Ghost Tree

This would be a better answer to last week's challenge, especially since I don't think another color, this week's mono challenge would do it justice. Except for the blue sky this is basically a mono scene. The Nun's fire in 2017 took quite a toll on this park, and was stopped on the ridge above our house...the same ridge the Glass fire tore down into our neighborhood in 2020. It has taken quite awhile to see just how many trees were irreparably burned in 2017.  The dead trees are just now beginning to fall all over the park. This one seems to retain its dignity and stature even as it's bark falls off and it is beginning to lose some branches. 

It is another example of the conflicts and confusions brought about by climate change. Fires brought about the landscape of burned trees that is still evident in the hills all around here*, yet is is climate change and drought that parched the land, brought about the fires and dried up the reservoirs that provide water to put out fires and nurture new trees.

We are constantly faced with the reminders of these terrifying and unstoppable conflagrations, but we are learning more from each one how to anticipate them, defend against them and how to fight them.  The Tubbs fire burned down the side of a mountain and jumped six lanes of freeway in a matter of hours. We knew how to put out forest fires, but we were totally unprepared for a firestorm of this magnitude.

We should have learned something from the Berkeley-Oakland Hills fire of 1991, which burned with the same kind of ferocity, trapped people on narrow roads making evacuation impossible, and killed 24 people. We stood in front of our house and watched that fire burn toward us, pushed by gale force Santa Ana winds. Firefighters from all over the state made a stand at the Claremont Hotel , the winds changed and the fire burned south across the hills instead of west toward us.

It is the supreme irony that both the Berkeley Hills fire and the Tubbs fires had previously burned almost the same footprint, the Berkeley Hills in 1924 and the Tubbs (called the Hanley fire) in 1964, yet both areas are being rebuilt with the same winding roads and the same difficulty of evacuation.

It is a story that has been replayed all over the state since 2017.

We are in the midst of fire season once again. The winds are picking up, the newspaper stories are reliving the Tubbs fire on it's 5th anniversary, and everyone is on edge. Our main consolation is the fact that Cal Fire sends out the everything in its arsenal from air tankers and helicopters to hand crews at the first report of a fire. Everybody understands the meaning of these conditions and everybody is taking them seriously. 

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