From TIME's Archive: The Great California Fires

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A Losing Battle
As more houses are dispersed through the fire zone — whether summer cabins or new McMansions — both firefighters and budgets are stretched ever more thinly. Last year the Forest Service spent a record $2.5 billion fighting wildfires that burned 9.9 million acres (4 million hectares), another record. Even though California has boosted spending on firefighting since the catastrophic blazes of 2003 — the state set aside $850 million for this year — when a megafire like this one strikes, officers on the ground quickly hit the limits of what they can do. "You're putting people between the unstoppable force of a wildfire and the immovable object of a home," says Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. "That's as unsafe a position as you can be in as a firefighter."

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A frightening possibility is that the October wildfires may be only the start — not just of future fires in future seasons but of more to come this year. The Santa Ana winds have just begun and typically peak in the winter. What's more, there is not likely to be much relief from drought conditions. The National Weather Service predicts a La Niña pattern this winter, which occurs when sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean are cooler than usual. La Niña usually translates to dryer and hotter weather in the American South.

The long-term forecast isn't any better. Few scientists expect dry areas like the Southwest to do anything but grow dryer still. The past several years have been among the dryest on record in the West, leaving the Colorado River — which supplies water to 30 million people — at its lowest level in 85 years of measurements. If the mountain snowpack that stores much of the water used by the West were to melt because of higher temperatures, all the reservoirs in the world might not be enough to keep the region wet. Even if the effects of climate change turn out to be milder than feared, the same population growth that puts people in the way of fires also strains the scarce water supplies needed to fight them. In San Diego County, home to one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the U.S., water use has risen by about 34% since 1995. "We've set ourselves up for this," says JPL's Patzert. "We've been handing out building permits without considering the requirements for water."

The Outlook
Does all this mean that the only way to stop the cycle of catastrophic forest fires is to change the way Americans live in the West? Probably — but the transition will be painful. Population growth in the affected areas has implicitly been supported by federal policies that protect private homes even if they're built in risky areas. This, in turn, has caused the Forest Service — which is supposed to perform a range of wilderness functions — to become largely a firefighting agency, devoting nearly half its budget to that one job. That has caught the eye of Congress, which wants spending to be brought under control. The loss in recent years of several firefighters who died protecting homes has further caused Washington to rethink its policies. "So much development in California has followed the pioneering spirit," says Keeley of the USGS. "But we're reaching critical limits in growth, and people have to realize that they will lose certain freedoms if they want to be safe."

Wisconsin's Radeloff says those who choose to build homes in fire zones are "gambling with high stakes — and right now many of them are losing." One answer might be to make clear to those who choose to build in the highest-risk areas that they are effectively on their own — a message the insurance industry, which has grown reluctant to protect exposed properties, is communicating to Western home-owners. But while it's easy to see that logic — and to point fingers at the very victims of the fires — this week it's impossible not to focus more on the terror and worry of those whose homes are at risk, like Lee Hamilton. By the time the 60-year-old San Diego radio personality woke to a reverse-911 call early on the morning of Oct. 22, embers were already raining over his house. Hamilton barely had time to save his 93-year-old mother and a suitcase full of insurance papers before fleeing. "When I pulled out of my driveway, my mind-set was, I was saying good-bye to all my memories," he says. "I thought the whole neighborhood was going to be leveled." When he returned the next morning, fewer than half the homes in his area had survived — including his own. But the sheer scale of the destruction in the city Hamilton has called home for 22 years has left him wondering how San Diego will go on. "I'm mostly numb. I really felt we were losing everything."

Of course, nature rarely abides apocalypse. By the time the flames finally begin to go out, the charred forests will be on their way to rebirth. "The plants will put in new growth soon," says David Weise, a project leader with the Forest Service's Forest Fire Laboratory in Riverside, Calif. "The forest is amazingly resilient."

So are people. After the devastating wildfires of 2003, 1993 and 1970, Californians rebuilt and returned to the scorched hills in ever greater numbers. No doubt they will do so again after the wildfires of 2007. But the larger question is, should they?

—With reporting by Carolyn Sayre/New York, Matt Kettmann/Santa Barbara and Jill Underwood and Gary Warth/San Diego

The original version of this article misstated the name of the San Diego reporter as Matt Warth. His name is Gary Warth.