FOR THE WEEK OF JAN. 13, 2025

Devastating Los Angeles firestorms show impact of drought and changed climate

Photos and videos from Los Angeles look like a war zone or disaster movie. Vast areas of America's most populous county (nearly 10 million people) are blackened by the most destructive firestorms in California history. A severe lack of rain in recent months, wind gusts reaching 100 miles per hour and low humidity combined to create an unstoppable wall of fire last week. Four wildfires burned from Tuesday into the weekend, killing at least 24 people, uprooting about 180,000 and destroying over 12,000 homes, apartments, schools, libraries, stores, offices, government sites and worship centers. Damage and economic losses from to the costliest U.S. wildfire could exceed $135 billion and may reach $150 billion, preliminary estimates say.

In a familiar linkage, global climate changes are tied to the disaster, experts say. Though January is typically part of California's wet season, conditions are terribly dry. Los Angeles has received just 0.16 inches of rain in the eight months since last May and the summer was unusually hot. As a result, vegetation that typically would be full of water by midwinter instead remained parched. Dry fuel is much easier and quicker to ignite than wet fuel. Fire danger jumped from risky to ruinous last week when wind gusts reached hurricane strength in the San Gabriel Mountains near LA. That fed oxygen to the blaze, fanned even tiny sparks into an inferno and carried embers across roads and the Pacific Coast Highway. Only the ocean itself halted the spread in seaside Malibu. Treacherous weather also grounded firefighting aircraft.

Three days after the largest fire began in now-devastated community of Pacific Palisades, scientists made an announcement on Friday that could help explain the deadly conflagration: 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history. With temperatures rising around the globe and the oceans unusually warm, scientists warn that we're in a dangerous new era of chaotic floods, storms and fires made worse by human-caused climate change. "There's no fire season — it's fire year," Gov. Gavin Newsom said last week in Pacific Palisades. He sent California National Guard military police to help local authorities secure evacuated areas. President Joe Biden, who leaves office next Monday, issued a major disaster declaration that provides immediate federal help for survivors.

Though experts can't say for sure that any specific disaster was worsened or made more likely by climate change, the Los Angeles fires were driven by factors that scientists link to fire weather and that are becoming increasingly common on a hotter planet. "Southern California remains dry, gripped by drought and high temperatures. Both drought and heat are known to be more likely in the context of human-caused climate change," says environmental professor Jacob Bendix of Syracuse University in New York. "We must recognize that such fires are likely to become more common."

Governor says: "To those who would seek to take advantage of evacuated communities, let me be clear: Looting will not be tolerated." – Gavin Newsom

Scientist says: "We can expect that these extraordinary wildfires will become horribly more ordinary." – Ned Kleiner, Harvard University atmospheric scientist

Blogger says: "There is a bitter irony in how our dependence on the flames of burning fossil fuels stokes the very fires we dread, making wildfires more frequent and ferocious." – Elliot Kirschner, San Francisco documentary filmmaker, at Substack

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