Few states have influenced national fire policy and practice as much as California, for good and ill. Two road trips, one south, one north, have reacquainted me with the California scene – a bit of ground truthing for what the literature and chronicles say. These are, as before, the field notes of a scholar on fire.
The project grew, and may well grow further in the future. Rather than delay the texts further until I could insert suitable illustrations, I’ve decided to post the texts, with the figures to follow. The fascinating story of fire in the Sierra parks is, alas, yet to come.
Conflagrating California - a prolegomenon to fire’s Golden State
- California’s invented fire cultures
- State of emergency: CalFire, CalEMA, and catastrophe as catalyst
Cajon pass: portal to Southern California
- Four forests: Southern California’s fire rectangle [composite of all] The Signs of the Four:: Fueling the San Bernardino; Ascending the Angeles; Igniting the Cleveland; Blowing in the Los Padres wind
- Three parks: traversing the Transverse Range
- Imperium in imperio: Los Angeles County Fire Department
- Mending firewalls - thoughts on fuelbreaks and defensible space
- Force majeure – Vandenberg AFB
- Airing differences: South Coast Air Quality Management District
Interlude: ne’er the twain - charismatic metaflora; fire busts, north and south
Arch Rock: portal to Northern California
- The Tahoe crucible
- The pastures of purgatory – ranching and fire, with special attention to the Mendocino National Forest
- Working fire – a working meditation on the Plumas National Forest
- The Big Ones - the urban fires that bookend a century
- Lightning’s lottery
- Vignettes of primitive America: the Sierra parks [pending]
Ancillary essays
Subprime fires – an interview with Harve, hotshot turned hustler, on the relationship between modern fires and finances
