By Jess Carey
Southern California is facing one of the most detrimental natural disasters in recent history. Over 12,000 homes and businesses have been destroyed or damaged and at least 25 people have died in the wake of four wildfires that broke out across Los Angeles County early this year, as documented by The Los Angeles Times on Jan. 17.
A lack of rain coupled with extremely powerful Santa Ana winds created the perfect storm for flames to spread rapidly through vegetation and neighborhoods, overwhelming local firefighting resources and prompting mass evacuations. The Eaton Fire and the Palisades Fire have added to the growing list of destructive wildfire incidents in California’s recent history, raising questions about why and how this disaster occurred at such a scale, especially with wildfire season still months away.
Data from the Scripps Institution shows that California is getting hotter, seeing an average annual temperature increase of about 3 degrees since the early 1900s. Warmer temperatures coincide with a lack of rainfall, creating dangerous wildfire conditions as vegetation dries out. This year, L.A. experienced record-breaking temperatures throughout the summer and a significantly drier-than-usual fall and winter, receiving a scant 0.16 inches of rain since June, as documented by the Los Angeles Almanac in 2025. The chamise and manzanita chaparral, live oak woodland, and coastal sage scrub of the Santa Monica Mountains and the foothills of Angeles National Forest are constituted by oily and highly flammable plants that have evolved with regular fire return intervals.
Controlled burning is a land management technique where accumulated vegetation is burned intentionally during weather windows of low fire risk. The Chumash and Tongva peoples native to the Los Angeles basin light fires as a land management technique and cultural practice, opening up land for hunting and promoting ecosystem regeneration. Despite the benefits, this practice was historically repressed and even banned by the state’s 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. Many grassroots organizations and agencies, like the Cultural Fire Management Council or the Indigenous People’s Burning Network, are a part of an effort to reestablish burn cycles and cultural relationships to fire across the West. Controlled burning mitigates the buildup of dense vegetation, which in turn contributes to less fuel present when a fire comes through. However, according to the California Chaparral Institute, high intensity fires in chaparral environments are driven primarily by weather patterns and not by age or density of shrubland.
Cal Poly Humboldt fire science professor Jeff Kane notes that increasing the scale of controlled burns as a management technique may not be an easy solution to fighting wildfires in Southern California.
“The thing about chaparral is that if it burns once, it can be ready to burn again a few years later,” Kane said. “You don’t have fuel accumulation in quite the same way as we see in forests. It’s hard to say what else could have been done to prevent this situation. When you have winds that are that fast and strong, embers are blowing everywhere. The weather was so extreme that firefighters couldn’t fly planes to drop retardant, or even access some of the places that were burning.”
In all of California’s most destructive wildfires, the brunt of property loss occurs around the wildland-urban interface. Neighborhoods like Altadena and Pacific Palisades are located in hilly, brushy terrain adjacent to and intermixed with large tracts of vegetation. Danger arises when homes are surrounded by this fire-prone and fire-dependent environment, especially if those homes are built out of flammable materials like wood. The city of Los Angeles has strict building safety codes for new construction in high fire danger zones, yet most development occurred before these laws were enacted, leaving older neighborhoods vulnerable.
Since 1960, the population of Los Angeles County has doubled, making it now the most populated county in the country, contributing to a persistent demand for new housing. However, 72% of L.A.’s land is zoned for single family homes, as shown by city zoning maps collected by the Othering and Belonging Institute. This means that it is illegal for developers to build apartments, tenements, or mixed-use buildings in these zones that make up most of the county. This creates pressure for developers to extend suburban sprawl into the hills and fringe of the city as lowlands are already developed, creating neighborhoods with high fire risk.
A complicated array of factors combined to create these deadly fires, and as weather patterns become more extreme, it remains crucial to adopt preventative strategies now. Improvements in urban planning, fireproofing existing buildings and creating sufficient fuel breaks around neighborhoods can be significant steps towards safer communities.
“Events like this are going to keep happening,” Kane said. “And we need to come up with some creative solutions moving forward.”
Jess Carey is a senior at Cal Poly Humboldt, majoring in biology and double minoring in botany and journalism, and the science editor for The Lumberjack. They are passionate about telling stories that are relevant to the community, branching their interests in science, music, and the arts.
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