Ralph Bloemers

Jan 10, 2025 | washingtonpost.com | Jennifer K. Balch |Ralph Bloemers

Jennifer Balch is a fire scientist and director of the Environmental Data Science Innovation and Inclusion Lab at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Ralph Bloemers is director of fire-safe communities for the Green Oregon Alliance. The fires burning in Southern California involve tens of thousands of acres, tiny in the context of all wildfires. And they moved with what might seem to some to be astonishing speed. In just 24 hours, the Palisades Fire grew more than 15,000 acres.

Nov 8, 2023 | thebulletin.org | Beverly Law |Ralph Bloemers |Nancy Colleton |Mackenzie Allen

Wildfires started by people and lightning have been part of the North American landscape since the retreat of ice sheets in the Pleistocene. As settlers colonized the American West, they viewed fire as a destructive force to be controlled and eliminated. In 1850 the US government passed legislation outlawing indigenous fire practices that had been used for thousands of years. As fire suppression ramped up, a cool, wet period from the 1940s to the 1980s gave firefighters a helping hand.