There’s No Such Thing as ‘Fire Season’ Anymore; Chuckwalla National Monument May Be Rescinded–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: March 17, 2025

Indy Digest: March 17, 2025

You’ve heard the term “wildfire season.” In the West, the “season” has traditionally been June through November, more or less.

Well, it’s time for us to retire the term—because wildfire season, as the January Los Angeles-area fires proved, is now January through December. It’s never NOT “wildfire season.”

Unfortunately, folks in Oklahoma—and other parts of the Midwest—are witnessing this dauting new truth as you read this. ABC News says:

Oklahoma is under alert for fire danger on Monday after being devastated by deadly blazes over the weekend, and amid a continued fire threat in the Plains.

More than 40 million Americans are under alert for fire weather conditions over the next few days. Red flag warnings have been issued from Texas to South Dakota for critical to extreme fire danger due to the chance for high winds and low humidity.

Parts of Oklahoma, as well as Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas, face a critical threat of fire danger, with gusts up to 45 mph possible along with very low humidity.

Amid the threat, a “dangerous” wildfire ignited in southeast Guthrie, Oklahoma, the U.S. National Weather Service in Norman said Monday afternoon while urging residents in the area to evacuate immediately.

The continued fire threat comes after four people were killed and over 140 injured in Oklahoma due to high winds and raging wildfires that ignited on Friday, officials said.

The Associated Press reports that at least 39 people have died due to “vicious and damaging weather” that caused wildfires, tornadoes and severe dust storms over the weekend.

Meanwhile, here in California, we’re dealing with the aftermath of various devastating wildfires—including sky-high insurance bills and cancelled policies. Our partners at Calmatters have an update on the massive rate hike requested by State Farm:

California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara said … he will grant State Farm’s request to raise home insurance premiums by 22% on average if the company agrees to certain conditions—and wins approval at a public rate hearing next month.

Lara’s conditions are that State Farm, the state’s biggest provider of homeowners insurance, commit to pause canceling and not renewing policies through the end of this year. He also is asking that its parent company, State Farm Mutual, give or loan the California entity, State Farm General, $500 million to help boost its finances. In addition, State Farm must prove its need for the interim rate increases at a hearing April 8, where it must present updated and more detailed data. …

An email exchange obtained by CalMatters shows that on Thursday afternoon, a lawyer for State Farm told the Insurance Department that it would not commit to holding off on 11,000 remaining non-renewals that the company announced last year, as requested by the commissioner.

The effects of climate change are here—and higher insurance bills and the end of the concept of “fire season” are just the start.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• The Chuckwalla National Monument, designated just months ago by President Joe Biden, may be on the chopping block. The Los Angeles Times reports on the muddled situation: “The Trump administration touched off consternation and confusion over the weekend, issuing, and then apparently rolling back, an announcement implying the president had rescinded his predecessor’s order creating two popular national monuments in California. The confusion arose over a bullet item referencing President Trump’s rollback of the monument designations in a White House fact sheet posted Friday that details the reversal of various Biden administration policies. On Saturday, the reference to monuments was dropped without explanation. The change left unclear the fates of the Chuckwalla National Monument adjacent to Joshua Tree National Park and the Sáttítla Highlands National Monument in Northern California. But the expectation that Trump intended to roll back the status for the two California monuments led to immediate reaction from their supporters, among them conservation and environmental groups, tribal leaders and local and national elected officials.” Stay tuned.

• Wired magazine reports that the gutting of the Food and Drug Administration is likely to create significant issues in the supply chain: “Teams devoted to inspecting plant and food imports have been hit especially hard by the recent cuts, including the Plant Protection and Quarantine program, which has lost hundreds of staffers alone. ‘It’s causing problems left and right,’ says one current USDA worker, who like other federal employees in this story asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. ‘It’s basically a skeleton crew working now,’ says another current USDA staffer, who noted that both they and most of their colleagues held advanced degrees and had many years of training to protect US food and agriculture supply chains from invasive pests. ‘It’s not something that is easily replaced by artificial intelligence.’ … Lahar and other supply chain experts warn that the losses could cause food to go rotten while waiting in ports and could lead to even higher grocery prices, in addition to increasing the chances of potentially devastating invasive species getting into the country. These dangers are especially acute at a moment when US grocery supply chains are already reeling from other business disruptions such as bird flu and President Trump’s new tariffs. ‘If we’re inspecting less food, the first basic thing that happens is some amount of that food we don’t inspect is likely to go bad. We’re going to end up losing resources,’ says supply chain industry veteran and software CEO Joe Hudicka.”

• A popular weight-loss drug may have a disconcerting side effect: hair loss. Time magazine reports: “In the latest study published on MedRxiv—a site that hosts early research not yet peer reviewed by experts—scientists in Canada report that using GLP-1 drugs can contribute to a higher risk of hair loss, especially among women. Dr. Mohit Sodhi, a resident in emergency medicine at University of British Columbia, and his colleagues analyzed data from just over 1,900 people who were prescribed semaglutide and 1,300 who were prescribed bupropion-naltrexone—an older obesity treatment known as Contrave. Semaglutide is the compound in the drugs Ozempic, which treats diabetes, and Wegovy, which treats obesity. Sodhi focused only on people taking Wegovy to treat overweight or obesity to avoid any potential confounding effects of diabetes on hair loss. He and his team then compared the diagnoses for hair loss in these patients’ medical records and found that those prescribed semaglutide had a 50% higher risk of being diagnosed with a hair-loss condition compared to those prescribed Contrave. That risk was twice as high for women“

• Today’s recall news involves … General Motors vehicles! NBC News says: “General Motors is recalling more than 90,000 vehicles over a transmission control valve issue that can cause tires to lock up, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said. The problem affects cars with 10-speed transmissions, the safety administration said. Over time, the transmission control valves in some of the vehicles can become susceptible to excessive wear, causing a loss of pressure within the valve that can result in harsh shifting, it said. ‘In rare cases, the wheels may experience a momentary lock up,’ the administration said in a recall notice, increasing the risk of a crash. The affected models are the 2020-21 Cadillac CT4, 2020-21 Cadillac CT5, 2019-20 Cadillac CT6 and 2020-22 Chevrolet Camaro.”

• More and more Canadians are eschewing trips to the U.S. NBC News reports: “Trump’s escalating trade war against America’s closest allies and trade partners isn’t just rattling stock markets and drawing retaliation from Beijing, Brussels and Ottawa. It’s also fueling a backlash among ordinary consumers across the northern border. Two-thirds of Canadians said they’d significantly reduced their purchases of American products in stores (68%) and online (65%), and 59% said they’re less likely to visit the U.S. this year than in 2024, according to a survey last week by the Canadian market researcher Leger. Some 36% of Canadians with U.S. travel plans said they’d already canceled them. A separate poll this month by Montreal-based Approach Tours found even higher resistance among older Canadians, with three-quarters of respondents ages 55 and up saying they’re avoiding trips to the U.S. more than before. Canadians made an estimated 20.4 million visits to the U.S. last year, a number expected to rise by more than a million in 2025, according to the U.S. Travel Association. But the industry group warned last month that even a 10% drop in those visits would cost $2.1 billion in lost spending and some 14,000 jobs.”

• And finally … we started with climate change, and we’ll end with climate change: Several hundred conference attendees had to be rescued from the Big Bear area last week due to a snowstorm. The conference’s topic? Climate action. SFGate breaks down the ironic rescue: “San Bernardino County firefighters had to rescue attendees of a climate action conference near Big Bear on March 13 after they became stranded due to heavy snowfall. The incident occurred at YMCA Camp Whittle in Fawnskin, the department said in a post on X. Some of the 300 attendees tried to reach buses waiting near cleared roads by trekking through approximately 2 feet of snow, but the buses became stuck almost 2 miles away from the camp near San Bernardino County Fire Station 96, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. San Bernardino County Fire Capt. Anthony Muscarello described the immediate chaos to the Daily News. ‘Within a few minutes, we had a couple hundred people standing in a blizzard in front of our station, waiting to get on these buses that were getting stuck and didn’t know the best way to get down,’ he told the outlet. Firefighters used the station’s snowcat to evacuate ‘dozens’ of attendees who had remained at Camp Whittle before nightfall, the X post said, just as the facility had run out of food.“

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