More on the Fires
Politics, rhetoric, and the question of controlled burns.

The fires in the Los Angeles area continue to rage, and reports are that at least 16 people have been killed. The Kenneth Fire is now 100% contained, but winds continue to be a threat. The BBC has ongoing updated coverage here and the LAT here.
I want to return to the conversation we were having in my previous post on this subject. There was a lot of back-and-forth in the comment section which, as it often does, obscured some basic points. Let me clarify where I am on all of this, recognizing that, as always, my views are open to amendment based on new evidence and information.
In the simplest of terms, it continues to appear to be the case that this is a tragic confluence of extremely dry conditions and unusually strong Santa Ana wind in the broader context of a specific pattern of urban development in the greater Los Angeles area. Moreover, climate change has made a situation that was already prone to wildfires much worse.
In other words, there was a lot of dry fuel already present. Then the winds provided a delivery mechanism for spreading a fire. So all that was needed was a fluke (a spark) or carelessness (a cigarette butt) or negligence of some kind to provide a flame.*
To me, it seems that these ingredients mean that there was little in the recent past that could have been done to prevent this tragedy (in much the same way that nothing could have been done to prevent the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina).
Let me parse out a couple of things, as I think multiple commenters took this issue in more than one direction. There are, certainly, hypotheticals we could discuss about what might have been done many, many years ago. Could more have been done to mitigate climate change? Could the humans who developed greater Los Angeles done so differently? These are, however, to me “time machines” based scenarios insofar as, yes, we can say things done decades ago could have created a different set of parameters.
There is also the general truth that if more resources had been expended in various ways (more sophisticated fire suppression in houses, different construction, more money for fire departments, to name a couple off the top of my head) that could have helped. But, again, we are talking about time machines and the reality that resources are always limited.
So, it is nonetheless true, as a general statement, that there are “things” (a great big bucket of them) that might have been done. But we can say that after every disaster to one degree or the other.
There is also some level of hope that lessons of use for the future will be learned from this tragedy.
However, my ire in my post the other day, and what was at the heart of the debate in the comment section from my point of view, was focused on two, somewhat related, reactions to the fires.
The first is what I think of as “one weird trick” explanations (e.g., the “raking the forest” crowd).**
The second is just people trying to score political points.
These are what I was referring to when I said the following:
It is always tempting to assert that something could have ben done to have prevented all of this, but I am not seeing it (but am open to being corrected).
People who are using this moment to make cheap political points are, however, heartless ghouls.
To be clear: I wish there was some easy solution, but I fear that instead, we are seeing exactly what all the people who warned us about climate change tried to tell us. As such, I expect that we will see more tragedies of this nature (and, again, I point to Helene and North Carolina as being in the same category).
Now, of course, there will be lessons to be learned from all of this, but at the moment I am not sure what lesson will be learned that could have prevented all of this. No rain + California’s scrubby hills + dry winds (up to 100 MHP) + sparks equals the conditions for massive wildfires. I suppose I simply feel utterly fatalistic on that count.
In terms of “one weird trick” responses, a major focus has been forest management and specifically controlled burns. Kevin Drum has a detailed piece on the use of such burns: Why don’t we do more prescribed burning? An explainer. He notes that, in fact, their usage is up, but notes underfunding and regulatory hurdles. He further notes that conditions have to be right for such burns as well as the following point that is key for SoCal:
And even if you do manage to clear out the vegetation—either with fire or chainsaws—it will grow back quickly because these are native plants adapted to the climate. And in the meantime you’ve turned the hillsides into massive mudslide machines the next time it rains. This is not a great tradeoff.
I think people hear “forest” and assume that the problem is dead brush amidst tall trees and that burning off the brush solves the problem. Rather, most of what we are talking about is chaparral.
As such, I have not seen anything that convinces me that forest management is the solution to .4 centimeters of rain in three months plus 100 MHP Santa Ana winds.
Worse, however, than Monday Morning Quarterbacking on all of this is the gross politics. As per the incoming president:
On Truth Social, he called politicians “incompetent.” adding: “They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?”
Because, you know, it is good and useful to stoke anger and discontent in the midst of a tragedy, especially in an utterly dishonest fashion. But I guess that’s okay if you think it can make your political opponents look bad.***
Look, if Democratic Governor Gavin Newsome or Democratic Mayor Karen Bass of LA (or whomever) are demonstrated to have done something worthy of excoriation, then have at. But it is rather obvious that, like everything else in our current political climate, this is being spun on cable news and in social media as a partisan story to just create the requisite emotional rush. I can tell what Fox News is saying often by listening to acquaintances whom I know to be steady consumers. One such acquaintance quipped yesterday that “there won’t be in Democrats left in California after all these fires.” That’s just ridiculous partisanship and is reflective of our unhealthy media environment. But, of course, when leaders such as Trump are setting the tone on these matters, this is what we are going to continue to get.
To sum up.
- No rain + low humidity + dry, fast winds equals a tinderbox.
- Yes, we will learn things from this, but I don’t see some obvious fix that was missed.
- It is an additional layer of tragedy that we turn all of these events into cheap partisan politics.
I will note, however, that there are more serious political debates to be had (and that the cheap version is a distraction from those more serious ones). The more serious debates are about climate change as well as things like zoning and construction, as well as how many resources to be dedicating to things like fire departments and other services.
*I am highly influenced by the fact that I lived in Southern California during a time when there was a more regular rainy season and I also experienced normal Santa Ana winds. It is not hard for me to extrapolate what no rain and extreme winds could create.
Also, I live in a fairly humid place and was recently reminded of how dry the West can be during a visit to Arizona. As I write this I can see acres and acres of brown, dormant grass (with some intermittent green vegetation despite recent lows in the 20s). The ground is still soggy from recent rains and the grass is damp from frost this morning (and most mornings is covered in dew). Startin a fire out there would really, really difficult. Indeed, I like a good outdoor firepit and it is amazing how hard it can be to get a fire started if the fuel is not adequately dry.
However, if the fields around me had only had .4 cm of rain and if the humidity was low for months on end and then the was a consistent dry wind, these fields would be a serious fire risk. Conditions matter, and those conditions are not fully in human control.
As I noted in the comments of my previous post (and Drum passingly notes in his post), controlled burns of fields are not unusual around here. I am not a fan because I don’t like the smoke, but I am not at all afraid of out-of-control fires because it is just too wet here. But, also as the Drum piece notes, “controlled” burns in SoCal have gotten out of hand at times. I think people see the word “controlled” and overestimate how much control there is.
**For example, via The Guardian: Republican congressman calls for halting of disaster relief to California. Comments made on Fox Business, I would note.
***I find the cheap partisan politics to be galling for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that is sowing more discontent and distrust in the broader population in a way that makes actual solutions harder to achieve. It isn’t just that one team beats up on the other. It is that it damages the long-term ability for us to collectively solve problems.
Southern California has its own setup for wildfire catastrophe due to climate change. Other parts of the West have different setups. Here in Colorado, two million acres of overcrowded beetle-killed timber. You don’t do controlled burns in most of that. If you made every high school graduate in the state do a year of service thinning — much of the timber is on land sufficiently rugged that you would have to hike in, cut, and drag out (by hand or mule) — you couldn’t catch up.
https://swiftmedia.s3.amazonaws.com/mountain.swiftcom.com/images/sites/2/2018/08/21184208/BeetleSurvey-SDN-083018-1.jpg
And after 9/11, air travel changed and we got the TSA. What would the equivalent of that type of annoying vigilance (useful or not) be in daily life and not an airport? Who is going to pay for it? Who is going to go for it? Much of America had problems putting on a cheap mask for a year during a pandemic. This country just elected a guy who told people to drink bleach as a home remedy. What are we even thinking is going to happen?
It seems all very desperate in a way that’s hard to articulate. I do think that LA being a desirable place to live feeds into the desperate idea that a mass easy-to-understand failure occurred. I think there’s an implied lesson–you should be miserable like some MAGA idiot frightened of everything rather than able to handle yourself in a coastal city. There’s also the fact that climate change denial was bought and paid for, and it worked. I don’t think that minus the libertarians and Republicans spending decades citing fake science practical solutions would have emerged. But there’s such a thing as a guilty conscience. And everything Al Gore promised turned out, more or less, to be the case.
How about we wait about 10 days or so until we hear from the fire fighting professionals and authorities about how to handle increasingly frightening blazes? Right now it’s all just speculation, well intentioned or not. And the focus should be on fighting the flames, not fanning them.
Ha. Dangerous to assume Californians are as gullible as he is.
Driving from L.A. to San Diego a few years ago we what we assumed was a wildfire, only to call 911 and be exasperatedly told it was a “prescribed burn.” After which I learned CAFD has a whole program for “prescribed burns.” These foliage-heavy canyon-and-hills L.A. neighborhoods and the adjacent, heavily-trafficked woodsy L.A. parklands do not appear to be unmanaged when you visit them.
I just learned LAFD’s budget was somewhere north of $835 million in FY2024. It looks like firefighters were getting $50 million more in spending added to their collective contract later this year. Now there might still be underfunded depending on where all that money is going. But if they’re going to claim to be underfuned then…officials should eventually get an accounting on where all that money is going. After the ash settles.
@Modulo Myself:
If I had more money, I’d start a Cassandra Awards.
First recipients would be Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, and Mark Udall. Maybe Mitt Romney could get a certificate of merit for calling out Obama’s Putin appeasement in 2012 and being laughed at for it.
@Not the IT Dept.: What would you prefer I not talk about?
Denser population equals larger impact. It only gets worse.
One thing I’d add to your excellent description of the conditions leading to the fires — while this has been an extraordinarily dry year, it’s coming on the heels of a couple of very wet ones. So there was a lot of growth following all the rains, and then it dried out in the heat. I suspect that made things worse than if it had been drought all along…
@Modulo Myself:
This is a wild misstatement of what the once and future President actually said. He did not suggest that people drink bleach as a home remedy.
He suggested that doctors inject people with bleach. Not a home remedy, and no drinking.
This is actually a mostly recent phenomenon. Beginning in 2018 there have been a lot of major fires compared to the preceding years.
Indeed! But why would they have done that, prior to 2018 there was little to no basis to expect this development.
Hear is a link to WaPo listing of all the major fires that have occurred in CA and LA county, note how recent most of the biggies are .
“Link”
I kept looking but could not see a way to gift link this
ETA: Obviously, now, structures that are in or near foothills, canyons, or undeveloped areas with scrub brush or trees are at high risk.
So what happens with fire insurance? Does the state mandate it be available to these structures if you want to be an insurer in CA? Either these structures become uninsurable or everyone’s insurance gets more expensive.
@charontwo: There is a federal flood insurance program, which I think is mostly for people near rivers.
Florida has burgeoning homeowners insurance crisis with all the non-existent climate change and the weird recent cluster of statistically improbable weather events.
(Before anyone gets clever and insists this is evidence of , random events can and will cluster rather than have a purely smooth distribution. Flip a coin 1000 times — you will have a range of many heads in a row, and that’s all that’s been happening in Florida. The rest is a Chinese Hoax, and terrible education about statistics)
And Southern California is on fire. Let’s hope the insurers bought enough reinsurance.
We may need a similar or broader federal program to keep a large enough insuree base and buffer against years when predictions are off and there are more disasters than expected. An insurance program that can always pay out and not be bankrupted because it’s ultimately backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Cute, very cute. How about we discuss the resources that a major state like California can bring to bear on a crisis like this, and what made this fire(s) more deadly than the previous ones? There is a fair amount of info out there on this – it would be helpful to summarize it in one place.
@Not the IT Dept.:
Not cute. It was an honest question. I am still unclear on what your specific objection is.
I am open to citations.
Our local volunteer bush fire brigade scheduled a “controlled burn” a couple of years ago. It was to clear a build-up of fuel in a corridor of trees and under-storey, 50-75 metres wide and perhaps a kilometre long, that separates two areas developed for housing.
They got cold feet and cancelled it, lacking confidence they could stop it getting into people’s yards and homes if it got away from them.
I can’t begin to imagine the expertise involved in what we call in Australia “hazard-reduction burning” by the professional fire services.
@Not the IT Dept.: I can appreciate your sensibility.
AND, that ship has sailed, and Dr. Taylor was not the captain. Silence would cede the field to propagandists and defamers.
@Steven L. Taylor: When we call these fires “deadly” it’s a bit misleading. To my knowledge, 10 people have died in the total of the SoCal fires. None of them were residents. That’s not good, for sure.
What’s getting these fires called “the deadliest ever” is the dollar value of property damage. Because the homes that are burning are very expensive ones. The acreage involved is not small, for sure, and yet it is smaller than some other wildfires.
Losing property and possessions is a bad thing. I do not wish for it. And it is not the same thing as losing your life, or that of a loved one.
So when one is faced with funding, let’s say, further cancer research or funding expansion of water reservoirs, how should one make that decision?
@Jay L Gischer: The death toll from the fires is tragic, but it’s certainly not what sets this apart from other disasters. As for who and how many perished in the fires, the last I heard was that residents have been found among the ruins, comprising some of the 25 known thus far, and that that number is certain to rise.
@Jay L Gischer:
What does that mean? Last I saw, several old people and disabled people.
The last count I saw was 24 which I expect will increase.
@Jay L Gischer: In fairness, I never called these fires “deadly” nor described them as “the deadliest ever.”
The only usage of “dead” in the OP was to refer to “dead brush.”
I did note that at least 16 people had been killed, but that is just a fact.
So, I am perhaps missing your point?
@Steven L. Taylor: It seems that I am out of date. Latest figure I just got was 24 dead. The Camp fire in NorCal killed 88. It isn’t a contest, but this is probably not, nor not going to be the deadliest fire in California history.
Also, compare with the rate of fatalities on the California freeways. I’m not crowing about this stuff, but it does drive public policy. Let’s say the current blaze goes on to double the current casualties. That’s 48. Again, I’m not saying that’s good. But I’m also saying there are a lot of other things that public money could be spent on that would save a lot more lives than 48 once every 20 years or so.
[Sigh. I’m now starting to feel like I should have simply not discussed this now, it’s bound to be upsetting. I just hate it when people (Not you Steven, just the general media climate) try to jerk me around with hype and emotionality.]