#wildfires

#wildfires

"It's an extremely difficult area to access, even for walkers. The plot is fenced and gated, and the fire didn't start on its own. We'll see what the investigation reveals."

The spate of wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods fueled by manmade climate change that have plagued vast swaths of the country in recent years, are changing the housing industry.

The Nova Scotia supreme court acknowledged the urgency of the wildfire crisis, it warned that if individual rights aren't protected, they can be eroded in a way that eventually affects everyone.

At his home in Pasadena, high schooler Atticus Jackson frantically shoved his belongings into his car as the sky turned a deep orange. A few hundred feet away, the fire climbed up the mountain and a cloud of red and gray smoke obscured the view.

Recovery from the Hermit's Peak-Calf Canyon Fire has been daunting, with residents waiting for disaster relief payments while floods contaminate drinking water downstream.

Researchers have known since at least 2008 that wildfires can create chromium-6, but a new study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology in November, is the first to report details such as how long it might persist in groundwater.

One real benchmark would be that there would be less interest in the insurance commissioners position. Because it's always been kind of under-the-radar. It's become so high-profile because of all the problems that we have.

The proposal for ARCO 2026 responds to the duality of a constructed space, the Guest Lounge, and an evoked space, the forests of the northwestern Iberian Peninsula that burned uncontrollably this past August.

The resulting anger directed at the insurance industry over how it has handled claims has helped draw four Democrats into the race, who will be vying this weekend for a critical endorsement at the party's annual convention in San Francisco ahead of the June 2 primary election. "We haven't seen this level of competition and, frankly, choice on the Democratic side since it first became an elected office in 1990,"

When the blazes displaced thousands of residents in and around Pacific Palisades and Altadena, landlords hiked up rental prices across Los Angeles County despite calls from officials to crack down on price going, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing data from Rent Brigade. The tenant advocacy group analyzed Zillow listings in the year after the fires and found 18,360 potential instances of rent hikes exceeding 10 percent, potentially violating the anti-gouging rules signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom on Jan. 7, 2025, the day the fires broke out.

Wildfires are no longer a once-a-year emergency in Canada. In 2025, fires burned more than 8.3 million hectares across multiple provinces (roughly the size of New Brunswick), making it the second-worst wildfire season in the country. Some experts warn this could become the new normal. At The Walrus Talks Wildfires, expert voices from the health, climate, policy, and technology sectors come together to explore the impact of the wildfire crisis.

“fireball burning everything in its path”

Newsom's administration has touted his climate leadership, which has led to California's historic build-out of battery storage and the landmark program designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, newly renamed cap-and-invest - in California. But some environmental advocates and experts are second-guessing his climate record, including his support of legislation streamlining approval of new oil and gas wells, and not advocating for legislation that aims to hold industries accountable for fossil fuel-driven climate disasters.

Southern California Edison says that with the help of those state laws it expects to pay little or even none of the damage costs of the Eaton fire, which its equipment is suspected of sparking. But in recent filings to state officials, fire victims and consumer advocates say the law has gone too far and made the utilities' unaccountable for their mistakes, leading to even more fires. "What do you think will happen if you constantly protect perpetrators of fires," said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.

Since the 1990s, American homes have been systematically underinsured in the event that they are completely destroyed. Study after study shows that, counter to the public's understanding, many home insurance policies are not required to cover total replacement of homes. The trend, though decades old, has been somewhat hidden. But climate-driven events that cause massive destruction, especially wildfires, are revealing just how pervasive and severe the problem has become.

A year after the January wildfires, most businesses in affected neighborhoods remain shuttered, with those reopened reporting roughly half their previous customer base and revenue. More than 1,800 small businesses across burn zones face an uncertain future, with owners struggling to navigate insurance claims and cleanup costs largely unsupported. Business leaders and major developers are pushing officials to speed up permitting and inspections, saying faster reconstruction is critical for jobs and tax revenue.

My eyes zero in on a red door, its frame one of the few surviving remnants of a home. I pull it closer to me, and in moments I see a fraction of the house as it once was - now I'm in a cozy kitchen with blurred but welcoming pictures in the background and a grandfather celebrating a birthday. A voice-over tells me that it was Alexander, a grandfather, who painted the door red.

"Because I don't know if I've made a financial decision that's gonna ruin us, or are we just going to be optimistic and hope that it will work out?"

There were no stars in the October sky. No moon that 64-year-old Masuma Khan could see from the narrow window of the California City Immigration Processing Center. "No planes," she said, recalling her confinement. Once a prison, the facility in the Mojave Desert, located 67 miles east of Bakersfield, reopened in April to hold people in removal proceedings, including Khan. It was not the kind of place where she imagined ending up - not after living in the country for 28 years, caring for her daughter and surviving one of California's deadliest wildfires, the Eaton fire.

According to Mike Zolnikov, who tends a couple of acres of Pinot Noir and an acre of Chardonnay on a flat, slightly soggy patch of the central Willamette Valley, in Oregon, it had been a once-in-a-decade growing season. "Not too hot, not too wet," he recalled, wistfully. "It would have been a really great year." A few hundred miles south, in California's Napa Valley, the winemaker Ashley Egelhoff, of Honig Vineyard and Winery, was feeling similarly about her Cabernet and Sauvignon Blanc.

Ten English fire services tackled a record number of grassland, woodland and crop fires during what was the UK's hottest spring and summer on record, figures show. In total nearly 27,000 wildfires were dealt with by fire services in England during the prolonged dry weather of 2025, according to analysis by PA Media. One fire chief said the summer was one of the most challenging that crews had ever faced and the frequency and intensity of the wildfires was putting a strain on resources.

PG&E, the utility company that last week reintroduced one third of San Franciscans to the Dickensian joys of wearing coats indoors and tabulating the losses of spoiled food by candlelight, is not popular. Last night, in a move that would be on the nose if you could locate your face in the dark, a planned power outage was rudely preceded by an unplanned power outage.

Described as the "western hemisphere's most sophisticated weather-observing and environmental-monitoring system," the GOES-R satellite series is capable of providing data from diverse weather phenomena. This year, it captured several images of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano, which erupted from December 2024 to February 2025. In March, the lava fountain reached heights of over 1,000 feet, the highest it's been in about 50 years.