Sudden Oak Death has been implicated in the Basin Complex Fire (Big Sur, California) as making the burn hotter and harder to fight.
Trees killed by non-native pests can fuel forest fires that are hotter and harder to fight. Many California wildfires are burning forests already severely damaged by sudden oak death. The Los Angeles Times reports that the Basin Complex fire on the Big Sur peninsula is hotter and harder to fight than it would be otherwise because hundreds of thousands of tanoak trees in the forest have been killed by this disease.
Sudden oak death is a disease or pathogen introduced to California probably in the 1990s. No one knows where it originated, but in less than 20 years it has killed millions of tanoak trees. The path of destruction stretches up the coastal region from Monterrey County to Humboldt County in California, and into Curry County in Oregon.
Sudden oak death also attacks plants commonly used as ornamentals, including camellias and rhododendrons. Federal and state quarantines have greatly reduced the numbers of infected plants being shipped across the country, but have not yet eliminated the threat that the disease might spread via this pathway.
As you might have guessed, Sudden oak death can be spread by movement of firewood. The disease is similar to fungus and quite difficult to see- making it easy for people to accidentally move it on what looks like disease-free wood.
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