> So the wildfire risk wasn't forecasted to be notably extreme, until today when the red flag warning sets in.
This is absolutely untrue. Sure, the red flag warning set in today, but wildfire risk was considered to be at very high levels for (quite literally) weeks. See Tweets from way before the Creek Fire: [1][2][3] Just mild research would indicate that hiking (for days) deep in the wilderness would be a bad idea. It's just profoundly irresponsible. And, as someone that's done NorCal during this time previously, it's not comparable to prior years (except iirc maybe like 3 years ago when it was also a particularly hot summer).
> there are many hundreds of thousands of Californians (myself included) who also headed up into the Sierra this weekend.
There's a difference between doing some light camping or a day trip to the Sierras as opposed to hiking for several days deep in the wilderness during a heatwave.
> ...there's not really any evidence to suggest that these folks made a foolish or dangerous decision
This is the kind of shit that gets people killed. It was most definitely foolish and dangerous. Sometimes bad things happen to extremely experienced adventurers: flash floods, avalanches, etc. This was not that. It was a bunch of Instagrammers that wanted to "get away" without having any kind of respect for mother nature or what she can throw at you.
All of the points in my previous post still stand. This was not a notably risky fire-weather watch (which is part of why this fires behavior is so concerning), and the area where these folks were headed did not put them at particularly elevated risk. It's fine if you would have chosen not to go, but I probably would have made the same decision as these folks.
I'm not aware of any wilderness backpacker fatalities caused by wildfires in California. The hazards here are very different than those of avalanches or flash floods, which are actually usually easier to predict. Any experienced outdoors-person knows that. You can pick a bone with them for taking photographs, but I think their decision to continue with their hike (which started before the fire had even ignited!) was much more nuanced than "there was a heat wave." If you cancelled your trip any time there was an increased risk of something, you wouldn't get outdoors very often.
Also, there's only one 's' in the plural of "Sierra." The word "Sierras" is equivalent to "mountainses." ;-)
This is absolutely untrue. Sure, the red flag warning set in today, but wildfire risk was considered to be at very high levels for (quite literally) weeks. See Tweets from way before the Creek Fire: [1][2][3] Just mild research would indicate that hiking (for days) deep in the wilderness would be a bad idea. It's just profoundly irresponsible. And, as someone that's done NorCal during this time previously, it's not comparable to prior years (except iirc maybe like 3 years ago when it was also a particularly hot summer).
> there are many hundreds of thousands of Californians (myself included) who also headed up into the Sierra this weekend.
There's a difference between doing some light camping or a day trip to the Sierras as opposed to hiking for several days deep in the wilderness during a heatwave.
> ...there's not really any evidence to suggest that these folks made a foolish or dangerous decision
This is the kind of shit that gets people killed. It was most definitely foolish and dangerous. Sometimes bad things happen to extremely experienced adventurers: flash floods, avalanches, etc. This was not that. It was a bunch of Instagrammers that wanted to "get away" without having any kind of respect for mother nature or what she can throw at you.
[1] https://twitter.com/R5_Fire_News/status/1302311140815298560/...
[2] https://twitter.com/NWSSacramento/status/1301932248313200640
[3] https://twitter.com/NWSLosAngeles/status/1301255674655956992...