Take It from California. Wildfires Are Natural Disasters.

California is burning. Yet policy and consciousness still hasnt reflected the danger these fires can pose to those who live in the state.

I am sitting here writing, on the University of California, Santa Barbara campus. Due to the Thomas Fire which continues to burn, the air quality in Santa Barbara and nearby Goleta has been designated unhealthy .

On my way to school, my walking feet disturbed ash on the floor and students biked around me with face masks, scarves, and turtlenecks over their faces.

The air is bad. Several TAs and professors have said that they will not attend class. The nearby community college has canceled classes for the rest of the quarter, and some classes have been canceled at UCLA.

Though the fire is pushing ash to Isla Vista and driving the air quality in our area down, UC Santa Barbara sent an email yesterday that wrote: the fire poses no threat to UC Santa Barbaras physical campus. After continued worsening of air, only now has UC Santa Barbara sent out another email adjusting their statement, adding all remaining classes on Thursday, December 7, have been cancelled.

The slowness to act clearly illustrates a misunderstanding of what wildfires mean for California.

Wildfires are natural disasters.

6,762 fires have burned over 505, 391 acres of California from January 1, 2017 to December 3, 2017, according to the recent numbers published by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The year hasnt even ended yet and the numbers are significantly larger than the five year average. Last year, 4,742 fires occured in the same time period. And the five year average of wildfires clocks in around 4,749.

Historically, California is prone to wildfires due to what are known as diablo winds . But this years brought the death toll to over 42 and the cost of the damage well over 3 billion dollars.

The dramatic increase of wildfires over the past year is worrying. My fear is that we are moving too slowly to address the problems that wildfires might pose for the future, and thus are not creating effective policy.

One thing we need to worry about is the relationship insurance companies have to fire-prone areas of the state. Californias increasing sensitivity has pushed certain insurance companies to be more discriminatory in the houses they will insure. As Reuters reports :

In the last decade, major wildfires in California - and losses in the billions of dollars - have led some big insurance companies to stop writing homeowners policies for many of the nearly 2 million households that are considered at high risk of fire. Allstate Corp, for instance, in 2007 stopped writing new homeowners policies in the Golden State altogether. Others, like Farmers Insurance and State Farm, have become more discriminating about the areas they will insure homes.

This is a problem. As weve seen before with the healthcare situation in the United States, the dropping out of insurance companies who are willing to cover wildfires in California can potentially lead to less options and higher insurance rates for those in the market for coverage.

Governor Jerry Brown may need to soon address this problem of wildfires and the effect it will have on home insurance rates for Californias.

Furthermore, the designation of wildfires as natural disasters need to happen.

Right now, a bill is moving through Congress called the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act of 2017 . The bill has bipartisan support, including Senator Dianne Feinstein from California. The bill aims to change how the federal government budgets for the suppression of large wildfires to make that process similar to the way other disasters are funded. In this way, wildfires will result in the necessary responses needed to offset its growth in a timely matter.

California institutions are now faced with a problem that seems to be growing. And they need to take it seriously. Wildfires are no longer something Californians can ignore.