2020 California Wildfires
By Sanjoli Gupta
Swirling orange clouds filled the burning sky. Bronze beams of light filtered through the panes of my windows, rich in color and jarringly different from the everyday California blue. I stepped into my backyard to look at the devouring smoke of the apocalypse. Thin layers of dust coated the tables outside and the air was thick with particles that itched my throat. California was burning. It was like a dystopian science fiction novel and yet it was real.
The 2020 California wildfires that caused this hellish September sky also killed 33 people and displaced 280,000 (Bay Area News Group 2021, Adger, et al 2020.) These 280,000 were the newest additions to a growing group of people all over the world, climate migrants, who are either forced or voluntarily leave their homes for a temporary or permanent duration due to changes in the environment that negatively impact their life or living conditions (IOM 2019).
The impacts of both climate change and climate migration have been growing increasingly severe. In 2020, the US experienced a record-high 22 ‘billion-dollar’ climate-induced events, including hurricanes, storms, droughts and wildfires, causing a total of 95 billion dollars in damage and the displacement of 1.7 million Americans (Peterson 2022, Smith 2021) The wildfires that impacted California, Oregon and Washington burned down 10.2 million acres of forest (Smith 2021).
In 2018’s Camp Fire in California, the town of Paradise burned down, causing the neighboring city of Chico to face a flood of people even though they already had less than 1 percent of housing available, leading to a 21 percent increase in home prices in the two months following the fire. In addition, the homeless population in Chico rose by 16% while the state’s homeless population rose by 12.7 percent (Bernstein 2020). Such drastic and sudden changes cause stress on urban areas and cause severe lasting mental trauma for those involved. Such events will grow more common with the increasing severity of climate events.
Works Cited:
Group, Bay Area News. “Map: 33 People Killed in California Wildfires, 2020 Season.” The Mercury News, The Mercury News, 6 Dec. 2021, www.mercurynews.com/2020/10/02/map-31-people-killed-in-california-wildfires-2020-season/.
“International Migration Law Glossary on Migration.” IOM UN Migration, International Organization for Migration, 2019, environmentalmigration.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl1411/files/iml_34_glossary.pdf.
Peterson, Isa. “Internal Climate Migration Imposes Varying Challenges across the U.S.” Texas Impact, 27 Apr. 2022, texasimpact.org/2022/04/internal-climate-migration-imposes-varying-challenges-across-the-u-s/#:~:text=In%20the%20U.S.%20alone%2C%20roughly,Americans%2C%20according%20to%20the%20report.
Smith, Adam B. “2020 U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters in Historical Context.” NOAA Climate.gov, 8 Jan. 2021, www.climate.gov/disasters2020#:~:text=The%20billion%2Ddollar%20events%20of,combined%20%2495%20billion%20in%20damages.
Bernstein, Sharon. “Refugees in Their Own Country as Wildfire Destroys California Towns.” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 2 Oct. 2020, www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wildfires-displacement/refugees-in-their-own-country-as-wildfire-destroys-california-towns-idUSKBN26N1MW.
