eucalyptus with their crowns well above the chaparral, perhaps even drier than normal with the effects of climate change. Oxygen, the third side of the triangle, rode in the air on a wind known locally as a sundowner, a wind that comes tumbling down the Santa Ynez Mountains, running toward the sea, warming as it loses altitude and gains pressure, like the winds that blow downward to fill Death Valley. Its warmth stripped the remaining moisture from plants while driving their flammable vapors into the air. The wind fanned the fire, turning warm coals hot, then hotter. Flames appeared around dinnertime and, pushed by the sundowner, moved downhill toward the houses.
As these things go, it was an average fire, a historical footnote, one fire in many. It was contained and controlled within days. During that time, more than five thousand homes were evacuated. Seven hundred and fifty-six firefighters were mobilized, with sixty-two fire engines. Something like six million dollars was spent in three days, and a thick-limbed doll was melted into an objet d’art, heated by the Tea Fire, along with a lightbulb, a pile of coins, an antique pistol, and a copy of Br’er Rabbit .
I drive a road through the hills and along the ridgeline above Santa Barbara with a scientist who studies, among other things, wildfire fuel. He looks at photographs taken from satellites and airplanes. From these photographs, he makes maps. Meaning in no way any disrespect to his science, I think of him as a mapper.
We can see Santa Cruz and the three islets of Anacapa Island and oil platforms off the coast, and the city of Santa Barbara surrounded by suburbs, and the suburbs surrounded on three sides by fuel in the form of dense chaparral. In places, orchards and highways form what may be thought of as firebreaks, separating the fuel of chaparral from the fuel of suburbia.
The Spaniards who ranched in California called the dense shrubby vegetation chaparral because it reminded them of scrub oak hillsides in Spain called chaparro . Cowboys chasing cattle into the chaparral invented chaps to protect their legs. In the heat of summer, they would have seen the chaparral burn just as it burns today.
The mapper carries binoculars and a camera and several maps. “Avocado and citrus orchards and golf courses make good firebreaks,” he tells me.
He talks on and off about climate change. He wonders if the chaparral is entering a time when the fire season will extend throughout the whole year, when fires will burn in winter as they burn in summer. He comments, too, on the spread of housing and human activity deeper into the chaparral. It may be that an increase in fire frequency will come from climate change, but it could just as well come from increased sources of ignition, from the close proximity of humans, matches, and fuel.
The road, narrow and steep and winding, will not let two cars pass comfortably. It is not the sort of road I would associate with southern California. It is a road that would be at ease in parts of Montana or Alaska.
We pull off to look at fuel. “This one,” the mapper says, “is Ceanothus megacarpus, or big-pod ceanothus.” It is a lilac, in the buckthorn family. “Only the leaves and small branches burn in the first fire,” he tells me. “The leaves burn off and the trunks stay behind. But the trunks die and dry out and are burned in the next fire.”
Big-pod ceanothus is not the sort of plant one would grow in a firebreak. Its leaves carry flammable resin. Its seeds drop to the ground beneath it, saturating the soil, but only germinate after a fire. They germinate in response to heat or smoke or the presence of charcoal. A stand of big-pod ceanothus is a sure sign of returning fire.
“They take about eight years to mature,” the mapper says. “If the fire return rate is too quick, they will be replaced by laurel sumac. That’s what happened in the Santa Monica Mountains.”
If the land does not burn, the big-pod
As these things go, it was an average fire, a historical footnote, one fire in many. It was contained and controlled within days. During that time, more than five thousand homes were evacuated. Seven hundred and fifty-six firefighters were mobilized, with sixty-two fire engines. Something like six million dollars was spent in three days, and a thick-limbed doll was melted into an objet d’art, heated by the Tea Fire, along with a lightbulb, a pile of coins, an antique pistol, and a copy of Br’er Rabbit .
I drive a road through the hills and along the ridgeline above Santa Barbara with a scientist who studies, among other things, wildfire fuel. He looks at photographs taken from satellites and airplanes. From these photographs, he makes maps. Meaning in no way any disrespect to his science, I think of him as a mapper.
We can see Santa Cruz and the three islets of Anacapa Island and oil platforms off the coast, and the city of Santa Barbara surrounded by suburbs, and the suburbs surrounded on three sides by fuel in the form of dense chaparral. In places, orchards and highways form what may be thought of as firebreaks, separating the fuel of chaparral from the fuel of suburbia.
The Spaniards who ranched in California called the dense shrubby vegetation chaparral because it reminded them of scrub oak hillsides in Spain called chaparro . Cowboys chasing cattle into the chaparral invented chaps to protect their legs. In the heat of summer, they would have seen the chaparral burn just as it burns today.
The mapper carries binoculars and a camera and several maps. “Avocado and citrus orchards and golf courses make good firebreaks,” he tells me.
He talks on and off about climate change. He wonders if the chaparral is entering a time when the fire season will extend throughout the whole year, when fires will burn in winter as they burn in summer. He comments, too, on the spread of housing and human activity deeper into the chaparral. It may be that an increase in fire frequency will come from climate change, but it could just as well come from increased sources of ignition, from the close proximity of humans, matches, and fuel.
The road, narrow and steep and winding, will not let two cars pass comfortably. It is not the sort of road I would associate with southern California. It is a road that would be at ease in parts of Montana or Alaska.
We pull off to look at fuel. “This one,” the mapper says, “is Ceanothus megacarpus, or big-pod ceanothus.” It is a lilac, in the buckthorn family. “Only the leaves and small branches burn in the first fire,” he tells me. “The leaves burn off and the trunks stay behind. But the trunks die and dry out and are burned in the next fire.”
Big-pod ceanothus is not the sort of plant one would grow in a firebreak. Its leaves carry flammable resin. Its seeds drop to the ground beneath it, saturating the soil, but only germinate after a fire. They germinate in response to heat or smoke or the presence of charcoal. A stand of big-pod ceanothus is a sure sign of returning fire.
“They take about eight years to mature,” the mapper says. “If the fire return rate is too quick, they will be replaced by laurel sumac. That’s what happened in the Santa Monica Mountains.”
If the land does not burn, the big-pod
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