Environment

Lindy Rice, Sacramento While fire-preparedness is important, something also needs to be done about power lines, which are causing a lot of our fires. They are outdated technology, like land-line telephones.  We have transitioned from land-line phones to wireless mobile phones in this century, so why not do the same with energy transmission? We need […]

Jim Wood is tackling two enormous, heart-wrenching puzzles: identifying the people who perished this month in California’s deadliest wildfire and figuring out what state policies could prevent such catastrophes in the future.

As California grapples with an increasing possibility that once-in-a-century wildfires are becoming once-a-year occurrences, larger swaths of the state’s population will find themselves living in the crimson high-risk regions of state maps now being revised. Which presents lawmakers with a dilemma: impose costly and politically unpalatable regulations on homeowners and rip up existing infrastructure—or simply accept the risk.

California's increasingly dire blazes have brought a reckoning over the role of power equipment in starting wildfires.

Fires raging across California are decimating historical and recognizable landmarks throughout the state.

Due to school closures from the California wildfires, more than one in six students in the state are staying home as the state continues to burn.

The $1 billion wildfire prevention bill passed in the last legislative session was supposed to "prevent catastrophic wildfires and protect Californians." Months later, the state faces another epic disaster. Why?

President Trump's tweet today blaming California, not climate change, for the state's catastrophic wildfires and threatening to withhold federal funding provoked a bitter reaction from many Californians, including Gov.-Elect Newsom

Speaking against the backdrop of a busy freeway, California officials this morning reaffirmed their opposition to a Trump administration proposal to roll back automobile fuel efficiency standards—noting the state had just filed 415 pages of comment strenuously objecting to the federal plan.

We track key data on California wildfires: land consumed, lives lost, growing firefighting costs.