The Los Angeles fires – could they happen here?

Written By: - Date published: 12:02 pm, January 11th, 2025 - 18 comments
Categories: climate change, Donald Trump, global warming, making shit up, Media, politicans, science, spin, uncategorized, you couldn't make this shit up - Tags:

Over in the US of A the state of California is currently dealing with multiple large and out of control fires.

From the Guardian:

Even on their own, the fires are behemoths.

  • Palisades, the first and largest fire, is spreading west of Los Angeles. Burning across 20,438 acres, the fire has only been 8% contained as of Friday morning, meaning firefighters have created control lines – usually wide trenches – around 8% of it. Officials say initial estimates indicate it has destroyed at least 5,300 structures between the Santa Monica Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, making it the most destructive wildfire in California right now.
  • The Eaton fire, burning across Pasadena and Altadena areas in the north-east has blazed nearly 14,000 acres and has only been 3% contained. It has so far destroyed 4,000 structures, ranking it as the fourth most destructive wildfire in California’s history.
  • The other fires currently burning across Los Angeles include Kenneth, Hurst and Lidia. Kenneth, a brush fire which emerged in the Woodlands Hills area on Thursday, has burned across 1,000 acres in Los Angeles and Ventura counties. As of Friday morning, it has been 35% contained. Meanwhile, the Hurst fire, which is burning across 771 acres across the northernmost suburb of Los Angeles, has been 37% contained as of Friday morning. Over in Antelope Valley, the Lidia fire has burned across 395 acres and is 75% contained as of Friday morning.

The cause is simple. Climate change has made the area hotter and drier and intense winds have spread initial ignitions with terrifying event.

And it was utterly predictable.

In this must read post from Democracy Now climate scientist and activist Peter Kalmus reports how he lived there until two years ago. He left because increasing heat and dryness made him leave the area in fear of his safety.

I couldn’t stay there … It’s not a new normal … It’s a staircase to a hotter, more hellish Earth.”

In the article he is quoted as saying:

I don’t know what to say anymore. I’ll get to that in a second, but I just want to make sure — the reason I wrote [this article in the New York Times] was because we have to acknowledge that this is caused by the fossil fuel industry, which has been lying for almost half a century, blocking action. They’re on the record saying that they will continue to spread disinformation and continue to attempt to block action. They’ve known the whole time that the planet would get hotter like this and that impacts like this fire would happen.

And then, something I really wanted — a point I really wanted to make in the piece, which they wouldn’t let me make, is that this is still just the beginning. It’s going to get way worse than this. Two years ago — well, 2020, when the Bobcat Fire happened, the whole time I was living in Altadena, it was getting hotter and more fiery and drier and smokier. And it just didn’t feel like I could stay there. Like, I could — you know, when you have a trendline, things getting worse every year — right? — like, where’s the point where something — where it breaks? You know, like, you keep going, keep pushing the system, getting hotter and hotter, getting drier and drier — right? — like, emitting more and more carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, eventually things break.”

To emphasise his point he then said this:

[I]f we don’t change course very quickly — and maybe it’s even too late to avoid some of these much more catastrophic impacts, but I am fully expecting heat waves to start appearing where 100,000 people die, and then maybe a million people die, and then maybe more after that, as things get hotter and hotter, because there’s no — there’s no upper limit, right? Like, we keep burning these fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry keeps lying. The planet just keeps getting hotter. These impacts just keep getting worse.

It’s not a new normal. A lot of climate messaging centers around this idea that it’s a new normal. It’s a staircase to a hotter, more hellish Earth.

My jaw dropped when I read the NY Times tried to dumb down his article by not emphasising where this is leading us to. This should be front page news. Unless we address climate change now things are going to get way worse.

The fires have been met by the usual response from the right.

Elon Musk has attacked the gender and sexual identity of a fire fighter and has emphasised that getting rid of red tape and quicker processing times for consents is a priority.

He has said this:

The real red pill will come when people try to get permits to rebuild their homes and face multiyear waits. This might finally spell doom for the Californian Coastal Commission, which should not even exist as an organization.”

He and his buddy Donald Trump have tried to blame Californian Governor Gavin Newsom for the fires.

Trump has made a number of patently false assertions:

  • That Biden has depleted the FEMA budget, it was replenished recently by $29 billion;
  • That  Newsom “refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.” There is no such thing as a water restoration declaration.
  • That Newsom had “wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt” and had refused to allow water in the northern delta to be used for agricultural purposes. The water was in a different part of the state and Southern California does not have a shortage of water for fighting the fires.

The reality is that this is the hottest year on record and Los Angeles area has received less rainfall since the start of the rainy season in October than almost any other year since record-keeping began in 1877.

It is amazing that the debate should continue. That the right who serve the interests of billionaires whose temporary wealth relies on the burning of fossil fuels should continue to downplay the effects of climate change is predictable but completely bonkers.

Hang on. As Peter Kalmus states this is going to get rough.

And don’t think we are immune. As temperatures increase and droughts become more regular the incidence of fires over here will increase. And we are one wind blown fire away from suffering similar devastation.

18 comments on “The Los Angeles fires – could they happen here? ”

  1. Karolyn_IS 1
    11 January 2025 at 12:18 pm

    excellent post. I've seen some of the misinformation the post mentions and more.

    This link explains more about the LA water issue.

    The high winds stopping aerial firefighting. There was so much water being drawn off by the fire hydrants from storage tanks in a short period of time, it couldn't be sustained because the hydrants couldn't cope. It was an unprecedented event – and I guess unexpected. There was still plenty of water in the reservoirs.

    In NZ we need to prepared for unpredictable and unexpected events in the future – not starving necessary public services of funds via taxes etc.

    Minor point: it was 2024 that was the hottest year on record, not this (2025) year.

    Reply
  2. Ad 2
    11 January 2025 at 1:27 pm

    Our most intensely populated area in a subtropical forest is Titirangi to Bethells in Auckland. Covers about 120,000 hectares total.

    It has about 30,000 residents, 10,000 fairly expensive houses, 10% of Auckland's water supply with 4 dams, and 6,000 hectares of rare bird sanctuary.

    Also 4 small fire stations and no infrared monitoring.

    It'll all happen at some point.

    Reply
    • lprent 2.1
      11 January 2025 at 2:21 pm

      I'd be more worried about the Central Otago, the Canterbury Plains, Tasman. Often with fast-moving low vegetation fires, windbreak and plantation fires.

      The cause of fires in LA are usually precipitated by dryness, they are driven by dry air driven over a orographic lift. They come out of the mountain and hill country with hell of a lot of velocity, dry out vegetation. and make any blaze extend rapidly. The Santa Ana winds have an analogies here.

      It is pretty much the same here.

      The orographic winds coming over the New Zealand Alps get pretty damn dry because they drop most of their rain on the other side, they pass over a parched summer landscape, and they often have a lot of speed and inertia.

      We can get similar effects from orographic air masses falling off the volcanic plateau.

      If you have a look at where we have had large and extensive wildfires, it isn't in places with subtropical vegetation. It is in places that have fast dry winds.

      eg
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raetihi_Forest_fire
      https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/wildfire-2/
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Port_Hills_fires
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Port_Hills_fire
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_Valley_Fire
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_%C5%8Chau#Lake_%C5%8Chau_fire_2020

      etc.

      Sure it possible that we could get a severe enough drought at some point to cause the Waitakeres to burn. However it would take a really major shift in weather patterns, because most of that area is in the small orographic drop zone from wet air coming off the Tasman Sea, which is Auckland's common prevailing climatic wind pattern (mostly westerly) – see wind rose section here. Which is the reason that those dams are there. The lift of the old volcanoes in the Waitakeres cause a water drop. Same with the Hunua dams as SW winds hit the Hunua area after passing through the flat Waikato plains.

      Reply
      • Ad 2.1.1
        11 January 2025 at 9:32 pm

        The Lake Ohau 2020 fires were the biggest warning. 5,000 hectares and 46 houses gone.

        Wanaka now has infrared cameras all around it for early warning monitoring,

        They should do the same for the Waitakeres also gets into drought. When it goes it will really go.

        Reply
      • weka 2.1.2
        12 January 2025 at 9:53 am

        Here are the indices for Auckland fire risk for forest, scrub and grass. A number of areas are already in the extreme zone. I don't know the names so maybe you and Ad can point to the more highly populated areas. But it's also possible they don't have monitoring stations in historically less dry areas.

        https://fireweather.niwa.co.nz/region/Auckland

        You can click on each station name, and then look for the indices (not the general fire index). You can also click through to the drought rating.

        I think the point Ad is making is that going forward we are going to see increasing atypical emergencies. Which is pretty much what was predicted, more extreme weather events, and changes in what those are.

        Auckland isn't LA, and Central Otago is obviously much worse although has the benefit of lower population density. Wanaka and Queenstown in particular have distinct problems, largely of their own making and it's hard to fathom the council's role in this and why they basically have their head in the sand.

        Those smaller areas like Ohau are very high risk now, and one would hope all have solid evacuation plans, but I expect like most of NZ, she'll be right and we are well behind the curve in many places.

        Reply
        • lprent 2.1.2.1
          12 January 2025 at 12:23 pm

          Pretty much what you’d expect on the map. The areas with low risk are the hills where the rain drops off the Tasman sea. The areas that have risks are the areas with unobstructed wind flows like Counties Manakau (which is where Auckland gets most of its wildfires), and the coastal areas on the north east coast where the prevailing winds have already largely dropped their rain loads.

          My point about climate change is that over the next 40-50 years there are unlikely to be fundamental shifts in existing weather patterns. There will be however be higher prevalence’s of the extremes of those patterns.

          If it is possible in an existing weather pattern to get tropical downpours, then they will happen at higher frequencies, and at greater volumes. Like Auckland Jan/Feb 2023 flooding. We’re going to get those rivers of airborne water from the north.

          There is a Auckland pattern of wild fires in Counties Manakau because of the prevailing wind velocities. That has been getting noticeably more likely.

          The north eastern shore of Auckland has a propensity to have mini-tornadoes because of how the winds operate there. They will get more common. It also get pretty dry regularly which also seems to be more frequent if there is a dry winter.

          What I don’t expect is significant drought and wildfire in the north west hill country, because it is unlikely that the prevailing winds off the Tasman sea will shift or their water load will diminish. What I do expect there is what happened in 2023. They area got hit hard with rain and lots of slips.

          Of course as the ice sheets around the poles starts to thin out significantly, all bets are off. We haven’t seen what the effects of that are during a transition to smaller icecaps. All that is known is that on a geological timescale (ie resolutions are about 200-500 years over the last 20k years), the transitions were very rapid. Like through the mid-holocene period ~9kya-~6kya, and especially the holocene hot-spot about 8kya.

          Humans are shifting the climate far far faster than any natural processes. Not even volcanoes operate as fast, mostly because their individual effects aren’t sustained for more than a few years.

          So I’d expect that we’re looking at decades rather than centuries for changes. But starting with extremes of existing climate patterns, and changing climate patterns later this century. It looks to me like LA is just getting a minor extreme of an already prevailing pattern. It will get worse pretty fast.

          In Auckland and around NZ we’ll get the same. But mostly flooding and slips will the major issues across most of the country. Wildfires and droughts are most likely to happen in places that have orographic rain shadows – mostly Canterbury plains and Central South Island.

          Reply
  3. Mike the Lefty 3
    11 January 2025 at 2:11 pm

    And all this is happening in the Northern Hemisphere winter, how much worse will it be in summer?

    Reply
    • Graeme 3.1
      11 January 2025 at 3:50 pm

      Cold air can carry much less water, so the slightest Fohn effect and very low humidities can occur, leading to very alarming and dangerous fire dangers.

      We can get very dry conditions in Central Otago through winter, fortunately our Fohn conditions turn to a heavy front within days.

      Reply
  4. SPC 4
    11 January 2025 at 2:14 pm

    There are other factors

    1.After two decades of droughts, 2022 and 2023 were higher rainfall years and there was a lot of vegetation growth. This was all dry because of the 2024 drought.

    They declared a high fire risk a week before the fires (which then coincided with stronger Santa Ana winds than normal (these occur Sep-March) – off the hills towards the coast with embers starting house/section fires.

    Newsom has been accused of poor forestry/vegetation management, despite the known increasing risk from GW.

    Wildfires are part of life in the US West and play a vital role in nature.

    But scientists say human-caused climate change is altering weather patterns.

    Southern California had two decades of drought followed by two exceptionally wet years, which sparked furious vegetative growth, leaving the region packed with fuel and primed to burn.

    Meteorologist Daniel Swain said the fierce winds – which have gusted up to 160km/h – are stronger than the usual seasonal Santa Ana winds but are not unexpected.

    “The winds are the driver, but the real catalyst … is this incredible antecedent dryness,” he said.

    “That’s something that we haven’t seen in records going back to the 1800s.”

    If we build on flood plains, properties will flood. If we build in earthquake zones, there will be destruction. If we cover the hillsides that are home to scrub and prone to drought and exposed to fierce winds, there will be fires.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/california-los-angeles-wildfires-karen-bass-climate-change-b2676535.html

    2.The LA county does not have a full staffing for the 12 month a year city normal. They do not have trained volunteer reservists, just the state National Guard (for looting and other security).

    This in a nation without a fire fighting reserve (inter-state seasonal transfers) for emergency situations (apart from US Air Force planes being used). They have also done this

    https://www.nationalguard.mil/News/Article-View/Article/3223104/fireguard-program-enhances-national-guard-wildfire-fighting/

    They appear about as organised as their health system in getting results.

    3.If they build back, they need covenants making sections/housing ember fire resistant. Already insurance companies had started denying insurance in Altadena because of the fire risk, that would go viral after this outbreak of fires.

    Random insights

    Staffing

    It has been “extremely challenging” for the Los Angeles City Fire Department to battle the historic wildfires ripping through the county while already facing staffing and resource shortages, according to Captain Erik Scott.

    “We could use more firefighters. Fire Chief Crowley has been on record saying: We’re understaffed, we’re under-resourced. And that is something that people above my paygrade are having frank conversations and working on.”

    The fire captain said mutual aid is critical in battling the fires, along with getting resources from out of state.

    Ember fires overwhelming local water supply, high fire risk area housing covenants and forest logging.

    The “infrastructure with the fire hydrants” in place now to put out fires across Los Angeles is not sufficient to handle hundreds of homes engulfed in flames at once, said Chad Hanson, a forest and fire ecologist with the John Muir Project.

    While the area has the assets to safely put out a fire in a single home and “maybe an apartment building or commercial structure,” the design cannot address a situation in which whole neighborhoods are on fire, he told CNN.

    Meanwhile, most of the areas at serious risk of fires are not in forests but rather in communities that lack home hardening, defensible space pruning and evacuation planning, he said, addressing critics who say more tree removal is the solution to combatting wildfires.

    “These are community safety issues not wildland management issues,” Hanson said.

    “Instead of political opportunism,” he added, “we need to promote logging policies from certain members of Congress, put the partisan aside.”

    CNN coverage

    https://edition.cnn.com/weather/live-news/los-angeles-wildfires-palisades-eaton-california-01-09-25-hnk/index.html

    Reply
    • SPC 4.1
      11 January 2025 at 2:36 pm

      Traci Park, councilmember for Los Angeles’ District 11, which includes the Pacific Palisades, said the ongoing blazes have been “horrifying, terrifying and traumatic,” and that the people who are affected are not just her constituents but also her friends.

      “This is a community that is no stranger to fires,” Park told CNN, adding that people in the district are very familiar with what she described as faulty protocols required of them in an emergency situation like this.

      “We know that there are particular bottlenecks when it comes to evacuating and so to see those same issues repeat in what has now become the most devastating disaster in Los Angeles history is incredibly frustrating,” she said.

      “It is indicative of chronic underinvestment in critical infrastructure as well as in public safety.”

      Park told CNN that the number of fire stations and firefighters in the city of Lost Angeles has remained the same for 50 to 60 years –– despite a need for at least 62 new fire stations to serve the average daily demand.

      “During last year’s budget, I fought to retain those positions, and I was successful in doing so. But it’s only a drop in the bucket,” she said. Park said the calls for service had tripled.

      “We are so understaffed that our response times are twice the national standards.”

      “The strains and the underinvestment in our public safety in Los Angeles is absolutely untenable, and so I think that our residents and constituents are right to be angry. I am glad to hear Mayor Bass’ commitment to accountability,” she said.

      https://edition.cnn.com/weather/live-news/los-angeles-wildfires-palisades-eaton-california-01-09-25-hnk/index.html

      Background

      The chaotic scene was not one year in the making. As in other areas of the towering, fire-prone hillside neighbourhoods that ring the Los Angeles basin, Pacific Palisades residents had long pleaded for more attention to preparing for the fires that are striking the region with ever-greater frequency and ferocity. As recently as 2019, two fires that burned near parts of Pacific Palisades had shown the challenges of moving thousands of people through the area’s few escape routes.

      The Palisades, rising on bluffs and foothills over the Pacific Ocean near the elite communities of Malibu and Santa Monica, has long been an enclave for those looking to escape the urban bustle of Los Angeles. Roads that snake up winding canyons provide residents with privacy, panoramic sunset views and access to hiking trails through the Santa Monica Mountains.

      But the steep topography and the rugged landscape carry a risk: wildfires are a constant threat.

      Over the past decade, residents have held meetings and sent emails urging local officials to recognise the potential for problems with evacuation and do more to avoid the risk of future disaster. In a 2020 message to Los Angeles City Council members, Palisades community leaders said that there remained “substantial risks to public safety because of crowded conditions causing backups on both substandard and standard streets during required evacuations”.

      With the tinder-dry conditions this year and forecasts for powerful Santa Ana winds, the Pacific Palisades Community Council had already been scheduled to meet Thursday, with plans to discuss fire safety and a citywide effort for Los Angeles to develop its first Community Wildfire Protection Plan – something many US communities facing wildfire risks have already done to help identify risks, explain mitigation strategies and plan for disasters.

      Park once more

      She said there were unique factors that had caused the current fire to be so devastating, including high winds that spread the flames and kept emergency responders from using aerial equipment to beat back the fire.

      https://archive.li/MtMOD#selection-4749.176-4788.1

      https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/in-the-palisades-an-evacuation-disaster-was-years-in-the-making/UOVVTYGQS5ARFEZVOV65XX2HVE/

      Reply
    • SPC 4.2
      11 January 2025 at 3:32 pm

      California congresswoman Judy Chu has told the BBC there needs to be changes to the insurance system.

      The rising threat of wildfires and insurance companies pulling back on offering coverage has become a crisis for homeowners throughout the state.

      She says the state's insurance commissioner has announced a moratorium on non-renewals of insurance plans in wildfire areas.

      She points to the non-renewals as what led residents to turn to the California FAIR plan, an insurance programme of last resort for homeowners who can't get fire coverage in the private insurance market.

      But Chu says the FAIR plans costs more and cover less.

      "There's some big problem-solving that has to be done on our insurance," she says.

      https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cg7z9zjv90jt

      Reply
  5. Mike the Lefty 5
    11 January 2025 at 8:04 pm

    You know that sometime down the line Trump is once again going to engage mouth before brain and say something stupid like the wildfires are God's vengeance against Californians for voting Democrat at the presidential election.

    Reply
  7. adam 7
    11 January 2025 at 8:41 pm

    I'm trying to remember where I read about the speed of modern houses burning. But looking at LA fire, houses are burning fast their too.

    Reply
  8. SPC 8
    11 January 2025 at 8:43 pm

    Maybe some New Zealand group could monetise research in this area.

    There should be a giant sprinkler (water storage release) system (piped re-supply from the inland area) set up on the hills which source the fire and embers on the areas down below to operate when the Santa Ana wind means that planes cannot fly (when the fire risk is highest). To supplement logging to create fire breaks and high fire risk area building covenants.

    Reply
  9. Jenny 9
    12 January 2025 at 6:27 am

    '

    It's winter in California.

    This time of year traditionally has not been fire season, but now we disabuse any notion that there is a season," California governor Gavin Newsom said Tuesday…..

    https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/world/538653/from-flooding-rain-to-unmitigated-wildfire-why-california-is-ground-zero-for-disasters

    Summer is coming

    Reply
    • Jenny 9.1
      12 January 2025 at 9:45 am

      “New Zealand is a small emitter by world standards – only emitting some 0.2% of global greenhouse gases.”

      “…..anything we do as a nation will in itself have little impact on the climate – our impact will be symbolic, moral and political.”

      Sir Peter Gluckman

      https://www.pmcsa.org.nz/climate-change/

      I am not a doomsayer, I have been saying for a long time that New Zealand must give a lead on climate change action.

      It is no good waiting on someone else to be the pathfinder.

      Some country has to be the first to act to seriously act to decarbonise, why not us?.

      If no one else is doing it, then it is up to us.

      We are in a better position to to take this leading action than many others

      So why aren't we doing it?

      Two reasons

      Denial and Obfuscation

      Denial;
      Some people say we can't definitively conclude that this, or that, latest disaster, is related to climate change.

      Obfuscation;
      Some people say New Zealand is too small to make a difference.

      Some people say that we have to wait for a global consensus before we can decarbonise. Some say we can't be leaders we must be followers, John Key for instance argued that instead of being leaders we should be fast followers. But who are we going to follow?

      This is our moment.

      If we are waiting on some international body to give a lead we will be waiting for some time.

      Cop28 failure on fossil fuel phase-out is ‘devastating’, say scientists

      Cop29 fails again;

      ….The mood in Baku has not been hopeful. Leaders from most major economies, consumed by domestic political struggles, failed to turn up. The US, the world’s biggest economy and second-biggest polluter, is set to disengage from international climate cooperation under Donald Trump’s second term as president. And the host country’s president, Ilham Aliyev, has spent more time defending fossil fuels and picking fights with other countries than pushing for an ambitious deal…

      Just like the League of Nations before WWII couldn't come to a united position on German aggression. It took just one nation to stand up, at first alone, before others would follow.

      My hope is that this bunch of right wing crazies will be a one term government.

      My other hope is the Labour led opposition parties will promise to embark on a full decarbonisation of our energy sector, starting with a promise to close down Huntly Power station and ban all coal imports and exports, alongside a promised investment in a just transition to green industry jobs.

      Coupled with full electrification of the main trunk line and bus fleet.

      As well as resurrecting the ban on off shore oil exploration, opposition parties could look at resurrecting the Ardern administration plan to ban the import of ICE cars that was torpedoed by Winston Peters.

      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/444341/climate-change-commission-releases-final-report-says-nearly-all-cars-imported-by-2035-must-be-electric

      These are the things that a united opposition coalition can promise right now.

      On the thorny issue of agricultural emissions, a united opposition coalition must agree to promise to leave agricultural emissions off the table right now. That is just buying a fight with the agriculture sector that the opposition parties cannot afford to have just right now.

      Science Learning Hub

      https://www.sciencelearn.org.nz › resources › 2962-cli…

      15 Oct 2020 — New Zealand has an unusual greenhouse gas profile for a developed country. Almost half of our greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture, …

      As Gluckman points out above, our emissions from all sectors are only 0.2% of total global emissions, our emissions profile is anomalous, if we can give a lead on agricultural emissions that's fine, but not globally significant. More importantly, is if we can give a lead on the major causes of emissions globally, coal, oil gas.

      New Zealand was a global path finder once.

      First in the world with votes for women, first in the world for the Welfare State, first in the world to be nuclear weapons free. Instead of being a country comically trying to keep up by 'fast following' other countries, we can be a world leader that provides the example for other countries to follow,

      Make Aotearoa a path finder again.

      Reply
  10. SPC 10
    13 January 2025 at 4:21 pm

    A fully staffed fire service in LA would include use of permanent or volunteer staff in high fire risk areas and times working to prevent winds restarting one.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360545981/what-caused-palisades-blaze-visual-evidence-points-recent-fire-nearby

    Reply

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