The fires in California have been a new development over the past couple of weeks. The LA Times reports these fires started the first week of Jan. 7. By the 30th of January, the fires were nearly 98% contained yet the damage is still possible due to dry land and recent rain, having the ability of mudslides. Natural resources teacher Mrs. Laura O’Leary talked about wildfires, saying, “Wildfires are becoming more at the forefront, and part of the reason for that is that we are becoming a more densely populated country also because our climate is changing and our environment is becoming drier and more prone to burn.”
Three separate fires occurred in California: the Palisades, Eaton, and Hughes fires. NBC News reported on these fires using the information available now.
The Palisades fire started on Jan. 7 in the Pacific Palisades, near Malibu, starting as a brush fire. Powerful Santa Ana winds hit the land, some of the strongest to hit the area in over a decade, officials said. These winds not only intensified the spread of the fire but also prevented helicopters and planes from dumping water onto the fire as it was too dangerous to fly. O’Leary says “The west has been in a drought period for more than a decade now, with a couple of like breaks here and there, but the drought conditions have caused more of a problem with the burning.” This fire was the largest of the three which had grown to 23,448 acres, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. This fire is said to have damaged or destroyed more than 6,800 structures.
The Eaton fire ignited a couple of hours after the Palisades fire, near a canyon in the sprawling national forest. By then, it had expanded to 14,021 acres. The Department of Forestry has reported that 9,418 structures were damaged or destroyed in the blaze, making it the second-largest fire in the area.
Finally, the Hughes fire began near Castaic Lake in northern Los Angeles on Jan. 22. It quickly grew to over 10,000 acres, covering around 10,425 acres, and was the fastest-contained fire.
Multiple small fires resulted from the larger fires. Although easily contained, these fires burned 2,399 acres of land.
The cause of the fires is not fully known but officials say that the combination of drought conditions with less than ten percent of average rainfall since Oct. 1, as well as powerful offshore winds that hit during the first week of January, prompted fire weather.
However, there was some relief when the first significant winter storm of the season brought Southern California some showers, pushing several wildfires in the Los Angeles area closer to full containment. About a half-inch to an inch of rain was expected around the Los Angeles area by the end of Jan. 27, with one to two inches of rain in the mountains. However, with the rain comes the threat of mudslides as the National Weather Service has placed several burn areas under a flood watch into the 27.
Mudslides have already occurred, including one along Topanga Canyon Boulevard. The LA news reports that this was caused by minor flooding, which closed the highway due to mud and debris obstructing the roadway. A mudslide also occurred on Pacific Drive, located in the Palisades fire burn scar area.
O’Leary mentions the feedback loop the wildfires produce; trees provide a feedback loop because trees are carbon sinks. The more carbon that is allowed to go up into the atmosphere, the warmer and drier we then become. So it becomes this positive, amplifying feedback. The World Resource Institute says that a positive feedback loop is a cycle where wildfires release carbon that contributes to climate change, which then makes conditions worse for wildfires. Wildfires release carbon stored in trees and soil; this carbon contributes to climate change, making the planet warmer and drier. Third, warmer and drier conditions make vegetation more brittle and more likely to burn. Then more frequent and intense wildfires release more carbon, which contributes to more climate change.
“We used to suppress fires. There was a management strategy where they do controlled burns, but we suppressed our burning in terms of management, mostly because of our population density, and prescribed burnings became more and more of a risk because people were closer and closer. Now on top of that, you have these drought conditions.” O’Leary finishes by saying , “even some of these humongous, old-growth trees that used to be able to handle the fire, are dying and adding to the risk and feedback loop.”