California Fire Prompts Evacuation

Facts

• On Sat., fire officials in Weed, California said that a raging wildfire sweeping through the rural community has destroyed at least 100 homes and other buildings, injured at least two, and forced thousands to evacuate their homes.
• The blaze, labeled the Mill Fire, began on Fri. and quickly blew through a neighborhood in Weed with a community of 2.6k people, before raging on outside of the town. As of Sat. morning, the fire is reportedly around 20% contained.
• Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for Siskiyou County to make state and federal resources available for residents. He also warned evacuated residents that they should plan to be out of their homes for "a minimum [of] several days."
• At the time the Mill Fire began, 9k customers reportedly lost power. PacifiCorp, the power supplier for the area said the outages were due to the wildfire.
• This is the third wildfire in three days in California, which currently faces a prolonged drought and a heatwave, with temperatures expected to breach 100F in many areas through the Labor Day weekend.

Sources: Associated Press, Guardian, US News, NPR Online News, and Al Jazeera.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Washington Post. This is the latest in a pattern of catastrophic California fires and signals the increasing urgency of climate change. Every-increasing temperature - which isn't unique to just California - is putting everyone at risk; something must be done.
• Narrative B, as provided by Financial Times. It's easy to dismiss any extreme weather event as a consequence of climate change, but in reality they're usually influenced by a myriad of factors that have nothing to do with it. More research is needed before we can establish any direct causal link between the two.