Once again the West Coast is caught up in flames. As the Californian heat continues to remain constant, more and more acres of land are being burned through. More than two million acres of land have been through the fire, more than 3,300 buildings have been destroyed, and there are eight deaths. 

California Fire Captain Richard Cordova is one of the firemen responsible for fighting the fires. Cordova said in his interview to the Center of Disaster Philanthropy, “This is crazy. We haven’t even got into the October and November fire season, and we’ve broken the all-time record.” 

Many of the California wildfires this year have been sparked by lightning, and the intense heat waves only made matters worse. According to the Los Angeles Times,  Los Angeles County has hit a record 121 degrees fahrenheit, and Death Valley recorded a historical world record of 130 degrees. This intense heat has increased the amount of wildfires and the amount of potential fires. For comparison, according to the New York Times, in 2019 there had been 4,292 fires burned 56,000 acres of land, while this year there are more than 7,000 fires and two million acres of land burned. 

But not all of the fires were caused by natural means. One of the fires, El Dorado in the Los Angeles area, was caused by an incident at a gender reveal party. The plan was to reveal the gender of the baby by a smoke generating pyrotechnic device, but everything went wrong when the device ignited tall, dry grass. This happened on Sunday, September 6, and by the following day, the fire burned through more than 7,300 acres.  

The fires have not only directly impacted the land that burned through, but also the people of that area. According to the LA Times, more than one hundred people have been evacuated by helicopters in the Sierra Nevada, and many people in Southern California are waiting for the call to evacuation. According to the LA Times, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sacramento, warned the people that state resources will now be, “severely taxed by dozens of wildfires raging across the state.”

These fires have been devastating, not only to California and its residents, but to the whole nation, and will require much time to recover.