Oof [work, california, crickets]

The Lake Fire is very close to the Sedgwick Reserve*, where I did a fair amount of cricket field work when I was a postdoc in California. This is not especially surprising, when you consider the terrain and how dry it must be right now. I believe it was also a relatively wet winter, which sounds nice for fire prevention, except it means that all of the introduced grasses grow tall and then dry out, providing even more fuel to burn. People who lived in the region were very concerned about wildfire possibilities when we were there carrying out fieldwork, and it isn't as though anything has dramatically changed to reduce the fire risk. Basically, if you snap your fingers too hard, a fire will start.

The main fire at the time was south of Lake Cachuma, so we could see the light of the fire at night, and the cloud of smoke during the day, but the fire couldn't head in our direction. The aftermath was apocalyptic to drive through.

Apparently the Lake Fire is currently at 8% containment. Fire containment usually involves emergency bulldozing efforts, which aren't always possible across steep mountainous cliff and hillside areas.

It is all grim.



*A news article in a big national paper also noted that it's near the Neverland Ranch, which I guess might be more familiar to most people than the Sedgwick Reserve.