…There have also been an unusually large number of fires so far in California overall. From the first of the year through July 13, the entire state has experienced 3,719 fires that have burned across 63,701 acres, according to the latest data from the State of California.
That’s quite a few more fires than the five year average for that same time period, which totals 2,428. (Luckily, the total area burned so far is a bit less than the five-year average of 77,504.)
If my sense of geography is accurate, seven counties are visible in the satellite image up top, either in whole in or in part. And within those counties, data from Headwaters Economics, an independent, nonprofit research group, show that there are more than 155,000 homes in close proximity to fire-prone wildlands, meaning they are in the so-called wildland-urban interface, or WUI…