Australia’s “black summer” of 2020 – the most devastating wildfire season in the modern recorded history of that continent – was not only responsible for a level of devastation that stunned all who either witnessed it in person or saw the heart-breaking photos of it, it is also thought by many involved in studying global climate change to be a precursor of wildland fire seasons to come.
As I began my early morning walk down the hill into town, just as I was putting on my sunglasses to face the rising sun that always greets me this time of year, I realized that they weren’t needed – the smoke from the many forest and rangeland fires burning across the Pacific Northwest had reached our little corner of Oregon, turning the Sun’s disk from its usual blazing yellow into a muted dark red.
I couldn’t help but find it particularly ironic that the day after the first rains my home state of Oregon had seen for months finally arrived, providing much-needed help to the valiant fire fighters working around the clock trying to extinguish the massive forest fires raging throughout the state, that a copy of Edward Struzik’s new “Firestorm” arrived on my desk from Island Press.
A social media message from the Oregon Department of Forestry about the coïncidence of the expected eclipse-viewing tourist deluge with the peak of the state’s wildfire season got me thinking about just how wildfires effect both ecosystems as well as economies. However a wildfire in central Oregon is not the same type of event as, say, a wildfire in Nebraska, or in southern California, for that matter.