美国国家公共电台 NPR After Paradise, Living With Fire Means Redefining Resilience

 

NOEL KING, HOST:

In the last two years, California has seen its deadliest and most destructive wildfires ever. In 2017, wildfires killed more than 40 people across the state. And then last November, 85 people died in the town of Paradise, which was destroyed by a fast-moving inferno¹. Now, some fire-prone communities are rethinking what wildfire resilience means, and they're asking big questions on how to live with this threat. NPR's Eric Westervelt has that story.

ERIC WESTERVELT, BYLINE²: Dan Efseaff looks out over the Little Feather River Canyon³. The Camp Fire raced up this canyon on its way to Paradise like a blowtorch to a paper funnel⁴, incinerating most everything in its path, including scores of homes.

DAN EFSEAFF: The whole community needs some defensible space.

WESTERVELT: Efseaff is the parks and recreation director for Paradise. He has a vision, an idea for a new park that includes what might seem like a radical⁵ idea - paying people not to rebuild in this slice of canyon.

EFSEAFF: You know, we would work with either landowners on easements or looking at them from a standpoint of maybe some purchases in here.

WESTERVELT: Residents would get new green space for recreation and a vital safety buffer⁶ to help protect Paradise from future fire disasters.

EFSEAFF: There are areas that you just don't build in.

WESTERVELT: There needs to be more of these areas you just don't build in, Efseaff says, especially with the extraordinary buildup of forest fuels after a century of suppressing wildfires and a warming climate. Many veteran firefighters agree.

KEN⁷ PIMLOTT: Every year, starting at about 2014, we thought we were seeing the career fire. We thought, well, it can't get much worse. And every year, it was getting worse.

WESTERVELT: About an hour and a half south of the destroyed town of Paradise, I'm walking with Ken Pimlott, the recently retired⁸ director of Cal Fire. He fought wildfires and led firefighters for 30-plus years. We're in the Pine Hill Preserve, federal land in Cameron Park, a suburban⁹ community in the Sierra Nevada foothills, east of Sacramento.

PIMLOTT: You've got manzanita pine...

WESTERVELT: Cameron Park is a small example of a big problem across the West. Wooded backyard fences of comfortable homes mark a fragile artificial line between wildland and suburbia. It's the classic wildland-urban interface¹⁰.

PIMLOTT: We really need to change the conversation to ahead of the fire occurring - how we build our homes, where we place them.

WESTERVELT: Almost half of new homes built in the U.S. are in this interface where development meets highly combustible¹¹ vegetation. In California, the challenge is acute. About a quarter of the state's population - 11 million people - live in high-risk fire areas. One in three homes in the state is in this wildland-urban interface, from parts of Malibu, to the Oakland hills, to Paradise. Across the West, ever expanding development in this area, Pimlott says, is a ticking firebomb - the likely site of future Paradises.

PIMLOTT: I worry about it every day. There are hundreds of communities like those just here in California. And it's just a matter of time.

WESTERVELT: After Paradise, Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency, suspending some environmental regulations to fast-track tree removal, fuel reduction and firebreaks in 35 fire-vulnerable areas around the state. He's also beefed up spending on firefighting and fire education. But fire-exposed communities want to see more, so many are now taking action, hardening their towns for wildfire like never before.

REINETTE SENUM: This community is galvanizing itself like it's galvanizing itself for a war.

WESTERVELT: Reinette Senum is the vice¹² mayor of Nevada City. It's a gold rush-era mining town in the Sierra foothills packed with lots of lovely old Victorian homes made of wood.

SENUM: Santa Rosa, Paradise - this was the first time that we were seeing forest fires obliterate¹³ whole towns, and that was a game changer for us.

WESTERVELT: Hardening this tourist-dependent town includes a mix of low- and high-tech¹⁴. Nevada City is reinstalling old-school emergency alert sirens to warn residents of a coming firestorm. Senum says the last two fire seasons exposed shocking flaws in phone and broadcast-based alert systems. In Paradise, about a third of the few who had signed up for phone warnings actually received the alert.

SENUM: And many of them perished waiting for that call or that text. We're bringing back old-fashioned, hardwired sirens with battery backup, with solar backup.

WESTERVELT: I meet Senum in a local park where brigades of brush-eating goats recently munched¹⁵ away built up fuel on fire-prone hillsides. Senum started a goat fund me campaign. Volunteer software engineers aligned¹⁶ fire-risk maps to direct the hungry goats.

SENUM: High-tech, state-of-the-art software telling us that we're doing the right thing.

WESTERVELT: Others who can afford it are doing more than brush clearing, more than the traditional defensible space they've long been asked to create by firefighters.

CHRISTINE BOTTARO: And that deck wraps around the house and it's made out of a plastic composite...

WESTERVELT: Christine Bottaro and her husband own this spacious¹⁷ 164-year-old home. It looks vulnerable these days, like some giant Victorian-era matchstick. But looks are deceiving. They've spent money and sweat hardening the home for wildfire.

BOTTARO: The siding of the house is actually made out of a cement composite.

WESTERVELT: Oh, this isn't wood.

BOTTARO: This part is far less flammable than wood is...

WESTERVELT: But retrofitting is expensive. And California currently does almost nothing to incentivize or help homeowners pay to retrofit their homes for wildfire safety like they do for earthquakes. A bill to create a $1 billion fund to do just that has stalled in the state legislature. The need is enormous. California has the nation's strictest building standards for fire protection, but that's only for homes built after 2008. And this is a major problem. Reports show that more than half of the homes built to those stricter codes survived the Paradise Fire, while nearly 80% of the homes built before 2008 burned.

Shaye Wolf is a climate scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity.

SHAYE WOLF: In this era of climate change, it's absolutely essential that the state and local governments do a much better job of preparing homes and communities to make those homes as fire resistant¹⁸ as possible. And that's where the money needs to be invested.

WESTERVELT: A larger lesson out of Paradise, says retired Cal Fire director Ken Pimlott, has yet to really sink in - the need, he says, for a wholesale¹⁹ mindset change about wildfire in the West at all levels - planners, homeowners, politicians and builders.

PIMLOTT: And that means going in and looking at - maybe making some hard decisions about, you know, where we build. These are hard decisions. They cost money. They may mean land use changes.

WESTERVELT: If we don't start making those hard decisions together, Pimlott warns...

PIMLOTT: We're going to be back in these communities, time and time again, rebuilding, spending months, looking for people - bodies of people in rubble²⁰. And we can't keep doing that.

WESTERVELT: Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Nevada City, Calif.

1 inferno   

n.火海；地狱般的场所

参考例句：

• Rescue workers fought to get to victims inside the inferno.救援人员奋力营救大火中的受害者。
• The burning building became an inferno.燃烧着的大楼成了地狱般的地方。

2 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

3 canyon   

n.峡谷，溪谷

参考例句：

• The Grand Canyon in the USA is 1900 metres deep.美国的大峡谷1900米深。
• The canyon is famous for producing echoes.这个峡谷以回声而闻名。

4 funnel   

n.漏斗；烟囱；v.汇集

参考例句：

• He poured the petrol into the car through a funnel.他用一个漏斗把汽油灌入汽车。
• I like the ship with a yellow funnel.我喜欢那条有黄烟囱的船。

5 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

6 buffer   

n.起缓冲作用的人(或物)，缓冲器；vt.缓冲

参考例句：

• A little money can be a useful buffer in time of need.在急需时，很少一点钱就能解燃眉之急。
• Romantic love will buffer you against life's hardships.浪漫的爱会减轻生活的艰辛。

7 ken   

n.视野，知识领域

参考例句：

• Such things are beyond my ken.我可不懂这些事。
• Abstract words are beyond the ken of children.抽象的言辞超出小孩所理解的范围.

8 retired   

adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的

参考例句：

• The old man retired to the country for rest.这位老人下乡休息去了。
• Many retired people take up gardening as a hobby.许多退休的人都以从事园艺为嗜好。

9 suburban   

adj.城郊的，在郊区的

参考例句：

• Suburban shopping centers were springing up all over America. 效区的商业中心在美国如雨后春笋般地兴起。
• There's a lot of good things about suburban living.郊区生活是有许多优点。

10 interface   

n.接合部位，分界面；v.(使)互相联系

参考例句：

• My computer has a network interface,which allows me to get to other computers.我的计算机有网络接口可以与其它计算机连在一起。
• This program has perspicuous interface and extensive application. 该程序界面明了，适用范围广。

11 combustible   

a. 易燃的,可燃的; n. 易燃物,可燃物

参考例句：

• Don't smoke near combustible materials. 别在易燃的材料附近吸烟。
• We mustn't take combustible goods aboard. 我们不可带易燃品上车。

12 vice   

n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的

参考例句：

• He guarded himself against vice.他避免染上坏习惯。
• They are sunk in the depth of vice.他们堕入了罪恶的深渊。

13 obliterate   

v.擦去，涂抹，去掉...痕迹，消失，除去

参考例句：

• Whole villages were obliterated by fire.整座整座的村庄都被大火所吞噬。
• There was time enough to obliterate memories of how things once were for him.时间足以抹去他对过去经历的记忆。

14 high-tech   

adj.高科技的

参考例句：

• The economy is in the upswing which makes high-tech services in more demand too.经济在蓬勃发展，这就使对高科技服务的需求量也在加大。
• The quest of a cure for disease with high-tech has never ceased. 人们希望运用高科技治疗疾病的追求从未停止过。

15 munched   

v.用力咀嚼（某物），大嚼( munch的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• She munched on an apple. 她在大口啃苹果。
• The rabbit munched on the fresh carrots. 兔子咯吱咯吱地嚼着新鲜胡萝卜。 来自辞典例句

16 aligned   

adj.对齐的，均衡的

参考例句：

• Make sure the shelf is aligned with the top of the cupboard.务必使搁架与橱柜顶端对齐。

17 spacious   

adj.广阔的，宽敞的

参考例句：

• Our yard is spacious enough for a swimming pool.我们的院子很宽敞，足够建一座游泳池。
• The room is bright and spacious.这房间很豁亮。

18 resistant   

adj.(to)抵抗的，有抵抗力的

参考例句：

• Many pests are resistant to the insecticide.许多害虫对这种杀虫剂有抵抗力。
• They imposed their government by force on the resistant population.他们以武力把自己的统治强加在持反抗态度的人民头上。

19 wholesale   

n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售

参考例句：

• The retail dealer buys at wholesale and sells at retail.零售商批发购进货物，以零售价卖出。
• Such shoes usually wholesale for much less.这种鞋批发出售通常要便宜得多。

20 rubble   

n.（一堆）碎石，瓦砾

参考例句：

• After the earthquake,it took months to clean up the rubble.地震后，花了数月才清理完瓦砾。
• After the war many cities were full of rubble.战后许多城市到处可见颓垣残壁。