In the days lead­ing up to Labor Day week­end, offi­cials with Wash­ing­ton State’s Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources — from Com­mis­sion­er Hilary Franz on down — spoke out as loud­ly as they could in an attempt to head off irre­spon­si­ble behav­ior that could lead to death, injury, and prop­er­ty destruc­tion dur­ing fire sea­son.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, some peo­ple either nev­er heard or nev­er heed­ed their message.

By the time the sun had set yes­ter­day, the Pacif­ic North­west had joined Cal­i­for­nia in firestorm mis­ery, with hun­dreds of thou­sands of acres new­ly burnt or burning.

Smoke blown east by gusty winds began pol­lut­ing the Puget Sound low­lands and Ore­gon’s Willamette Val­ley not long before sun­down on Labor Day, caus­ing air qual­i­ty to rapid­ly plum­met. Urban Pacif­ic North­west­ern­ers are advised to lim­it time out­doors, keep the win­dows closed, and run an air puri­fi­er if they have one.

“I’m sick, the amount of new fires today is unre­al,” tweet­ed DNR fire mete­o­rol­o­gist Josh Clark. “Ear­ly esti­mates fig­ure 288,000 acres burned today across the state. Numer­ous homes and prop­er­ty destroyed, 30,000+ with­out pow­er. Every one of these was 100% human-caused, and there­fore 100% preventable.”

A map show­ing new fires in Wash­ing­ton State (Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources)

“Plus con­di­tions were very well fore­cast­ed by your­self and many oth­ers,” replied John Abat­zoglou. “Believe that your efforts + mes­sag­ing do help; but these cap­stone wind events empha­size what sci­ence, info, sup­pres­sion alone can’t fix.”

With dry and windy con­di­tions like those that we’re see­ing now, all it takes is one spark to start a red hot con­fla­gra­tion that no fire­fight­ing force can contain.

The news com­ing out of Cal­i­for­nia should have served as a warn­ing to us.

Big Basin Red­woods State Park recent­ly lost all of its his­toric build­ings to fire. Many of the red­woods sur­vived (they’re a hardy, fire resis­tant species) but the park is no longer the lush green oasis that it once was. Its CCC-built vis­i­tors cen­ter, con­struct­ed in the 1930s, is no more. The park is expect­ed to be closed to vis­i­tors for at least a year due to the dam­age caused by the CZU com­plex.

Sad­ly, some Pacif­ic North­west­ern­ers chose not to exer­cise cau­tion, and as a con­se­quence, Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon have seen fires sprout up all over.

The small town of Malden, Wash­ing­ton (near Pull­man), suf­fered a fate sim­i­lar to Big Basin today. In just a few hours, eighty per­cent of the town burned to the ground, includ­ing the post office, the fire sta­tion, and city hall. The dev­as­ta­tion was doc­u­ment­ed by media out­lets based in Spokane and Pull­man.

A struc­ture is reduced to its foun­da­tions in Malden (Pho­to: Whit­man Coun­ty Sher­if­f’s office)

Mean­while, down in Cal­i­for­nia, the Creek Fire is rag­ing out of control.

“The Creek Fire is up to 130,000 acres (203 square miles) and is 0% con­tained,” report­ed Marie Edinger of KMPH. “The Fres­no Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office says 25,000–30,000 peo­ple have been evac­u­at­ed, and that many of those peo­ple should expect to be away from home for a long while.”

Extreme­ly high, kiln-like tem­per­a­tures, smoky skies, and falling ash have made life in the Los Ange­les area hideous­ly uncom­fort­able.

Sear­ing sum­mer fires are not a new prob­lem on the Left Coast, of course.

But fire sea­son did­n’t used to be this dead­ly or destruc­tive.

“Through only ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, wild­fires so far this year have burned more than 2 mil­lion acres in the state, sur­pass­ing 2018 for the most acres destroyed in a year, accord­ing to fig­ures from the Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Forestry and Fire Pro­tec­tion and Times research,” the Los Ange­les Times report­ed.

The cli­mate cri­sis has exac­er­bat­ed the com­mon­al­i­ty and sever­i­ty of extreme weath­er events of all kinds. While the Left Coast burns from incred­i­bly destruc­tive wild­fires, the Gulf Coast is grap­pling with the threat of treach­er­ous hur­ri­canes like Lau­ra, which recent­ly pum­meled the Lake Charles area in Louisiana.

We have only our­selves to blame for the dam­age we’ve caused to our cli­mate. Don­ald Trump and his enablers can sneer that it’s a hoax all they want — Moth­er Nature does­n’t care what they think. There’s a mes­sage in all of these extreme weath­er events: rethink your unsus­tain­able and pol­lut­ing ways.

The Earth is our com­mon home. And our only home: there is no Plan­et B. Yet we’re trash­ing it. Destroy­ing it. At breath­tak­ing speed.

If we’re to save what is left of the home we’re bor­row­ing from our chil­dren, we are going to have to change how we live, work, play, and gov­ern ourselves.

It is clear that just ask­ing peo­ple nice­ly not set off fire­works, burn debris, or dis­charge firearms recre­ation­al­ly is not work­ing. It’s time for Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, Cal­i­for­nia, and oth­er states to take a tougher line against activ­i­ties that can lead to the rapid destruc­tion of every­thing from state parks to small towns. Activ­i­ties like burn­ing debris should be pro­hib­it­ed. Oth­er activ­i­ties should require permits.

And for all our sakes, let’s make sure we sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the bud­get of the Depart­ment of Nat­ur­al Resources. We need to not only beef up our fire pre­ven­tion pro­grams, but geo­log­ic haz­ards map­ping too, for we live in an area prone to tsunamis, lahars, vol­canic erup­tions, and landslides.