As climate change warms the planet, California's worsening wildfires have become unpredictable and extreme.
A firefighter battles flames from the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on Jan. 7, 2025. Photo by Eric Thayer, Getty Imageshave become so unpredictable and extreme that new words were invented: firenado, gigafire, fire siege — even fire pandemic. California has 78 more annual “fire days” — when conditions are ripe for fires to spark — than 50 years ago.
Fire officials reported this morning that about 1,000 homes in Los Angeles County have been destroyed and many people injured, including two fatalities. Nearly the entire county is shrouded in smoke advisories. All of Southern California is experiencing drought conditions,Vegetation along the usually moist coast is often so parched that it doesn’t need winds to fan wildfires. ” have lost their immunity.
The U.S. Forest Service has a longtime policy of putting out every fire, and quickly, which has packed the federal land with fuel to burn. And its budget falls short of the cost of needed work to reduce that fuel.If a burned-out forest is replaced by chaparral or brush, that landscape loses more than 90 percent of its capacity to take in and store carbon.A warming climate complicates everything. Hotter and drier seasons mean that big fires in December, once almost unheard of, are now common.
The state routinely exceeds projected fire suppression costs. In 2018, California spent nearly $1 billion on fire suppression and emergency response, surpassing the budgeted $450 million.
RAND researcher Lloyd Dixon found the higher prices were influencing purchasing patterns: Policyholders are buying less coverage, low-balling the cost to fully replace their belongings and tending to elect higher deductibles., after especially damaging wildfires in 2017 and 2018. It’s a small share of policyholders: less than 3%, according to the department. The numbers are higher in areas with greater fire risk.
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