Four massive wildfires continue to rage through the northern region of Texas, as other states send help to allow the state to contain the fire and rebuild.
Climate change has only made the wildfire problem worse, as research done by the Texas State Center for Water and the Environment says that Texas’s warming will increase the likelihood and severity of wildfires.
Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that he would be sending in a California National Guard unit especially equipped to fight fires.
“In times of crisis, Americans stand together,” Newsom said in a statement made earlier today. “California has built a nation-leading firefighting fleet and we’re proud to lend a helping hand to Texas as the Lone Star State battles the largest wildfire in its history.”
Christophe Merriam, a sophomore studying the business of cinematic arts from Houston, said these fires are another example of Texas being ill-prepared for natural disasters.
“It’s the same story over and over for Texas,” Merriam said. “Texas doesn’t honestly do all that it should take care of the people in that state. That’s why states like California are rushing to help give us aid; states that actually have the resources to do it because Texas refuses to stay up to the environmental codes there.”
Merriam said that this alleged lack of preparedness worries him for the future and was one of the reasons he moved out of state to attend college in California.
“I had been through Hurricane Harvey and I was in an area that was a part of the 95% destruction,” Merriam said. “Out of all the buildings in my neighborhood, over 95% of them were destroyed during Hurricane Harvey. It is cheaper [to live in Texas], but it’s at a cost. I feel like that’s the thing that skipped over a lot.”
The biggest fire Texas firefighters are currently fighting is the Smokehouse Creek Fire, located in Hutchinson County in northern Texas. According to the Texas A&M Forest Service, the fire has burned more than one million acres of land and is only 37% contained.
The blaze burned as much of Texas’s land as the August Complex Fire in 2020 did in California, the largest fire in the Golden State’s history according to Cal Fire. Vatche Babikian, a junior studying biological sciences and a Los Angeles resident, recalled his experience with the state’s wildfires.
“I remember in high school, there was a really big wildfire that happened here in L.A. and pretty much all the schools and everything got shut down for about a week or so,” Babikian said. “I feel like a lot of these wildfires that occur happened because of poor decisions by people, for example, like getting a cigarette and just throwing getting somewhere very dry.”
Another Los Angeles resident, Lachlan Bailey, a sophomore studying neuroscience, remembered how his family was affected.
“I did have some family living in the Santa Monica area,” Bailey said. “There were some bad fires and definitely like, over the years where there [have] been times where the smoke has been really bad air quality, not great at all.”
Kevin Vartani, a senior studying business administration, advocated that by funding wildfire protection programs, California could lessen the impact of wildfires.
“[We can improve them] by probably putting more funds into the forest areas, because I know now they’re heavily looked over,” Vartani said. “We definitely need to invest more money because climate change is a real thing and it’s affecting us to this day.”
Merriam said that Texas’s wildfires are an ongoing issue they have to manage, especially with the increase in natural disasters as a result of climate change. Research from the United States Geological Survey says that with increased global surface temperatures, there is a possibility of more droughts and increased intensity of storms.
“Texas gets like almost every natural disaster except for earthquakes,” Merriam said. “We get hurricanes. We get, in recent years due to global climate change, freezes and stuff which destroys our power grid. We get tornadoes, we get all different types of things. It’s a severe issue and, sadly, it’s something that’s more highly contested in Texas.”