What is happening in California? 

The California Wildfires have been going for about a week and have destroyed 9,000 homes and miles of miles of acres. The current death toll is up to about 88 people and 52,000 have been forced to evacuate due to the rising and surging flames. 130 people are still unaccounted for. The locations of the Wildfires are Butte County and Los Angeles County, Ventura County. The fires in 2018 have been 30 percent than the rest of the Wildfires in decades. At its height, the Camp Fire was burning the equivalent of 60 Football fields per minute. As of publication, there were  600 people missing in California’s Wildfire. 

How do most Wildfires start? 

Wildfires are caused by humans or naturally caused. Natural fires are usually started by lightning.  Human-caused fires can be started in many ways. It can also begin with something as simple as a downed power line, a flat tire or a tossed cigarette butt.  

How are Wildfires put out? 

Helicopters and air tankers that can drop water or fire retardant on blazes, but they only slow the progression of the fire for the ground resources to put the fire out. Huge planes that are filled with tanks of water can drop the water over the blazes and large fires. Some helicopters get equipped with big buckets to douse fires. They can carry 300 to 800 gallons of water from nearby sources, including lakes, pools, ponds, or oceans. 

“Conditions in the state have meant that dry underbrush, combined with winds and the hot temperature is the perfect breeding ground for fires to ignite.”

There are many ways the fires could have started

An electrical circuit had an outage near where the Woolsey fire started”

They still don’t know what started the fires but this what the company said

“Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers, employees, contractors and the communities we serve.”