





●Introduction

Wildfire is scary. The state of California has severe fire weather every summer and it looks like it is getting worse every year. When I watch the news about houses and buildings being burned by wildfire, I feel a sense of helplessness that you can do nothing to fight against Mother Nature.

Recently I watched a YouTube video that captured a woman driving through flames while fleeing the Woolsey Fire in California. I imagine it must have been very scary driving through flames. I attached the YouTube footage and pictures of wildfire below, so you can see how ferocious the wildfires in the California are.

Growing up in Japan, I didn’t hear or watch the news about the wildfire disasters despite that Japan is largely covered with vast forests and has really hot summers. I wondered why I didn’t hear about it. I examined the reasons and explained them below based on the statistics and my experience in the US and Japan.

Woman driving through flames while fleeing wildfire in California

Here is the footage for the woman driving through flames while fleeing wildfire in California.

Wildfires in the US are scary. I attached some pictures below.

Source: Photo by The National Guard

Comparison of wildland fire acreage between the US and Japan

The figures below illustrate the wildland acres burned by fires in the US and Japan. The red bars in the figure show the acres in the US from 1983 to 2018 while the yellow bars show the acres in Japan from 2004 to 2018.









You can see the wildland fire acre is much less in Japan than in the US. While it’s about 1,500 acres in Japan in 2018, it’s more than 8,000,000 acres in the US. America has roughly 5,800 times more wildland fire acres than in Japan. When you compare the total land area of country between the two countries, America has roughly 26 times more land area than Japan. Also, Japan’s forest area is high at about 67% while the forest area in the US is at about 34%. So, the American wildland fire acre, 5,800 times more than Japan, is significantly large even considering the total landmass and forest cover.

The reason why Japan does not have as many forest fires as the US is that Japan is more humid than the US. The main causes of wildfires are lack of rainfall, dry climate condition, and lightning. The state of California, where severe wildfires usually happen in the US, tends to have wildfires in summer while Japan tends to have its fire season in winter. Those seasons are dry in common in those two countries. Japan is much more humid in summer than California. I have never heard of any wildfire in Japan as disastrous as the ones in California.

Also, before I checked the statistics for the graphs above, I thought Japan would have an increasing trend of wildfires over time like the US had. Some people say the global warming making the wildfire in western US worse than before.

CENTER FOR CLIMATE AND ENERGY SOLUTIONS states about western US that

Research shows that changes in climate that create warmer, drier conditions, increased drought, and a longer fire season are boosting these increases in wildfire risk.

It make sense to me that warmer climate makes forests or forests products drier and makes them easier to burn. When you go camping and start a fire with a piece of wood, dry wood is easier to start a fire than wet wood. Japan has been getting warmer gradually over time as well as other countries (Please see this page if you are interested in the warming temperature in Japan). I thought maybe the global warming makes the wildfire in Japan worse like in the US.

However, it does not look like the wildfires in Japan have been increasing according to the graph above. I think it’s because the country still has some rain or snow during the fire season. The fire season in Japan is in winter, the temperature is low, which helps the moisture in the air or flammable goods evaporate less than in summer.

Summary

・Wildfire is scary. It can spread very quickly and kill you easily. A woman driving through flames while fleeing the wildfire in California was very brave and lucky.

・The US has much more ferocious wildfires than Japan because of the difference in climate conditions between the US and Japan. The dry condition with little rain in California summer makes the wildfire fiercer than wildfire in Japan.





