Scott Mc Kiernan Presents zReportage.com Story of the Week #778: TUESDAY March 16, 2021: BURNING CALIFORNIA TO SAVE IT Sacramento Bee award winning staff photographers Renée C. Byer and Paul Kitagaki Jr. together with Outdoors reporter Nicole Blanchard and Dale Kasler who covers climate change.
zReportage.com Story of the Week #778: TUESDAY March 16, 2021: BURNING CALIFORNIA TO SAVE IT by Sacramento Bee award winning staff photographers Renee C. Byer and Paul Kitagaki together with Outdoors reporter Nicole Blanchard and Dale Kasler who covers climate change: On a crisp, breezy February morning near Lake Tahoe, a crew of five firefighters descended on a snow-covered, heavily-forested park straddling the California-Nevada border. They came to start fires, not put them out. California and the West are just months removed from one of the worst wildfire seasons in modern history. Climate change is ramping up the hazards, and a dry winter suggests another tough year is coming. Desperate for a solution, states are finding that lighting a fire can be a good way of preventing one. ‘It’s the closest thing to a consensus in the fire community,’ said Timothy Ingalsbee, director of Firefighters United. ‘We need more of it.’ A growing army of experts argues that ‘prescribed fire’ planned, deliberate burns, can reduce the volume of combustible vegetation from parched landscapes and ease a crisis gripping the western third of the country. Welcome to: BURNING CALIFORNIA TO SAVE IT
Scott Mc Kiernan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ZUMA Press