California Today: Reporting on Wildfires Felt ‘Like a Country at War’
|
Version 0 of 1. Good morning. (Want to get California Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.) Thomas Fuller, the San Francisco bureau chief for The New York Times, describes his experience covering the fires in Northern California. I keep a satellite phone in the trunk of my car, the same one I used to cover disasters and insurgencies in places like Myanmar and Nepal. But I never thought I would need it in Napa Valley, not for a wildfire anyway. During a week spent covering the fires in Northern California, I fell back on my training as a foreign correspondent: finding the satellite on the smoky horizon, locking in the phone’s antenna and dictating paragraphs to patient editors. But this was not a foreign land. It was my own country, and the conveniences that we take for granted had collapsed. Traffic lights went black and commerce shut down. Streets that were normally filled with tourists in the charming towns of wine country were deserted except for crews of exhausted firefighters, sheriff’s deputies and a few reporters. In the evacuation zones, rows of destroyed houses made it feel like a country at war, emptied of its civilian population. Small fires seemed to pop up everywhere. As I raced down narrow country roads to meet deadlines, I caught glimpses of smoldering embers on tree stumps a few feet away. I felt vulnerable while driving through tunnels of vegetation — it would be easy to be surrounded by fire and trapped. Everything smelled of smoke: my clothes, my car, my bag, my fingers. I feel enormously grateful to the dozens of people who took the time to articulate their grieving, some while standing in the rubble of their homes. The fires stripped away their privacy. Their kitchens, their exercise equipment, their hobbies — their lives — were in cinders at our feet. I think back to meeting Lisa Layman, her azure eyes staring at the ashes of her home at Coffey Park in Santa Rosa. She was recovering from cancer and recently had a kidney removed. The night before, she had escaped with her Bible and a scrapbook of her son’s early years. That is all she had. It is a reporter’s job to bring empathy to disasters like this. But I wondered how I could ever comprehend the magnitude of her loss. • Although the direct danger from wildfires may be waning, there is an unseen hazard from household chemicals and pesticides in hollowed-out homes. [The New York Times] • Many people did not receive an emergency alert during the wildfires because counties have struggled to collect numbers as people shift from landlines to cellphones. [The Sacramento Bee] • Survivor’s guilt is a legitimate concern for those who had their home spared while their neighbor’s was destroyed. [The Mercury News] • Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital stayed open throughout the blaze, with doctors and nurses delivering 36 babies and treating four firefighters. [The San Francisco Chronicle] • Is it the new normal to wear gas masks as the air quality in the Bay Area has deteriorated? [Opinion | The New York Times] (Please note: We regularly highlight articles on news sites that have limited access for nonsubscribers.) • San Diego has eagerly prepared its bid to host Amazon’s second headquarters even though only two Fortune 500 companies are headquartered there. [The San Diego Union-Tribune] • The economy of Los Angeles and Orange Counties reached $1 trillion last year, trailing only the New York City-New Jersey metro area, after gross domestic product rose 2.1 percent. [The Orange County Register] • Silicon Valley is home to several “unicorns,” private companies valued at more than $1 billion. But those valuations may be a bit of myth — or perhaps wishful thinking. [The New York Times] • A new lawsuit against Tesla alleges that the company failed to address complaints about racist language and drawings. [The Mercury News] • A third gender option, nonbinary, will join male and female on state identification and birth certificates beginning in 2019. [The San Francisco Chronicle] • Uber and other ride-hailing apps may make traffic worse by reducing the use of public transit, suggests a new survey by U.C. Davis researchers. [The New York Times] • All puppies, kittens and rabbits sold in California’s pet stores must be from shelters or rescue centers beginning in 2019. Individuals will still be able to buy from private breeders. [The New York Times] • Those wanting to skip security lines will soon be able to fly on a private jet between Oakland International Airport and Hollywood Burbank Airport. A one-way fare is $129. [The Mercury News] To battle the scourge of wildfires this past week, planes and helicopters have dropped several millions of gallons of fire retardant ahead of the flames. Unlike water, retardant is not distributed directly onto a fire. “It’s not actually intended to put the fire out,” said George Matousek, the product steward for Phos-Chek, which makes the retardant used by government agencies. “It’s intended to reduce the intensity of the flame so a firefighter with a shovel or hand tool doesn’t get burned up.” The key ingredient in retardant is ammonium phosphate, which produces nonflammable carbon — think of a diamond or pencil lead — when it chemically reacts with plant cellulose, Mr. Matousek said. Fire retardant is essentially high-quality fertilizer and is not considered dangerous for people or plants. But it can be toxic to fish, Mr. Matousek said, by causing underwater plant life to grow and choke the oxygen from the water. The United States Forest Service bans its use within 300 feet of a waterway unless human life or property is threatened. “When you dump that type of nutrient load on a landscape, it’s going to change a lot of dynamics,” said Richard Halsey, director of the California Chaparral Institute, which seeks to preserve native shrubland habitats. “It does cause significant harm to aquatic organisms.” Where fire retardant lands is also important for its efficacy. Because it needs to be applied in a continuous line, it is typically dyed red or pink. California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: CAtoday@nytimes.com. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from U.C. Berkeley. |