http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/us/california-today-fires.html 2016-09-13 14:20:02 California Today: Fighting Fire With Fire Welcome to California Today, a morning update on the stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state). === Good morning. Welcome to California Today, a Tell us about the Want to receive California Today by email? If you think it’s been a fiery year, we’re only just getting started. Since January, the number of fires threatening areas protected by California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection has In their wake, at least seven people have died, according to reports, and hundreds of homes have been vanquished. On Monday, five big blazes were raging across the state. The biggest, Fire specialists expect the situation to worsen, fueled by a warming climate and development too close to forests that are dried and overgrown after years of aggressive fire suppression and drought. That prognosis has added urgency to discussions in firefighting circles over how to better approach the crisis. Many fire experts want California to start emulating Florida, where fire departments have for decades set small forest fires, or allowed controlled fires to burn, as a way to use up fuels and prevent monster ones from erupting later. “They are a place that’s kind of figured this out,” said California, on the other hand, has taken fewer preventive steps and put out too many of its fires over the last hundred years, leaving forests choked with fire-loving brush, many experts say. Stephen Pyne While prescribed burning has since crept into the mix of strategies used in California, it has remained relatively rare. But that may be changing. Attuned to the rising threat, California forest officials have been embracing a new policies, Dr. Stephens said. Right now, three national forests in California — the Inyo, Sequoia and Sierra — are “I think the plans are really forward-looking,” Dr. Stephens said. “I really am hopeful that this could begin to change.” Still, fire is a many-headed beast in California, and prescribed burning offers no solution for the shrub lands of Southern California. There, developers simply need to stop building homes in fire-prone areas, Dr. Stephens said. That prescription may be a harder sell. • Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that would gradually grant farmworkers the same right to • Tom Calderon, a former assemblyman, was sentenced to a year in federal custody for • California community colleges are encouraging students of the now-defunct • Documents found by a U.C. San Francisco researcher show that the • • California is now home to the nation’s first large-scale program to • A U.C. Berkeley professor is trying to persuade his students that • A father-daughter • Inside the gentrification of Los Angeles’s • An architect has made Most of the grape harvest workers, weary and eager to get home, turned him down. For more than a year For those who were game, if puzzled, Mr. Castro had them stand in front of a backdrop of white paper hanging between two stands. The results were stark The project, a work in progress titled “Harvester,” captures the faces of a group that operates at the margins of Northern California society while playing an essential role in its multibillion dollar wine industry. Labor advocates on Monday celebrated the signing of a new Mr. Castro only includes a few details in the captions accompanying the images, wanting the faces to stand for themselves. Of the 70 who agreed to be photographed, three were women and all were born in Mexico, he said. “Some people get kind of frustrated with the project. They’re like: ‘What are the back stories? Who are these people?’” Mr. Castro said. “And to me, I’m like, ‘Just look at their face for five minutes and you tell me you don’t learn something.’” Images from Mr. Castro’s “Harvester” series are California Today goes live at 6 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: The California Today columnist, Mike McPhate, is a third-generation Californian — born outside Sacramento and raised in San Juan Capistrano. He lives in Davis. California Today is edited by Julie Bloom, who grew up in Los Angeles and attended U.C. Berkeley.