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THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2020
Kittredge, author
of books on the
rural West, dies
land, but to each other.”
His books “Hole In
The Sky” and “Owning
William
Kittredge, It All” recall his impres-
who grew up on his fami- sions of growing up in
ly’s historic MC Ranch in Lake and Klamath coun-
southern Oregon’s Lake ties. In both he was crit-
County and was regarded ical of himself, his fam-
as one of America’s great ily and damage created
western writers, died last by irresponsible ranching
week in Montana.
and farming.
Kittredge was 88.
“We thought we were
A
Klamath
Union doing God’s work out
High School graduate, there,” said Kittredge of
Kittredge was the author life on the MC. “We found
of several books, includ- out that some of that ‘big’
ing his ground-
ag doesn’t work.”
breaking memoir
“Hole In The
“Hole in the Sky.”
Sky,” in which
He edited “The
Kittredge chron-
Last Best Place: A
icles his personal
Montana Anthol-
failures, won the
ogy” and authored
PEN West Award
essay collections
in 1992 for best
William
including “Own-
nonfi ction book of
Kittredge
ing It All,” “The
the year.
Nature of Gen-
Despite
his
erosity” and “Balanc- critical writings about
ing Water: Restoring the agriculture, “Balancing
Klamath Basin,” which Water” is regarded as a
was published in 2000 balanced book about the
and featured photographs Klamath Basin and its
by Tupper Ansel Blake.
water problems.
During his decade-
“I’m quite positive
slong career, Kittredge about what’s going on
was twice awarded a down there,” he said in
National
Endowment an interview about the
for the Arts, two Pacifi c book. “I don’t think any-
Northwest Booksellers body’s acting out of mali-
Awards for Excellence, ciousness. They’re all
the
Charles
Frankel addressing the issues
Prize from the National and they’re getting them
Endowment
for
the solved one by one by one.
Humanities and the Rob- That’s the way a com-
ert Kirsch Award from munity gets formed ...
the Los Angeles Times, you’ve got to take care of
among numerous other the people, you’ve got to
accolades.
take care of the place. A
Although
revered lot of environmentalists
by many, his books don’t put much empha-
were often viewed crit- sis on taking care of the
ically by ranchers and economy or the people.
agri-businessmen, espe- Clearly both have to be
cially in Lake County and taken care of and that’s
other areas of rural Ore- the thrust of the way I’m
gon. Kittredge was often trying to approach it. I
sharply critical of farm think it’s pretty remark-
and ranch land use prac- able. There’s a lot of good
tices, including those on work going on. There’s a
the family ranch.
lot of agreement.”
During an interview in
Although
Kittredge
the 1990s at his Missou- had an agricultural back-
la-area home, Kittredge ground,
including
a
said his criticism was degree from Oregon State
based on fi rsthand expe- University, he left the
rience of being raised in ranch to study at the Uni-
Lake County’s Warner versity of Iowa’s Writers’
Valley on the once-mas- Workshop.
sive MC Ranch.
Kittredge later began a
“At one point I wanted successful writing career
to write about the West that led to his books and
and the mistakes that magazine articles in such
were being made and the publications as The Atlan-
best example I could use tic, Harper’s, Esquire and
was myself and my fam- Outside. Kittredge spent
ily and the mistakes we more than 30 years as a
had made,” he said. “And professor of English and
because of that I got a creative writing at the
reputation of being hard University of Montana in
on my family and being Missoula.
hard on ranch people in
He also co-authored,
general. I don’t hate cow- under the pen name Owen
boys. Most of the grief Rountree, nine novels in
I’ve given is to agribusi- the Cord series of West-
ness ranchers.”
erns. His novel “The Wil-
The Los Angeles Times low Field” was published
wrote of his 1996 book in 2006.
“Who Owns the West?”
Because of restric-
that it pleads with West- tions stemming from the
erners to “rethink our per- ongoing coronavirus pan-
sonal lives and our stew- demic, his wife, Annick
ardship of this region to Smith, said a memorial
fashion sustainable rela- will be held at a to-be-de-
tionships not just to the termined time.
By LEE JUILLERAT
The Herald and News
A year
of climate
disasters
Noah Berger/AP Photo
Firefi ghters watch fl ames from the LNU Lightning Complex fi res approach a home in the Berryessa Estates neighborhood of
unincorporated Napa County in California in August.
By SETH BORENSTEIN
Associated Press
Nature struck relentlessly
in 2020 with record-break-
ing and deadly weather- and
climate-related disasters.
With the most named
storms in the Atlantic, the
largest-ever area of Cal-
ifornia burned by wild-
fi res, killer fl oods in Asia
and Africa and a hot, melt-
ing Arctic, 2020 was more
than a disastrous year with
the pandemic. It was a year
of disasters — and climate
change from the burning of
coal, oil and natural gas was
a big factor, scientists said.
The United States didn’t
just set a record for the most
disasters costing at least $1
billion — adjusted for infl a-
tion — the nation obliterated
the record, according to the
National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration.
By September, 2020 had
tied the old record of 16 bil-
lion-dollar disasters and
when the count is completed
in early January, offi cials
fi gure it will be 20, likely
more. Only three states
weren’t part of a billion-dol-
lar weather disaster (Alaska,
Hawaii and North Dakota)
— and all the coastline from
Texas to Maine, except for
a tiny part of Florida, was
under a watch or warning for
a hurricane, tropical storm or
storm surge from those sys-
tems in 2020, according to
U.S. weather offi cials.
With 30 named storms,
the Atlantic hurricane sea-
son surpassed the mark set in
2005, ran out of storm names
and went deep into the Greek
alphabet, making meteorolo-
gists reconsider how they
name future storms, offi cials
said. Ten of those storms
rapidly intensifi ed, mak-
ing them more dangerous. A
dozen made landfall in the
U.S., easily smashing the
old record of nine. And Lou-
isiana got hit fi ve times. At
one point, the American Red
Cross had 60 New Orleans
hotels fi lled with refugees.
With
a
devastating
20-year megadrought and
near-record heat, Califor-
nia had at least 6,528 square
miles burned by wildfi re,
doubling the previous record
area burned. Five of the six
largest wildfi res in California
history have been in 2020.
Oregon and Colorado had
immense fi re damage, too.
More than 10,000 buildings
were damaged or destroyed
and at least 41 people killed.
Between fi res and hur-
ricanes, the American Red
Cross provided a record 1.3
million nights of shelter for
disaster-struck Americans —
four times the annual aver-
age for the previous decade.
“Since April, we’ve seen
a large disaster occur some-
where in the country every
fi ve days,” said Trevor Rig-
gen, the Red Cross vice pres-
ident in charge of disasters.
“It’s really been a non-stop
pace, and not all those disas-
ters make the news.”
“Nature is sending us a
message. We better hear it,”
United Nations Environ-
ment Programme Director
Inger Andersen said. “Wher-
ever you go, whatever conti-
nent, we see Nature socking
it at us. The warmest three-
year period we’ve ever seen.
The Arctic temperatures, the
wildfi res, etc. etc.”
Worldwide, more than
220 climate- and weather-re-
lated disasters hurt more
than 70 million people and
caused more than $69 billion
in damage. Over 7,500 peo-
ple were killed, according to
preliminary fi gures from the
international disaster data-
base kept at the Centre for
Research on the Epidemiol-
ogy of Disasters at the Cath-
olic University of Louvain in
Belgium.
‘NATURE IS SENDING US A
MESSAGE. WE BETTER HEAR
IT. WHEREVER YOU GO,
WHATEVER CONTINENT, WE
SEE NATURE SOCKING IT AT US.
THE WARMEST THREE-YEAR
PERIOD WE’VE EVER SEEN.
THE ARCTIC TEMPERATURES,
THE WILDFIRES, ETC. ETC.’
Inger Andersen | United Nations
environment programme director
It was such a busy and
crazy a year that a dere-
cho that savaged the Mid-
west somehow fl ew under
the radar, despite damage
nearing $10 billion, and is
barely remembered. Other
billion-dollar severe storms,
often with tornadoes and hail,
struck the U.S. in January,
February, twice in March,
three times in April and
another three times in May.
All these U.S. disas-
ters have “really added
up to create a catastrophic
year,” said Adam Smith, a
NOAA applied climatolo-
gist. “Climate change has
its fi ngerprints on many of
these different extremes and
disasters.”
Of the disasters the group
tracks, including earth-
quakes, volcanoes and land-
slides, 85% to 90% are cli-
mate and weather related,
said Director Debarati
Guha-Sapir.
Unlike the United States,
which saw a rare break
in 2020 from increasing
non-hurricane
fl ooding,
worldwide “fl oods is your
biggest problem,” Guha-Sa-
pir said. “It’s a huge mistake
to underestimate fl oods.”
Floods killed more than
1,900 people in India in
June and affected 17 mil-
lion people, according to the
center’s data. Other fl ooding
and associated landslides in
Nepal, Pakistan, Afghani-
stan and again in India killed
at least another 1,250 people.
African fl oods killed nearly
600 people. And fl ooding
along Yangtze River and the
Three Gorges Dam in China
killed at least 279 people in
the summer and caused eco-
nomic losses of more than
$15 billion, according to
the World Meteorological
Organization.
Hue, Vietnam, had a
record 103 inches of rain in
October, according to the
organization.
Extremes, including heat
waves and droughts, hit
all over the world. Sibe-
ria reached a record 100
degrees as much of the Arc-
tic was 9 degrees warmer
than average and had an
exceptionally bad wildfi re
season. Arctic sea ice shrank
to the second lowest level on
record and set a few monthly
records for melt.
Death Valley saw the
warmest
temperature
recorded, 129.9 degrees, on
Earth in at least 80 years.
The pace of disasters is
noticeably increasing, said
disaster experts and cli-
mate scientists. The inter-
national database in Bel-
gium calculated that from
1980 to 1999, the world
had 4,212 disasters affect-
ing 3.25 billion people
and costing $1.63 trillion,
adjusted for infl ation. From
2000 to 2019 those fi g-
ures jumped to 7,348 disas-
ters, 4.03 billion people
affected and $2.97 trillion
in damage.
“Disasters are very much
becoming a chronic condi-
tion in this country,” said
Riggen, who has noticed the
change since 2006 when he
joined the Red Cross after
Hurricane Katrina.
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