In this two-part essay, NARA’s author Dominyka Nachajūtė speaks with people coping with the consequences of fire in two regions marked by some of today’s biggest wildfires: California and Ukraine. The essay begins in California, where the January 2025 fires in the Los Angeles area proved to be the most destructive in more than four decades.

We tend to think of wildfires as the result of human negligence – a single irresponsible match or cigarette suddenly lighting the surrounding area ablaze. Or, increasingly, as a consequence of climate change, where fire-prone areas have become even more vulnerable following prolonged droughts. While both are true, an equally universal factor lies in the structural reasons why wildfires are now often spiraling out of control. Beyond human carelessness, wildfires reflect our deeper stories embedded in history, power, and policy.

It might seem intuitive that someone working at a fire department would see fire as the natural enemy. But for Rod Mendes, the Fire Chief of the Yurok Fire Department in California, fire is not a threat, but a partner. As a child in northern California, he grew up as a descendant of the Karuk people and their traditions, where setting small, intentional fires around homes was a common practice.

I met Rod through a thoughtful recommendation in the Yurok community, the largest Native American tribe in California, to learn more about Native American fire stewardship. We talked in late spring over Zoom, still recalling the wildfires that devastated California in January, while anxiously awaiting the approach of the summer dry season.

After 56 years working with fire, Rod is sure that the lack of careful, intentional burns practiced by his community is a primary cause of wildfires today.

Last January alone saw devastating fires in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and San Diego County in California. The fires, raging and uncontained for over three weeks, burned over 57,000 acres of land, killed at least three people, destroyed more than 18,000 homes, and forced more than 200,000 people to evacuate.

Such fires are out of the ordinary, not only in terms of scale but also timing - summer months have traditionally marked the fire season, while January is typically defined by rain. This shift is a testament to how unpredictable and unmanageable California’s fires are becoming. This year’s fires, although undoubtedly fueled by drought and strong winds, can also be seen as a signal of neglect of the wisdom of the Yurok and other Native American groups – and the possible solutions they could offer to help end such spiraling tragedies.

Before European contact, Yurok people, together with their Karuk, Hupa, and Konomihu neighbors, were considered to be the wealthiest of all Native people in California. Their wealth can be attributed to their intimate knowledge of the surrounding Klamath region, and their crafted ability to sustain its abundance of food resources and nature.

Throughout time, this wealth has been accompanied, or rather facilitated, by the element of fire. Yurok and Karuk, as well as a hundred other Native American tribes in California, have long practiced sophisticated forms of cultural burning. Such purposeful burning practices are low intensity, and have historically been used around Native American homes and communities to enhance vegetation, reduce insects, and create space that kept wildfires from reaching their dwellings. Crucially, such fires prevent the buildup of easily flammable flora (e.g. grass, bushes, leaf litter) which, once caught fire, can contribute to much larger, hotter, and uncontrollable fires – much like those which have recently burned across the West Coast. Cultural burns also exhibit a reciprocal spiritual relationship with nature: by using fire, the Yurok give back to the land, which in turn sustains them.

“Native Americans figured this out thousands of years ago – that certain types of vegetation need fire to grow, fire to recede, fire to enhance growth. The materials that they used to weave baskets with – hazel shrubs, beargrass – require fire. So did indigenous foods that were growing on the landscape. To Native Americans, life begins and ends with fire.” – Rod’s testament to the reverence for fire, a latent yet powerful tool of renewal and creation.

Unlike wildfires, cultural burns are carefully timed and controlled. With months or weeks of advance preparation, the surrounding brush and dead limbs – which represent dangerous fuel – may be trimmed, and later gathered into piles. Once it’s time, the firekeepers may drop fire from a wormwood torch or pitch sticks, setting the edges of an open field sizzling with the first crackling of burning grass and light smoke sweeping above. The flames are watched closely, moving low across the surface until they reach clearings, bare soil, or already burned ground. Once the fire has run its course, ashes are often raked into the soil to nourish it and encourage new growth.

“There’s science to it,” Rod explains. “Native Americans knew they could not burn when it was 110°F and everything was dry. They knew to wait when it rains lightly, and most of the burning was done in the fall and early spring.”

The Californian landscape is home to the world’s tallest trees – redwoods, including sequoias, stretching up to an astonishing 115m high. They have sheltered Yurok people for centuries and today still stand as the oldest witnesses, not just survivors, of intentional burning practices. The thick skin of redwoods’ trunks has adapted to fire and can withstand the surrounding burning of bushes, shrubs, dry grasses, and leaf litter. Under the traditional management of Indigenous people, the landscape we think we know so well, was not as overgrown and lush in tree cover. Most circulating images of Yosemite, one of California’s and the nation’s oldest national parks, were taken in the late 70s. But such evocative postcards, made for tourists and geography enthusiasts, portraying the vast Yosemite forests, do not demonstrate their historical appearance – a more open and diverse space of grassy meadows, scattered tree stands and clearings maintained through regular burning.

In defiance of narratives that justify its colonial past, North America was never a mere untamed wilderness untouched by humans, but an area inhabited by people with a profound understanding of the land. However, when the first European settlers came to North America, they regarded intentional burning as primitive – consequently, fire suppression policies followed. Environmental policies, justified through scientific explanations and economic rationales, were used as tools to erase and displace Indigenous peoples.

The imposition of new environmental policies wasn’t isolated – it was a part of a broader colonial project, marked by attempted control and, ultimately, erasure of Indigenous lifeways. White settlers swamped Yurok ancestral lands during California’s Gold Rush in the mid-19th century – a period of rapid migration to the area where vast gold reserves had been discovered, driven by the hope of striking it rich. The settlers massacred the Yurok people and their population which, already decimated by disease, was reduced by 75%.

In 1850, California passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, which outlawed intentional burning in the newly created state. People who would practice cultural burning were heavily punished and could face ending up in prison. Nation-wide policies, considered universal at the time, were established following the creation of the US Forest Service in 1905 and the US National Park Service in 1916 – agencies that overtook the management of many Indigenous-inhabited lands. The tolerance for fire was so low that in 1935, the Forest Service introduced the so-called ‘10am policy’, which required every fire to be suppressed by 10am following its detection. The Forest Service aimed to maximize the number of trees per acre – a policy that still sounds appealing today – but this left dense, overcrowded forests with thickets and few clearings, ready for a massive fire to start.

Among many colonial legacies, the introduction of invasive species by settlers is another significant factor in fueling California’s wildfires today. What appears to be beautiful yellow fields along the roads and hillside is, in fact, black mustard – a silent invader that has already been flagged for its role in spreading wildfires. Its tall stalks, notably higher than the surrounding grass, act as fire ladders, helping flames climb into the tree canopies and escalate small fires into full-blown wildfires.

According to Rod, another major reason for the recent destructiveness of California’s fires is the expansion of housing and civilization into the wilderness – hills, canyons, and ridges – which places homes directly in burn zones.

Rod shares that: “When you look at these California fires that devastate communities… when Native Americans lived here, those kinds of towns didn’t exist. People didn’t build homes or village sites in areas that were not managed.”

Communities like Pacific Palisades and Pasadena, affected in 2025, are textbook examples of the wildland-urban interface (WUI), recognized zones where human built environments closely intermingle with wilderness.

In the backdrop of the vast history of North America, fire suppression is a very recent undertaking. However, there has been a positive shift under cooperation with the U.S. National Park Service. In 1968, it first allowed lighting fires to burn within special fire management zones where potential danger to human settlements were minimal. The National Park Service would also introduce prescribed fire – a strategic use of burning performed by fire experts under certain conditions and in limited areas.

Prescribed fires, though informed by the science of cultural burning, are highly operational: fire crews follow detailed burn plans, with maps and set boundaries, and are assigned specific ignition duties. They may bring a variety of tools – drip and propane torches, fusees, pistol flares – and use them to start spot fires that light the burn. Backup resources such as water tanks stand ready. The ultimate aim of such burning is to reduce wildfire risk across large areas rather than to renew the land and its resources. But this blend of modern planning with traditional knowledge is perhaps what offers hope.

“We have executive orders that now allow people to do burning without feeling like they’re going to prison for that”, says Rod. In 2022, a new Californian law recognised the concept of ‘good fire’ by directly reducing the legal risk for people using controlled burning. For decades, the fear of liability – lawsuits, property damage claims, even criminal charges – made it nearly impossible for tribal and local practitioners to put ‘good fire’ on the ground. But this law gives practitioners more legal protection associated with the possible spread and damage of fire, providing they follow a burn plan and act responsibly.

Last year, another significant milestone for the Yurok people took place. Their tribe, which had 90% of its territory taken away during the gold rush period, will regain 125 acres of land named ‘O Rew’ under a historic memorandum with the National Park Service - making it the first Native people to manage and hold full ownership of tribal land. Otherwise, Rod notes, the majority of tribal land management practices are concentrated in tribal trust lands – held in trust by the federal government for Native people, they serve as vital spaces for self-governance and cultural continuity, but remain scarce and fragmented.

Rod senses a growth in consensus amongst agencies that we need to return forests to the condition they were in under Native stewardship – and to increasingly integrate indigenous controlled burning practices into today’s decisions. He remembers when growing up in his own Karuk community that, “everytime they would light the fire, here came the Forest Service pulling up in their vehicle going “You can’t have fire! You’ve got to put it out!” But now, that has eased a little bit.” However, significant institutional barriers still stand in the way of reintroducing indigenous fire management practices in California and across the U.S. – as do the deeper challenges of restoring justice to the Native American people.

Subsequent direction and success, Rod notes, remain vulnerable to each incoming administration and its shifting priorities. There is little consistency in policymaking, and the agencies responsible are often left in a state of need and expectation – waiting for funding, staffing, and direction. “But indigenous people will continue doing what they do”, he says. Amid unstable policy cycles, it has become Rod’s lifelong work to ensure the indigenous practices are restored, scaled, and sustained.

Rod and the Yurok Fire Department, an agency of the Yurok tribe, are adapting the tradition of cultural burning within modern realities. The department responds to local wildfires, conducts prescribed burns to manage overgrowth, and works towards restoring a more natural fire and vegetation regime. Rod now aims to achieve the same level of sustainable land stewardship as his ancestors once practiced. But, as he reminds, “Native Americans didn’t have fire departments or firefighters – the kind of resources that we have today.”

Just as wildfires often have human-induced causes, they also bring very real human consequences. People’s lives, homes, and property lost – and the surrounding environment destroyed. It is estimated that California’s 2025 January fires caused property and capital losses that range between $76 billion and $131 billion, a 0.48% decline in county-level GDP, and a total wage loss of $297 million for local businesses and employees in the affected areas. Another looming consequence in California, and elsewhere, is a growing uninsurability crisis. This goes beyond unaffordable premiums: insurance companies are withdrawing from certain high-risk areas altogether, as the risk and economic losses in regions frequently ravaged by devastating fires increase. In Pacific Palisades alone, thousands of insurance policy renewals have been refused in just last year. Increasingly, houses in California remain uninsured or cost exorbitant prices, compounding an already dire cost-of-living crisis.

Drawing on decades of experience, Rod believes that the wildfire issues in California are more universal than people tend to think. Places around the globe, including the Mediterranean basin, Southwest Australia and other regions with ecosystems similar to California’s, face the same challenge: landscapes that have not only adapted to small-scale fire, but actually require it to thrive, are now increasingly ravaged by large-scale, catastrophic wildfires. These regions, Rod argues, could also benefit from the wisdom of the Yurok people – embracing cultural burning and facilitating more frequent, controlled low-intensity fires.

“Plagiarism is allowed when it comes to safety”, Rod says.

In the second part of this essay, we will examine how Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine has turned fire into a tool of destruction. Since the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has been the most scorched country in Europe.