LA Burning Is Hard To Ignore If You Cover Climate Change

Southern California and in particular Los Angeles are in the conversations of those in climate change circles since the outbreak of wildfires that are currently destroying thousands of structures and causing tens of billions of dollars in damage along with lives lost. The conversations point to the inevitability of these unfolding events based on history from which we should learn.

California has not been alone when facing devastating wildfires. Every year the state has a fire season. Similar wildfire events have happened in Canada in recent years, first in Fort McMurray, Alberta in 2016 with much of the city burned out, and then in Lytton, British Columbia in 2021 where a town burned down in minutes. Both examples are fires associated with climate change-created conditions and forewarning for what we are witnessing in LA right now.

LA is the perfect storm for wildfires. It is located in California’s dry climate zone, an area that has a Mediterranean climate, dry hot summers, and mild wet winters. LA’s recent weather history shows it experienced before May 2024, a period of precipitation well above normal which caused flooding. Since then the city has experienced drought recording only 4.1 millimetres (0.16 inches) of rain over 8 months. The period of heavy rain caused the hills around LA to grow green largely because of chaparral which is native to Southern Oregon, California and Baja California.

Chaparral is an evergreen shrub that features waxy and resinous leaves. It easily burns and is well-adapted to fire which doesn’t kill it. Chaparral is well adapted to California’s natural fire cycles of between 30 and 150 years. Recent decades have seen the intervals between chaparral fires get shorter with hotter and drier summers to blame along with many human factors including:

• Urban sprawl with homes built close to nature in potential ignition zones.
• Power lines that run through potential ignition zones.
• Old transmission infrastructure in need of replacement that cannot withstand high wind conditions like the Santa Anas.
• Cleared building sites close to nature that leave combustible debris around.
• Ill-conceived fire suppression activities including controlled burns that increase wildfire risk.
• Poor fuel management practices in wildfire zones.
• Other careless activities that include disposing of lit cigarettes and dousing campfires in parks and recreational areas near ignition zones.

Just how much of this human activity is to blame? A 2017 research article that appeared in Biological Sciences, a journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, noted then that,

“Humans have vastly expanded the spatial and seasonal “fire niche” in the…United States, accounting for 84% of all wildfires and 44% of total area burned.”

California is no exception with chaparral, human-aided fires erupting. A Washington Post article, appearing on January 11, 2025, notes that “more than 70% of the burned areas in Los Angeles County fell in zones the state determined had a very high fire risk.” And yet these were heavily built-up urban areas.

The burning of LA has occurred despite efforts by the city and state to build the resources needed to stop wildfires before they get out of control. It has occurred despite the state’s requirements and regulations for houses built in high-fire risk zones to create combustible vegetation buffers around them. It has happened despite the billions the state and city have spent to clear out dead wood and debris from hillsides and forests. It has happened despite California having the largest firefighting force of any state in the United States.

Humans never seem to learn. The desire to move closer to nature produced the conditions for the 2018, Paradise, California wildfire that burned that community to the ground. Eugene Linden, a writer for The Guardian, in March 2022 wrote Americans have not learned from events like the Paradise fire, noting that “since the climate risks surfaced, millions of people have moved into wildfire zones in the US west.”

Either the lessons aren’t being taught or the students haven’t learned. Encroachment into nature is a smoking gun that leads to the type of wildfire destruction we are seeing in LA right now. This fire likely originated in chaparral-covered hills near homes built to be close to nature. It may have started when Santa Ana winds blew down a utility pole causing the wires to spark and begin a fire that soon found lots of stuff to fuel it to the LA suburbs of Altadena and Pacific Palisades and in the process destroying thousands of structures and killing 24 to date.

Fire risk in California isn’t lessening according to research. A letter that appeared in the October 24, 2024 edition of the Journal Environmental Research describes these hotter and longer droughts as critical drivers in accelerating burned areas throughout the Western U.S. including California. Not only will there be more of them but they will be even more intense. California is a “fire regime” that is identifiable through historical records. These are zones where communities should be a “no-go.” Yet after a wildfire occurs in one of them humans return to rebuild. This is insane group behaviour that will continue to make managing wildfires in Southern California difficult in the 21st century.