SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) - Dried out from the summer, September and October are typically the height of the wildfire season in the Bay Area and Northern California. But this year, it's been different.
The season got started early and then exploded when the Park Fire near Chico ignited in July, becoming the fourth largest wildfire in California since 1932.
So far this year, more than 5,500 wildfires have burned in California, charring more than 800,000 acres. That's significant jump from last year.
"It was a very active start to this fire season; one of the most active that we've seen," said Jason Clay, with Cal Fire Sonoma-Lake-Napa Unit. He says a couple strong winters fused with searing record heat in July was the formula for fire.
"When the grasses go, you get any wind on it and it will expand rapidly," added Clay.
Scott Stevens, a professor of fire science at UC Berkeley, says our consecutive wet winters were problematic not just because they were wet, but also constant.
"I think it really enhanced the grass growth, probably at least double, maybe one and a half to two tons per acre dry mass per acre this year, which is about probably double of last year," he said.
Ironically, Stevens says the state's highest elevations have fared well when it comes to moisture. Rather, it's the lower levels that are parched.
"I think that's one reason why we've had so many grass fires, so many fires in lower elevation. Grass fuels are higher and they basically ignite a little better. They can put flame lengths better and also get larger, easier," he said.
While most wildfires are ignited by humans, there is a wildcard that California hasn't seen too much of this year.
"We get one of these big lightning busts again, that just can change everything. You get so many ignitions simultaneously. Even California, with the world's best suppression organization, still cannot manage all those ignitions at once," said Stevens.
The Bay Area thus far has averted the "mega fire" this year, though the expectation is for elevated fire danger to continue in the coming months.
This fall will mark seven years since the devastating Wine Country fires that broke out throughout Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino, Butte and Solano counties. In the years since, firefighters in the North Bay have worked hard on a number of fronts to reduce the threat of it happening again.
In Mount Tamalpais, wildfire hasn't struck since 1929 but fire crews still have their guards up higher than ever. Tam is overgrown with vegetation and thousands of homes that didn't exist nearly 100 years ago.
"The potential for large scale loss of homes is definitely a real threat here," said Marin County Fire Department Captain Matt Watson. "Mount Tam isn't just one community. I think a lot of people relate Mount Tam to Mill Valley, but it also covers Corte Madera, Larkspur, Penfield, Ross, San Anselmo, Fairfax."
And the obstacles to getting fire trucks in and evacuees out are huge.
"There's a lot of vegetation along the road corridors that precludes us from passing where we need to, and also can contribute to fire behavior during a fire," said Watson.
To reduce the threat of fire, Marin County conducts prescribed burns, bulldozers create firebreaks, and homeowners are encouraged to do their part because a wildfire is not a matter of if, but when.
"Part of that is having our evacuation routes, our home, hardening our defensible space. But I don't think it's overly dramatic to think that it's potential for us to have for it to happen here," said Watson.
One place where it has happened several times Sonoma County, which in 2017 alone lost nearly 5,000 homes to the Tubbs and Nuns fires. The vast county spans over 1 million acres; compare that to San Francisco with just 29,000 acres. Since those devastating blazes, the county and its cities have required new construction meet strict fire mitigation standards, emergency notification technology has been upgraded and mountaintop fire detection cameras have been installed.
"It's a constant process. Fuel management isn't something you do once. It's something you have to constantly do to maintain a defensible space and to keep the fuels, mitigated," said Sonoma County Fire District Division Chief Rob Bisordi.
Many homeowners are also taking proactive steps to protect their properties. From retrofitting buildings to clearing flammable vegetation, residents like Sue and Dave, who live in the foothills near Mount Tamalpais, are making their homes more resilient against the threat of wildfires.
"We have also put in metal fencing in two areas where wooden fencing touched the house. The biggest thing we did was we replaced the cedar shingles on the side of our house with a composite called hardy," said Sue.
They also had assistance from Ember Defense, which helps California homeowners with home hardening projects. The company has now expanded to offer structure protection units -- basically hose and sprinkler systems that can be deployed during wildfires.
"It'll automatically be triggered by ambient temperature, and then it covers the whole siding of the house and out about 20 feet with water," said co-founder Adam Iverson.
On average, home hardening can cost between $5,000 and $10,000. That may seem like a heavy price tag, "but the more you do, the more of those checkboxes, so to speak, that you reduce the likelihood that you'll lose your home," said Ember Defense co-founder Devin LeBlanc.
In areas at greater risk for wildfires, residents may want to consider new fire-resistant building materials. Trevor Nuccio, with Pittsburgh-based EcoBuilding Systems, says they've developed a composite concrete form called the Perfect Block that's able to withstand flames up to 2,500 degrees for four hours.
"Which means when subjected to 2,500-degree flames continuously, the structure will still stand for four hours, those walls," Nuccio said.
Cal Fire does have official recommendations for retrofitting homes to be more fire-resilient. And there's even an app with a home hardening self-assessment .
"In less than 10 minutes, this self-assessment will evaluate your home's vulnerability to wildfire. A detailed report will be provided with tailored recommendations customized for your home," said Kara Garrett with Cal Fire's Community Risk Reduction Program.
At the very least, Garrett said homeowners need to clear defensible space, which "includes creating a buffer around structures through vegetation clearance and maintenance of at least 100-foot perimeter or to the property line."
Wildfires are expensive: fighting them, rebuilding homes and communities, and insuring properties against risk. California is the fourth largest insurance market in the world and that market is in turmoil.
More wildfires can mean the cost of insuring your home goes higher, even if you live in an urban neighborhood. But wildfires aren't the only thing going on here.
"It's an everything, everywhere, all at once kind of situation," said Professor Meredith Fowlie, an economist at UC Berkeley who's studied California's convulsing insurance market. She says there are multiple factors contributing to this crisis.
One of the main factors isn't surprising: inflation. Rebuilding a home destroyed by fire costs more now because labor and materials are more expensive. The second big factor is data. Insurance companies know a lot more about your home these days.
"We're naked. They can see everything about us now," said Amy Bach, a consumer advocate with United Policyholders. "Even with the privacy protections, they know so much more about the details of our properties than they used to."
Bach says insurance companies are now buying databases, using satellite imagery, even AI, to learn more about your home, like what kind of roof or siding it has, whether it has old plumbing or knob-and-tube electrical wiring. What they're learning makes them uncomfortable, Bock says, so they drop the riskier policies.
"They've gone from, like, 'We don't care if you have pine needles in your gutters,' to, like, 'You have one pine needle in your gutter, now we're dropping you,'" she added.
Insurance companies are raising rates, pulling out of California altogether, or asking homeowners to do thousands of dollars in repairs to remain insured. What's happening to homeowners in hilly neighborhoods around the Bay Area, even in the flats of South Berkeley, is making ripples throughout local real estate markets, because you need insurance to hold onto a mortgage.
"When insurance prices rise, homeowners really have no choice but to pay those higher prices. And in that sense, this is bad, because when prices rise, consumers can't vote for their feet and stop purchasing insurance. They have to keep paying," said Fowlie.
Although there's a painful realignment going on, in the end, it could give us a more accurate picture of the risk of living in scenic, wooded, fire-prone hills. Bach said prices should "signal the cost of insuring the risk."
"I think there's real efficiency gains from signaling high-risk home, low-risk home, high-risk construction materials, low-risk," she added.
Policyholders should also get a chance to fix flammable construction or landscaping, and regulations should protect people from being priced out of long-time homes by insurance costs, Bach said.
"Environmentalists have been saying for years, people who live in harm's way should be paying the true price of insurance in those areas," she said. "But for the people that live in those areas, I say they didn't come to the risk."
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