance commissioner, last year issued an unprecedented one-year moratorium to prevent companies from cancelling coverage on more than 800,000 homes in and next to wildfire-prone areas. The moratorium ends in December and can't be extended. A proposal that would allow insurance companies to jack up rates based on climate data — premiums are heavily regulated by the state — in return for them continuing to insure high-risk areas was watered down last month after consumer groups objected.
Lara announced in September an overhaul that would create incentives for companies to insure homes that have taken "home-hardening" measures, such as removing brush. Lara added: "Our current reality of increasing insurance premiums and non-renewals hurts those who can least afford it, including working families and retirees on fixed incomes."
Time is working against him. In California, which has the second-highest cost of living in America after Hawaii, more and more people are relocating to exactly the areas with which insurers are least comfortable, to what is known as the wildland-urban interface (WUI) . "About 30 per cent of new housing in California is in the WUI," Frady explains. "It's the drive to affordability."
It's also a drive towards disaster. Hurteau has created models that combine expected changes to the climate with ecosystem and vegetation patterns to predict wildfires. Those models had forecasted that the type of megafires that broke out this summer and in 2018 wouldn't arrive in California until 2050. "It's terrifying," he says. "We underestimated some of the sensitivity of the system to additional warming."
After 2018 the Forest Service altered its approach, doing more controlled burns and forest thinning. But there is no easy fix. "This is a multibillion-dollar, multidecade solution," says Hurteau.
For the foreseeable future California faces a compounding set of disasters. Paradise, decimated in 2018, remains a ghost town of burnt trees and empty buildings. Thousands of people who lost their homes in that fire are still struggling to get back on their feet. Tanya Hanson and her family were, until the Bear Fire, among the fortunate.
Jay Owens, 62, lost everything. For more than a year, home for him and 200 other families has been a featureless grid of trailers on an industrial park maintained by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Gridley, California. "It's a barren, cold, isolated place. Everything's grey and dirt. There's nothing green," he says. Around the corner at least 50 families are camped out on the unkempt grass at the Butte County Fairgrounds, waiting to be placed in temporary housing. Some have been put up in rooms as far as 60 miles away in Sacramento because every hotel and motel in the area is full of evacuees.
Owens, racked by post-traumatic stress disorder and with a visible hand tremble, says: "I don't know how long it will take for me to have any kind of feeling of normalcy. Covid ain't shit compared to dealing with a fire."
California was already grappling with a tangle of monumental challenges, from the pandemic to the largest homeless population in America. Now it has another: a growing group of climate refugees.
Written by: Danny Fortson
© The Times of London
