Extreme events remind us of the costs of not learning to live with nature

When it comes to natural disasters, fire and water are not so different.

Start with the wildfires raging in California, where flames are licking at homes, and embers are hopping from neighborhood to neighborhood and brush to tree, sweeping thousands of people onto evacuation routes in fear.

The flames threaten people and places indiscriminately, from Hollywood celebrities to the homeless in Los Angeles. Revered institutions from The Getty art museum to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library are at risk, as helicopters and hardworking emergency crews fight to contain the blazes.

Some of those scenes of devastation are all too familiar to those who lived through superstorm Sandy, which hit our region seven years ago this week.

In 2012, it was rising waters and monstrous winds that wreaked havoc, but the result was too often the same: thousands of homes battered and abandoned, families displaced and unsure where to go. They faced a long (and in some cases continuing) road to recovery.

Here it may be the scents of sewage and mildew that linger in the memories of storm victims. In California, it's the acrid smoke and layers of ash. But the shocking power of nature is the same. And both regions have too many now-empty lots, and houses still not rebuilt and uninhabited. 

On both coasts, climate change is exacerbating the fury of these forces. It can boost the intensity of storms and lead to the dry conditions that make tinderboxes out of forests and fields.

And in both regions, we face the costs of not learning to live with nature. Despite coastlines flooding year after year, we find it hard to retreat inland. Even with development creeping farther into parts of California where wildfire is an enduring threat, the impulse has been to build, baby, build.

It is difficult to imagine leaving, or denying the pioneer spirit of those looking to create a life for themselves. But we must come to terms with nature’s immense strength.

Some voices here and across the country are beginning to see reason, questioning the wisdom of all-out development in all places. Filling in shorelines with sand year after year is the local version of Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill again and again.

We need broad, regional thinking to prepare for the next storm, and a Suffolk County task force’s embrace this week of a Long Island Coastal Commission is hopeful news.

There are few feelings like the heart-sink that comes when familiar neighborhoods and roads turn into apocalyptic scenes. There is a particular loss when you realize that family treasures are gone, when everything you own is what you were able to throw into a car in flight. These are the harsh lessons that come when nature is oblivious to human hopes and dreams, and humans keep failing to respond.

— The editorial board