California has been experiencing a record-setting fire season with over 25 major fires and two extended attack wildfires. Washington and Oregon are also ablaze – 1 million acres have burned in Washington and 807,000 acres in Oregon. In California, 3.3 million acres have burned. At least 33 people have died and 22 are missing. 

This year, there have been a total of 7,900 wildfires in California alone. More than 17,000 firefighters have been working ceaselessly in an attempt to curb these wildfires. Some of these fires are at 98 percent containment. However, the continuing presence of smoke has created extremely dry conditions, which increase the likelihood of additional wildfires.

Though a cold front has recently made an appearance on the burning West Coast and has led to decreased temperature, this front nonetheless increases the likelihood of the spread of wildfires because it is accompanied by strong gusts of air. 

Furthermore, this cold front and its accompanying wind gusts have led to the spread of smoke across the country and beyond even our borders, with data collected by the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, suggesting that the smoke is going to make an appearance in parts of Northern Europe. 

The dangers of the smoke are made all the more clear during the pandemic. Lung specialists advise residents to wear N95 masks when outside and to stay indoors as much possible to avoid exacerbating their respiratory systems. People who have tested positive for COVID-19 are especially vulnerable to poor atmospheric conditions, as are children, people with pre-existing conditions such as heart and lung disease and elderly individuals. Furthermore, the damage that wildfire smoke wreaks over the respiratory system makes people more likely to contract lung infections, including those caused by COVID-19. 

Hundreds of thousands of homes and other structures have been destroyed. This has caused an enormous amount of displacement. In August, when the intensity of the fire-season reached its peak, roughly 10 percent of Oregon’s population was under some kind of evacuation alert.

Residents are having a hard time coping with the combined effects of the wildfires and the pandemic. In California, many still remember the devastating wildfire season of 2018 – this wildfire season is reopening wounds for residents, for their properties and livelihoods are once again being violently uprooted. 

Additionally, the demands of social distancing imposed by the pandemic have made the possibility of providing direct relief to people in need much more difficult. It has not been possible, for example, for many counties to set up traditional evacuation centers. Instead, people have been directed to “Temporary Evacuation Points,” where they must remain in their cars until a relief worker is able to help them. 

In between dealing with the pandemic and the wildfire season, government resources have been spread incredibly thin. Thus, mutual aid groups have become crucial to relief efforts in all three states. In Portland, restaurants, kitchens and other groups are providing food and other forms of wildfire relief to firefighters and people affected by the fire. Information regarding specific groups that are helping people in Portland can be found on Eater. 

What, precisely, is the difference between this fire season and other fire seasons? Experts say that this fire season, and other future fire seasons, are getting longer and longer. On average, fire seasons start earlier and last 75 days more than usual. Therefore, it may be that this fire season will last until November of this year. 

Daniel Berlant, a public information officer for CalFire, said, “It’s not that we’re seeing more fire, it’s that the fires are able to burn at a bigger size with more destruction.”

Though 95 percent of wildfires are started because of human recreational activities, many of the wildfires and their increased intensity are a direct result of climate change. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence to support the claim that wildfire seasons are worse, and will continue to get worse, because of climate change, President Donald Trump refuses to acknowledge the evidence. 

In a briefing on wildfires in McClellan Park, California, Sept. 14, Trump argued with Wade Crowfoot, the Californian Secretary for Natural Resources. Crowfoot insisted that climate change was in fact behind the exacerbated wildfire season. 

Trump stated that he didn’t think that “science knows” whether or not climate change has contributed to the fire season, and that, “it’ll start getting cooler.” Trump has repeatedly insisted that poor vegetation management is to blame for this wildfire season. As proof, Trump cites the forests of Europe, where less wildfires are seen. But in fact, this lack of wildfires is attributable to the difference in climate in Europe, and not at all to vegetation management. 

Trump’s comments have brought him criticism from the scientific and political communities. On Sept. 14, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden denounced Trump as a “climate arsonist” who endangered Americans by repeatedly denying climate change. 

Misinformation from fringe conspiracy groups has exacerbated the strain on governmental resources in coping with the fire season and the pandemic. Supporters of Donald Trump have been alleging online that Antifa – allegedly a left-wing anti-fascist political movement support by autonomous groups – have been starting the wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington. Such was the extent of the misinformation in Portland, for example, that the FBI division in Portland posted an official statement on Twitter debunking these contentious claims. 

Even officials seem to have bought into false claims involving arson, despite the fact that police departments take care to investigate each wildfire to determine that arson is not in fact the cause of them. For example, Sheriff’s deputy Mark Nikolai of Clackamas County, Oregon – who is now suspended from duty and is under investigation –was recorded urging residents to come forward and report any members of Antifa who were behind the wildfires. 

Facebook has pledged to remove false claims that Antifa is behind the setting of these wildfires, but misinformation has already had a marked effect on the capacity of local governments to cope with the crisis. 

For instance, Oregon state departments have had to work overtime to clear up these false claims, instead of working to contain the threat of the wildfires. Furthermore, the ability for investigative journalists to report on the wildfires has been extremely limited as many journalists have been threatened by residents who believe that the journalists themselves are Antifa arsons. 

To make matters worse, the possibility of looting has become a widespread problem during this wildfire season. Though this is only a rumor, many Oregon residents who have become paranoid about the possibility of their homes being ransacked by vandals have taken to staying at home and risking their lives to protect their possessions from looters. 

Some have also illegally stopped other residents who are trying to evacuate the area, using the threat of gun violence to deter those trying to leave. Some individuals believe that instituting these checkpoints and stopping unrecognized vehicles will protect their property.

These fears of looting and arson are unfounded, however. Though there has been a 400 percent increase in the rate of 911 calls made, nearly all have failed to result in evidence of either crime being committed. 

We have all seen the countless videos centered around the big question everyone seems to want to know: is the new baby a bouncing boy or a glittery girl? You’ll find your answer in cakes filled with sprinkles, balloons filled with confetti, baseballs filled with colored powder and, recently, pyrotechnics gone wrong. Gender reveal parties have become a rite of passage for many new parents – and it may seem like this tradition has been going on for a long time – but in reality it is fairly new.

Originating in the U.S. in 2009, gender reveal parties began in the backyard of Jenna Karvunidis, during a barbecue celebration of her pregnancy. After the recent birth of her nephew, many members of her family were not as excited by the announcement of her baby as she would have liked. So she came up with a theatrical plan to introduce some fun back into the baby shower with a surprise sex reveal. 

She baked two rubber duck-shaped cakes, one filled with blue frosting for male and the other with pink for female. At her 20-week ultrasound she asked her midwife to keep the sex of the baby a secret and instead write it down on a piece of paper that would determine which cake would be used. She is credited with being the first to really popularize this trend after posting about her pink frosting filled cake on her blog, High Gloss and Sauce. 

The post garnered some local attention and was eventually picked up by a Chicago magazine  The Bump, which was popular in the waiting rooms of obstetricians and midwives in the area. That was where the phenomenon started, but the internet really popularized it as videos started to appear of the parties. The first videos of reveals are dated in 2009 and really seem to start to trend in mid-2011. Google trends correspond to this as well with the first searches of the term “gender reveal” appearing mid-2010.

What started as an innocent cake reveal has now become a massive competition. It seems with each new video the reveals have become more and more extravagant – and dangerous. It has become less of a celebration of new life and more a showcase of parents-to-be hellbent on one-upping each other. In 2018, an alligator was even involved in a reveal with a video circulating of its jaws clamping down on a watermelon filled with blue jelly. Simple sprinkles, confetti or streamers don’t seem to cut it anymore, and these new parents have gotten very creative – and sometimes deadly.

In July of 2019, on the Australian Gold Coast, a car burst into blue flames after a reveal gone wrong. That September, a gender reveal in Texas led to a plane crash when the aircraft stalled after dumping thousands of gallons of pink water over a crop field. Just that next month in October, a grandmother was killed in Knoxville, Iowa, by shrapnel from a homemade pipe bomb meant to explode in blue smoke. In 2017, almost 50,000 acres of land in Arizona were destroyed from a brush fire that started when a gun was fired at a target filled with blue colored chalk and tannerite, a highly explosive powder. And most recently, over 8,000 acres of land in San Bernardino County, California, have now been destroyed after another pipe bomb explosion gone wrong. 

In the short time these parties have been around they have garnered a lot of attention, good and bad. Many controversies surround these get-togethers, from the dangers involved in the creative surprises to the question of whether these parties are perpetuating gender binaries. Even Karvunidis has changed her mind about them and took to Facebook and Twitter to condemn these over-the-top events. 

“Stop having these stupid parties. For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid’s penis. No one cares but you,” Karvunidis said.

She also shared another surprise – that her views on sex and gender have changed. 

“Who cares what gender the baby is? I did at the time because we didn’t live in 2019 and didn’t know what we know now — that assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what’s between their legs. PLOT TWIST, the world’s first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits!” Karvunidis said.

She and many others have found the parties are actually very restricting and that they perpetuate gender stereotypes. The parties have been known to be centered around themes like “guns vs glitter,” “tractors vs tiaras” or “ruffles vs rifles” that separate children into two distinct categories – hyper-masculine and violent or hyper-feminine and dainty – based solely on the basis of the child’s genitalia.  Before they can walk, talk or even think for themselves, they are thrust into a binary role full of constricting guidelines on what it means to be a boy or girl.

Many people have rejected this binary and are vocal about the struggle of growing up in a world so heavily focused on those restrictions. Children should be free to grow, learn and change in a welcoming environment with the option to be whoever they are. This is a struggle when there are those being pushed into ill-fitting boxes with feelings of shame for not living up to their parents’– and society’s– expectations of who they should be and how they should represent themselves. 

The very term gender reveal is problematic and comes down to the difference between the words gender and sex. Sex, in this case, means reproductive body parts and chromosomes. Gender, on the other hand, is much more complicated. Gender is a socially constructed concept and can be described as more of a spectrum. It is something that can change as a person is continually being developed and doesn’t always fall into neat categories. It’s a way for people to present themselves and define themselves – and it’s personal. Each person has to find their own way and is in charge of declaring their own gender. 

Gender expectations are stifling to everyone – even those who are not transgender. With themes like “tutus or touchdowns” and “bows or badges,” the children in the audiences of these reveals can be misled to assume that it’s wrong if they don’t fall into these stereotypes that reek of sexism. Who is to say that little girl won’t grow up to be a firefighter? Or what if that little boy finds he loves ballet? And why should any of that matter? Countless videos have ended with family members and even parents of the soon to be children extremely disappointed when their predictions of the babies gender are wrong. This can be damaging to a child’s self esteem and sense of well-being.

This debate, like anything else, is ongoing and has many different viewpoints, and there are definitely those who feel gender reveals should not be taken too seriously. Pregnancy is exciting for a lot of women, and they want to share that with others. That little bit of information on a baby’s sex is sometimes all a mother has to cling to and create an image of her future child. But there are many alternatives to a gender reveal party that are a lot less harmful – including a zodiac reveal or a birthstone reveal.

It is important when planning these events to take into account that what we should really be celebrating is life and who that baby will become – not what body parts they were born with.