Fires and Outages
It is a peaceful and still evening, night lights dotted across undisturbed towns. Occasional cars pass beneath street lamps. Gusts of wind build in strength as they blow through the towns from time to time, carrying with them the soft scent of smoke. Still, civilians seem undisturbed, bustling around their own homes in the usual manner. Then rather abruptly, darkness engulfs hundreds of homes and buildings. Faucets run dry and signals vanish. In some homes, the darkness lasts for only a few hours at a time; in others, it lasts for days.
As eastern coastal cities face flash floods and southern states experience intensifying hurricane seasons due to climate change, California is confronting a dangerous new normal: wildfire season. This year, in an effort to reduce the threat of wildfires due to power lines and high wind gusts, PG&E has shut off power in at least 17 counties throughout northern California including Alameda County, according to an article by NPR.
Piedmont Fire Chief Bret Black said that every county in the Bay Area was impacted by the power outages, and Piedmont experienced outages two times within the last month as several California fires blazed.
“Throughout the month of October, we had the Kincade fire up in Sonoma county, and we had several smaller fires in and around Alameda county, Contra Costa county, and Solano county,” Black said.
Black said that a crew of four firefighters from the Piedmont Fire Department assisted in putting out the Kincade fire for a week.
“Almost 200,000 people were evacuated [from Sonoma county], which is pretty historic,” Black said.
As the possibility of power outages emerged, superintendent Randy Booker was in regular communication with city manager Sara Lillevand and Alameda county in determining whether the schools would be in session, said PHS principal Adam Littlefield.
“We have to consider the number of days and instructional minutes we have to have for our students,” Littlefield said.
Black said he believes that the possibility of encountering more severe fires and power outages like these is significant.
“Anytime we have the high fire danger threat with high winds, that is the recipe for the power system to be disrupted, and I think we are going to see it on a reoccurring basis,” Black said.
Junior Ang Lee lives in the Oakland Hills, which also experienced the power outages. Lee said it was difficult to complete school assignments because he had to stay out late at cafes and he wishes that the school was more aware of this problem, especially for students living outside of Piedmont.
Student Activism
Switching on the news, reports of escalating temperatures and vanishing coral reefs is almost expected. Marker ink smudging onto their fingers, students around the world fill in the letters on their posters and examine them proudly, knowing tomorrow their whole city, and maybe the world, will see them. They refuse to allow raging wildfires and extreme flooding to become the new normal.
In the wake of alarming wildfires that creep closer to home, teens are not sitting back; instead, they are marching, incorporating sustainability into schools, and shifting personal routines.
Senior Maddie Young said that we are leading ourselves into catastrophe by devastating countless animal habitats.
“The fact that people still do not believe in [climate change] scares me,” Young said.
Young is currently taking AP Environmental Science, which she said has given her a deeper understanding of climate change.
“We learned in APES today that northern California is an environmental hotspot. There are native plants, but there is also a lot of habitat loss,” Young said. “We have a lot of industrialization, so we need to learn how to be more sustainable.”
During the week of Sept. 20 to Sept. 27, an estimated four million people worldwide, most of them students, attended a climate strike sparked by the actions of young and prominent activist, Greta Thunberg, according to a New York Times article.
Both Young and Lovric participated in the protest in San Francisco on Sept. 20. Protestors held up cardboard cutouts while hollering chants in a demand for attention from corporations they marched passed.
“One [poster had a quote by] King George from Hamilton, saying ‘Ocean’s rise, empires fall,’” Lovric said.
Young said she joined in on a chant that went “Hey, hey, ho, ho, climate change has got to go!”
“I wanted to march with other people that share the same concerns as me and are also the same age as me,” Young said. “It was empowering.”
Lee attended as well and said the solidarity of the youthful marchers struck him.
“I think they send a very clear message to schools because when students are not in school, [schools] are actively losing money,” Lee said. “But the cause is noble and justified.”
Yet Young said that people other than lawmakers and carbon emitting businesses must work to fix the issue as well.
“Within communities like Piedmont, we have been doing a lot,” Young said. “I think it’s a matter of the little communities creating change, coming together, and eventually spreading [the movement].”
Lee is the MHS representative for ASB and said that ASB is driving for greater sustainability within both schools this year.
“We are much more considerate when choosing decorations and vendors,” Lee said. “We are looking at things we can use for more than one year.”
For instance, Lee said that at Friday Fest, ASB handed out food to students’ hands rather than putting them into several hundred plastic cups. For giveaways, ASB occasionally gifts metal and bamboo straws.
“It seems like there are so many problems our country is facing: racism, mass-incarceration, poverty,” Lee said. “These are all very awful problems, and it feels like climate change is the less immediate of those problems, but it’s always looming in the distance.”
Lovric said that even though the Climate Strike did plenty to draw attention to the issue, awareness isn’t enough if politicians fail to create momentum.
“Older generations do not see the change as much and they see that everything that creates carbon emissions has bettered their lives,” Young said. “They do not want to readapt and give up their old ways.”
Young said it can be a struggle to explain the impact of global warming to some adults, even her mother.
“I try to explain to her that her generation will not be the one to experience the drastic changes,” Young said. “It’s going to be us.”