The Summary
- The Los Angeles-area fires are a worst-case scenario caused by powerful winds that struck after months without rain.
- Fire experts, past reports and risk assessments had all anticipated a wildfire catastrophe to some degree.
- The affected region s geography and weather, paired with climate change and suburban sprawl in fire-prone areas, created a vulnerable situation.
After months without much precipitation, the recent spate of wildfires in the Los Angeles area is a worst-case scenario due to exceptionally strong and protracted Santa Ana winds. According to an NBC News analysis of wildfire risk maps, public meetings regarding wildfire risk, after-action reports from other fires, and interviews with fire specialists, however, the severe repercussions of the fires are not surprising.
Char Miller, a professor of environmental analysis and history at Pomona College, stated that it was completely predictable.
Thousands of homes have been burned, almost 180,000 people have had to evacuate, and nearly half a million customers have lost power as a result of the flames.
We have been constructing houses in the middle of fire zones. “City Hall and the county government have consistently approved development in areas with increasing risks, even though we know they are dangerous and fire zones,” Miller said. You don’t want to see all of the components combined.
According to a federal investigation, Los Angeles County has a higher danger of wildfire to residences than 99% of other counties in the US. According to maps from the Los Angeles Fire Department and the state, the Pacific Palisades, the Hollywood Hills, and Altadena—three locations where fires are raging—have extremely high fire hazard severity.
According to Joe Scott, chief fire scientist at Pyrologix, a wildfire risk consultant that contributed to the federal analysis, it wasn’t if, it was when. However, this represents the extreme of what may have occurred.
An after-action analysis of the November 2018 Woolsey Fire detailed issues that are similar to those firefighters encounter today.
250,000 people were forced to leave as the fire rushed across the Santa Monica Mountains toward residences along the Malibu shore, spewing embers up to a mile from its front line. In the counties of Ventura and Los Angeles, almost 1,000 homes were destroyed.
It was called a perfect storm in the study.
It stated that dead-end canyon routes made evacuations and firefighting access difficult, and that the fire’s strength and pace overwhelmed the available resources. According to the investigation, the first reaction in Malibu and along the Pacific Coast Highway had to concentrate on saving lives and ensuring safety rather than defending property because of the weather and the fire department’s constraints. However, it claimed that the general public and decision-makers were not entirely aware of that fact.
The public believes that they can always be protected by public agencies. “This is not always possible, as an incident the size of the Woolsey Fire shows,” the report stated, praising first responders for keeping the death toll at three.
It came to the conclusion that protecting new projects in fire-prone areas could require more than just increasing the number of fire engines and improving residential preparation for possible fires.
It stated that it will reappear even if the present fire weather cycle ends.
This week, the prophecies came true: Given the weather, Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone stated on Wednesday that there were just not enough firefighters to manage the situation.
All 29 fire agencies in our area, including L.A. area, are ill-prepared for a calamity of this magnitude. According to Marrone, firefighters had been pre-positioned in the Santa Monica Mountains before the flames started, but there aren’t enough of them in L.A. County to handle four different fires of this size. This isn’t your typical red flag warning.
Geography plays a role in the challenges of battling fires in the regions impacted by the Woolsey Fire and the ongoing fires.
The Pacific Palisades is where wilderness slopes that are frequently beaten by winds meet suburbs. According to Zillow data, the median value of high-end properties in the ZIP code was over $3.4 million last year. These homes are surrounded by fire-prone chaparral species like manzanita, scrub oak, and chamise, sometimes known as greasewood.
Those ecosystems might have burned once every 30 to 130 years prior to European colonization. According to the California Wildfire & Forest Resilience Task Force, human-caused ignitions are now projected to trigger fires in inhabited areas every 20 years or less.
According to Robert Gray, a Canadian wildfire biologist and former wildland firefighter, chaparral habitats are characterized by fierce, wind-whipped fires.
According to Gray, there is a long list of these chaparral-driven fires that seriously harm populated areas. The plants also contain volatile compounds that can intensify flames.
Because of the growth in the foothills, a fire in Los Angeles County can now leap from roof to roof when it rages through, as it does, Miller said.
California has increased resources and people to combat fires all year long and invested in programs to reduce the danger of fire at the local, county, and state levels. The peak firefighting staffing season was extended from five to nine months by the Legislature in July.
Brush reduction initiatives have been put in place by the city and county of Los Angeles to guarantee that households have a defensible area for fighting fires. Homeowners in the Hollywood Hills and Pacific Palisades are obliged to keep their roofs clean, trim trees, and remove brush since these locations are classified as Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones. According to state law, a home must also undergo an inspection before it can be sold.
“If everyone in the neighborhood is committed, those interventions and others, like installing fire-resistant roofs, can work,” Gray added.
“The radiant heat alone will negate it if your neighbor doesn’t do it and their house catches fire,” he added.
Due to the significant risk, insurers have been more cautious. About 30,000 Californian property insurance clients, including more than 1,600 in Pacific Palisades, had their coverage not renewed by State Farm in March. As of September, California’s FAIR plan, an insurer of last resort, provided coverage to over 1,400 Pacific Palisades households.
Add abnormally dry weather to that precarious position. There had been a hazardous windstorm and no substantial rain in Los Angeles since July. This week’s flames are the result of a confluence of risks that fire authorities have been warning about for months.
At a meeting of California’s wildfire task force following the Franklin Fire that burned over 4,000 acres near Malibu last month, Anale Burlew, chief deputy of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), stated that Southern California, particularly that coastal region, was extremely vulnerable to a wildfire due to the low humidity and strong winds that have been occurring lately.
During the conference, California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot stated that the state’s fire season has become the fire year.
According to him, we currently deal with wildfire conditions throughout the state that essentially never go away over the course of a year.
The Santa Ana winds, which carry moisture away from coastal regions and wash down mountain slopes, are frequently responsible for California’s winter wildfires. Any fire that starts can be quickly pushed by the winds, especially in a dry environment.
The Santa Ana winds are typically created when high pressure seeps through canyons and passes because the San Gabriel Mountains tend to trap it. On Tuesday, however, the Santa Anas managed to climb over the mountains and deliver a downslope whirlwind toward Pasadena and the Pacific Palisades.
According to Robert Fovell, a professor of atmospheric and environmental sciences at the University of Albany, they are typically better protected places.
The wind event was well predicted by forecasters, he continued, adding that it would be reasonable to describe this as well-anticipated from a meteorological perspective.
Miller, a professor at Pomona College, stated that there are few options for property protection after the Santa Ana winds reach high speeds.
According to him, once that occurs and a fire is started, it cannot be put out. There is very nothing a firefighter can do when winds of 40, 50, 60, or 70 miles per hour are driving it.
There is little evidence that climate change is making Santa Ana wind episodes more frequent. But according to UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, extended droughts and rising temperatures increase the chance that things will be ready for fire when the winds blow.
“In a recent YouTube address, he stated that climate change is increasing the overlap between the occurrence of these wind events and extremely dry vegetation conditions later in the season.”
Swain was the lead author of a study published Wednesday in thejournal Nature Reviews, which suggests that hydroclimate whiplash a term for quick swings between intensely wet and dry weather has accelerated around the globe. California offers a prime example, since it experienced major floodingduring the past two winters.
This whiplash sequence in California has increased fire risk twofold, Swain said in a news release. First, by greatly increasing the growth of flammable grass and brush in the months leading up to fire season, and then by drying it out to exceptionally high levels with the extreme dryness and warmth that followed.