{"id":318854,"date":"2026-05-16T13:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T13:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/318854\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T13:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T13:20:10","slug":"rethinking-californias-wildfire-crisis-at-the-festival-of-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/318854\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking California&#8217;s Wildfire Crisis at the Festival of Books"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>  May 16, 2026 6:02 AM PT   <\/p>\n<p> Share via     Close extra sharing options  <\/p>\n<p>At the LA Times Festival of Books panel \u201cFire Escape: Wildfires and the Changing Geography of Southern California,\u201d recorded on April 18, 2026, climate reporter Blanca Beert moderated a vital discussion on the state\u2019s relationship with fire. Authors Jordan Thomas, a former hot shot firefighter, and DJ Waldy, a cultural historian, shared insights from their books When It All Burns and Elements of Los Angeles. The speakers emphasized that while climate change accelerates mega fires, today\u2019s crises are rooted in the colonial suppression of indigenous land tending practices. Thomas explained that fire is ecologically plural and that over a century of fire erasure has left landscapes deeply vulnerable to pests, droughts, and unprecedented infernos. Waldy added that fire is a permanent fixture of the Los Angeles landscape, requiring active historical memory to resist cultural erasure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May 16, 2026 6:02 AM PT Share via Close extra sharing options At the LA Times Festival of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[647,7,9,8,133156,133158,1404,3802,119009,133160,133159,63,133157,8826,2335,41547,535],"class_list":["post-318854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-books","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-changing-geography","tag-elements","tag-festival","tag-fire","tag-fire-escape","tag-former-hot-shot-firefighter","tag-indigenous-land-tending-practice","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-mega-fire","tag-relationship","tag-today","tag-wildfire-crisis","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}