california history. ahh! lucky for us, the fires hadn t made it to where my family lives in oakland, but the air had gotten so bad that it wasn t safe to breathe. so my wife and i took me, the asthmatic, our elderly parents and kids straight to vegas. not because we wanted to gamble, but because it was close and there were cheap flights. back then, it seemed like a once in a lifetime thing, but every year since, the fires in california have gotten worse. the dixie fire. the hill fire. there are more towns being burned to the ground, more people whose lives are devastated, and more wildfire refugees. this episode is about californians and fire, because we ve got to learn how to get along. now, if you re thinking that you re safe because you live outside of california, nope. wildfires happen across america, from alaska to florida, and they happen all over the world. wildfires sweeping across australia cape town sonia and turkey. all the way to the north pole
aka, good fire. but you ve got to know what you re doing to get the permit so we re going to take out this top little corner, but we re going to take our time. today i m going to hang out with some people who definitely know what they re doing at a prescribed burn on private property. always try to be downhill of the pyre. leading the way are zeke lunder and hank, a professor of pyro geography at pico state university. they ve been living with this extreme fear of fire. so we got this effort started locally to make it easier for land owners to burn their own land. the objective is to not kill the big trees, but we do want to kill little baby trees and kill brush. the more that communities that live in these kinds of environments can use fire, the better off they re going to be. if you each grab a torch, we ll get moving on this. my 8-year-old dreams come
going to do naturally. it s the only way to manage that much land. is there a part of this that maybe you feel like if we had been in charge of this land, this would not have happened? this fire absolutely would not have happened if it were cared for by tribal people. and we want to be able to share our knowledge, and people are continually asking us, you know, can we do cultural burning. and it s like, well, are you tribal? and why would you want to do cultural burning without us? oh, yeah. look at what happened when the white man got yoga. look at how that went. we re starting to try to sway the agencies to think about native burning. yep. yeah. and that s passing on that traditional knowledge that it does have value, even if you re not indian. like here and now today, how can we change human behavior and how can we rebuild that relationship of humanity to this earth? the only way to maintain
fire to reproduce, for real. but once white caolonizers came west, timber became a precious commodity, and the fire enemy to be stamped out. then in 1910, wildfires destroyed 3 million acres across the u.s. west, so the u.s. forest service made it their policy to put out any fire as soon as it started. as a result, forests became dense and overgrown. there were too many small young trees and dead leaves and dry brush accumulated on the forest floor. add drought and climate change to the mix, and you have the perfect kindling for a wildfire. isn t it also part of the wildfires started to do things that people haven t seen fires do before? one thing i ve noticed is how fast the wildfires move. you could look at it one hour, and in the next hour, the situation is completely changed. i think we definitely saw that on the cal dor fire this past year. the best way to think about is
get the lessons. yeah, that s perfect. wow. i m in a very zen mind state. there s a lot of people who could benefit from doing this. you ain t kidding. i pay $125 an hour for therapy. i m just going to come up here. it s hard to see that the leaders that are supposed to be in charge of california s fire still feel like they re at war with a wildfire. and no one s getting it right. we re spending billions of dollars a year and still burning down the tires. we re at a spot that fire won. we ve been fighting fire if a hundred years and now it s teamed up with climate change. we need a truce. come up with some terms of settlement. like, we ve occupied fire s territory. and if you build a settlement in fire s territory, you can keep living there, but you ve got to be all right with fire coming in wherever it wants, you know? yeah. it s so weird that like a second ago, there was like five-foot flames. now it s just sort of out. it s super fascinating.