There will never be “no more rain in California”. Also, fires are not becoming more frequent, but roughly the same number of fires are burning more acreage.
Apparently any and all weather pattern changes are “caused by climate change” whether that be drought or monsoon, heat or cold spells, increased or decreased hurricanes, etc.
And interestingly, no matter which direction the change is said to be occurring (e.g. more rain in the mid-west) it’s always predicted to lead to a catastrophic outcome.
For reference, I was a seasonal firefighter with Cal Fire (CDF at the time) for 6 years.
First off, if there is a fire burning on state land, federal land, BLM land, a national forest, a national park, etc. I'd call it a forest fire, it's just common parlance. To some that know better, I may use the term wildland fire. So, if it isn't a structure or vehicle fire, it's probably a forest fire. Specifically though, many of these fires are considered in the wildland–urban interface, that is where homes and wildlands meet or intermingle.
There is a problem happening and I'm not sure how to solve it. The amount of wildland-urban interface land keeps increasing. This land is much more difficult to defend against fire; structure protection is much harder than straight wildland fire management. We've aggressively fought all forest fires (see above), especially when there is a threat of homes being destroyed (again this is increasing due to the wildland-urban interface increasing). Forest fires are natural and should happen on a regular basis, when they do, they clear fuel from the ground. Note, some trees require this for seed release (serotinous cones), resprouting, and germination (fire activated seeds). When fires don't burn and the fuel loading increases (due to aggressive firefighting), a catastrophic fire can burn, one we can't easily put out. These fires burn so hot, they can jump into the tree canopy (crowning fire) and kill the tree, they can completely burn fire activated seeds and make them nonviable, and they typically burn much larger sections of land. This is all bad.
I'm really not sure how to deal with this. There are some steps homeowners in the wildland-urban interface (within 1/2-mile of the wildland) should do to protect their homes including defensible space, fire-resistant roofs and siding, enclosed eaves and vents, etc. These steps should be enforced through insurance company's policy (vastly reduced rates for "safer" homes, and no insurance or drastically higher for "unsafe" homes), keep in mind, these unsafe homes put firefighters at risk. Ideally we stop encroaching into the wildland, but I'm not sure how to stop that. But we do need to let forest fires burn more. We need to set more prescribed burns (controlled burns) We need to know that some will get out of control, but there shouldn't be any lawsuits for this, fighting fire is tough.
(I previously posted this on a CleanTechnica discussion)
Here's a Nature paper to set your mind at rest.
"Little change in global drought over the past 60 years",
Nature volume 491, pages 435–438 (15 November 2012) and no evidence of dramatic changes since 2012,
Smaller forest fires manage dead wood. If a forest burns on a regular basis, felled trees (naturally fallen, in this case) will burn more often and there will be less fuel for a bigger fire in the future.
This is a big issue on forestry management across the entire United States (and probably elsewhere).
How do all of these policies matter of there is no more rain in California?