This year has been a horrible year for California and its wildfires. The firefighters haven't had a moments rest with the fires burning out of control across the state. The latest one actually hits close to home for me and is destroying a lot of the wilderness I used as landscape in my book Day After Disaster. For a shocking video of a much loved mountain lake losing its vegetation visit:
https://www.facebook.com/Author.S.Hathaway. We are having so many fires this year in California because we have no water. Everything is dry as a bone and ready to light up at a moment's notice. Also, the fact that wild fires are suppressed doesn't help either.
That's right our constant suppression of every little fire is not helping in the long run. The National Autubon Society states in its Field Guide to California that fires play a vital role to California's ecosystem. They clean out all of the dead plant matter littering the forest floor and add essential nutrients to the soil. It goes on to say that there are many California native plants, like the Manzanita, Mariposa lily and fire poppies, that actually depend on fire to reproduce. These plants have natural fire helpers like flammable oils and natural defenses like fire retardant root balls.
Fires in California have always burned. They used to be set by lightening. Then the native American used controlled burns to burn out the undergrowth to make hunting easier.
Now-a-days every fire is suppressed with extreme focus and nothing is allowed to burn. This makes fires a lot less frequent but when they happen they are much more intense, much like the one that is burning in El Dorado County and has now engulfed over 70,000 acres of wilderness. These super intense fires destroy the natural defenses that plants have developed and leave the ecosystem stripped of life.
For the good of California we need to find a balance. A system of burning so these super intense fires don't happen.
Sara F. Hathaway
Sara F. Hathaway is the author of
the The Changing Earth Series:
Day After Disaster and
Without Land. She also
hosts
The Changing Earth Podcast which blends her fictional stories with
educational survival tips. Sara grew up in the country where she developed a
profound interest in the natural world around her. After graduating with honors
from The California State University of Sacramento with a Bachelor of Science
in Business Administration, she launched into a career in business management. In
her fictional novels her research and experience with survival techniques and
forgotten life-sustaining methods of the generations past come to the forefront
in a action packed adventures. She has used her background in business
management to pave new roads for fictional authors to follow and she delights
in helping other achieve the same success. She currently lives with her husband
and two sons in California where she is at work on the sequel to her first two novels.
For more information and a free copy of “The Go-Bag Essentials” featuring
everything you need to have to leave your home in a disaster visit:
www.authorsarafhathaway.com
