{"id":10897,"date":"2015-08-11T07:50:39","date_gmt":"2015-08-11T12:50:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10897"},"modified":"2015-08-11T07:50:39","modified_gmt":"2015-08-11T12:50:39","slug":"with-climate-change-a-terrifying-new-normal-for-western-firefighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10897","title":{"rendered":"With Climate Change, a Terrifying New Normal for Western Firefighters"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"http:\/\/e360.yale.edu\/feature\/with_climate_change_a_terrifying_new_normal_for_western_firefighters\/2902\/\" target=\"_blank\">With Climate Change, a Terrifying\u00a0New Normal for Western Firefighters<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><em>In the last two decades, officials in Colorado have watched as massive, months-long wildfires have become a regular occurrence in their state. A Yale Environment 360 video goes onto the front lines with Colorado firefighters who describe what it\u2019s like to continuously confront deadly blazes fueled by a hotter, drier climate.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>To many people, climate change is a distant, abstract concept. But to the men and women who battle wildfires in Colorado and throughout the American West, evidence of a warming world is something they face on a daily basis. In recent years, these fire crews have fought blazes that are larger, more frequent, faster-moving, longer-lasting, and increasingly unpredictable \u2014 the result of rising temperatures, diminishing snowpack, and more frequent droughts.<\/p>\n<p>This\u00a0<em>e360<\/em>\u00a0video, \u201cUnacceptable Risk: Firefighters on the Front Lines of Climate Change,\u201d produced by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/thestorygroup.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Story Group<\/a>, focuses on the people battling to save lives and property in a rapidly changing environment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">It tells the story of dedicated professionals struggling to come to grips with a new and frightening breed of fire. Once known as the \u201casbestos state\u201d because of its low incidence of big wildfires, Colorado is now experiencing huge, record-breaking fires almost every year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re being asked to battle fires that didn\u2019t exist 20 years ago,\u201d says veteran firefighter Don Whittemore. \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a level of fire and an intensity of fire and a risk to firefighters that hasn\u2019t existed in the past. On a day-to-day basis we\u2019re being surprised \u2014 and in this business, surprise is what kills people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/e360.yale.edu\/feature\/with_climate_change_a_terrifying_new_normal_for_western_firefighters\/2902\/#video\"><strong>Watch the video.<\/strong><\/a><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With Climate Change, a Terrifying\u00a0New Normal for Western Firefighters In the last two decades, officials in Colorado have watched as massive, months-long wildfires have become a regular occurrence in their state. A Yale Environment 360 video goes onto the front lines with Colorado firefighters who describe what it\u2019s like to continuously confront deadly blazes fueled [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,5503,220,7461,6008,369,4849,7163],"class_list":["post-10897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-colorado","tag-drought","tag-firefighting","tag-forest-fires","tag-global-warming","tag-wildfires","tag-yale-environment-360"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10897"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10897\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10898,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10897\/revisions\/10898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}