California's record-breaking fires are actually a return to the past

Countries & Cities · Published 16 October 2026 · Updated 25 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: In 2020, California saw over 9,900 wildfires burn 4.3 million acres—the largest season in modern history. Yet, this 'unprecedented' destruction is nearly identical to burn rates seen before Euro-American settlement. The real crisis isn't just how much land burns; it's the shift from restorative fire to destructive devastation.

While 2020 was a record-setting year for modern California, researchers at UC Davis found that burning roughly 4.3 million acres is actually consistent with pre-1800 levels, which averaged between 3 and 4 million acres annually. The primary difference lies in fire severity—the measure of impact on an ecosystem's vegetation biomass. Modern fires are increasingly destructive rather than restorative because of a century of forest management policies. The study notes that climate warming has been more extreme in southern California despite its lower burn rates. In contrast, central and northern forests have seen almost all recent increases in burned area over the last 40 years.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, fire exclusion policies restricted both natural lightning ignitions and Native American cultural burning. This led to a massive increase in forest density and fuel loads. Consequently, when fires do occur today, they explode into catastrophic events. Despite humans starting almost 60% of 2020's blazes via campfires, power lines, or arson, lightning-initiated fires scorched over five times that acreage due to built-up fuel levels. NASA's CALIPSO satellite mapped vertical atmospheric columns to track these massive smoke plumes. The EPIC camera also captured images of the sunlit Earth every two hours during this period.

The economic and human toll was staggering: 33 people died, over $19 billion in total economic losses occurred, and firefighting costs neared $2.1 billion. Furthermore, wildfire-driven air quality likely caused between 1,200 and 3,000 'excess' deaths among those aged 65 or older. To combat this, experts argue that managers must pivot from simply trying to reduce burned area to actively reducing fire severity and restoring ecosystem functions through fuel reduction. The state faced its five worst days of air pollution in history during this single year. Additionally, over 50,000 structures were destroyed between 2015 and 2020.

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