Whenever I wish to learn about how wild fires behave in different parts of the United States, I take one of the volumes of Prof. Stephen J. Pyne‘s unrivaled To The Last Smoke Series from University of Arizona Press. Not surprisingly, this past week had me reaching for the volume California; A Fire Survey.
I suspect that Prof. Pyne, one of the foremost experts in the world on the history of wild fire behavior, has been much in demand these past days. Indeed, he gave an interview, along with Dr. Jack Cohen, to Thomas Curwen of The Los Angeles Times. The article, “Inconvenient truths about the fires burning in Los Angeles from two fire experts” was published on 11 January behind the newspaper’s paywall, however an overview of it is freely available (at the time of this writing at least) in the Essential California newsletter under the title “Sobering advice from two experts on how to prevent similar ravaging blazes.”
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