The month of August has passed, but the high heat persists in California. At least two people died Tuesday in the American state and thousands more were evacuated because of a new large fire in the Los Angeles area. Another person was burned and had to be hospitalized, according to the provisional report communicated by the firefighters, who ordered the inhabitants of more than 3,000 homes to evacuate their homes.
Several buildings were also destroyed by this fire, which started Monday near the city of Hemet, southeast of Los Angeles, and which has already ravaged more than 1,000 hectares in less than 24 hours. Nearby schools have been closed. The fire “spread very quickly even before the firefighters arrived on the scene”, explained a spokesperson for the firefighters on Twitter.
California is facing, like certain regions of Nevada and Arizona, another day of extreme temperatures. A heat dome has settled over the region, pushing the mercury to climb up to 43 ° C in some places, and the phenomenon is expected to continue until Thursday.
Coupled with the devastating drought that has hit the American West for two decades, this brutal heat creates the ideal conditions for fires to start. Last week, another fire, called “Route Fire”, had already destroyed several thousand hectares in the hinterland of Los Angeles.
The damaged electricity network
This heat wave also causes disturbances on the Californian electricity grid, in particular because of the massive use of air conditioning. Its regulator, California ISO, has issued several alerts to ask households to limit their consumption from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. in order to avoid saturation.
Californians are therefore asked to avoid charging their electric vehicles during this time slot, not to set the air conditioning below 25.5°C and to refrain from using their main energy-consuming equipment.
This Tuesday, the boss of California ISO, Elliot Mainzer, called on the population to redouble their efforts, as the heat intensifies and increases the pressure on the network. “We are going through an extreme heat wave and efforts by consumers to reduce their energy consumption after 4 p.m. are absolutely essential,” he insisted. “We’ve seen a positive impact on lower demand in recent days, but now we need a two to three times reduction in consumption as this heat wave continues to intensify,” he said. he added.
In the middle of the day, all the solar panels generally provide one third of the electricity in California. But when the sun goes down, the supply of photovoltaic energy is abruptly interrupted, leaving the other sources of electricity to take over – which is a problem in the early evening, when the heat of the day is not still falling, pushing demand via air conditioning.
Last week, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom temporarily lifted restrictions so fossil-fueled power plants could produce more. Recurring heat waves are an unmistakable marker of global warming – and these heat waves are set to multiply, lengthen and intensify further, say scientists.