Long-term health scars left by LA’s historic wildfires

The fires have been long extinguished, but the health effects of Los Angeles’ destructive 2025 wildfires are still living on one year later.

The Palisades, Eaton, Hurst, Kenneth, Hughes and Sepulveda fires killed 440 people, destroyed nearly 16,000 homes, and burned more than 55,000 acres of land from Jan. 7 through February. The Palisades Fire alone caused an estimated $51.7 billion worth of home damage, according to a July analysis from Redfin.

LA residents are dealing with not just the emotional toll of the tragedy on its anniversary, but the physical toll as well, according to health experts from the University of California, Los Angeles. Residents’ lungs, in particular, face ongoing health challenges.

“Many individuals who followed up with me six months later also mentioned their symptoms flared with the fires,” UCLA Health pulmonologist and associate clinical professor May-Lin Wilgus said in a recent article posted by the university. “These patients often had continued exposures — such as returning to smoke-damaged homes or encountering high levels of heavy-metal contamination — so it does seem to be a trigger.”

A study published in December by LA’s Smidt Heart Institute and other researchers found that more severe forms of illness presented early in some susceptible LA residents, including excess emergency encounters for not only pulmonary illness and acute myocardial infarction. But, less severe effects have persisted or started to present with delayed timing, including increased systemic illness through blood chemistry laboratory abnormalities.

“Systemic health effects are not often reported in post wildfire outcomes studies, perhaps because they are not easily detected or because they are associated more with WUI than wildland-only fire exposures,” the research said. “Indeed, the smoke produced by WUI compared with wildland-only fires is known to contain not only a more complex aggregate of volatile and semi-volatile chemical constituents but also toxic metals, which may alter the epigenetic profiles of immune cells with broad tissue distribution in exposed individuals.”

Dr. Wilgus advised communities to start preparing for the next major wildfire now to lessen future adverse health effects, including using high-quality air filters, creating evacuation plans, and storing an emergency go-bag with food, water and medications.

“We have a very wide network of pulmonology clinics throughout the region, where we are treating patients who may have been affected,” Dr. Wilgus said. “Throughout Los Angeles, we need to be more aware and prepared, as well as support ongoing research to help reduce these impacts.”

Wildland firefighters with cancer can now get $450K from the US government

Wildland firefighters who have been diagnosed with or killed by a smoke-related cancer are now eligible for a nearly $450,000 payment from the federal government.

The Honoring Our Fallen Heroes Act, passed as one of the many parts of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act by President Donald Trump on Thursday, covers around 20 different “exposure-related” cancers under the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits program, which provides benefits to federal, state, and local officials who are killed or injured in the line of duty. Before the law, firefighters were generally only covered by the program if they were physically injured in the line of duty or died from heart attacks, strokes, or mental health conditions like PTSD.

Eligible wildland firefighters can get a one-time tax-free payment of $448,575, the max benefit for the program in Fiscal Year 2025, and four years of higher education financial support for their children or spouse. Families of wildland firefighters who have died within the last six years are also eligible for the benefits.

Firefighters must meet the following criteria to be eligible for the benefits:

  • The firefighter’s exposure occurred while they were engaged in the line of duty
  • The firefighter began serving in the position no fewer than 5 years before the diagnosis or death
  • The firefighter was diagnosed with cancer not more than 15 years after their last date of active service
  • The cancer directly results in death or permanent and total disability of the firefighter

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) co-sponsored the legislation with Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND) in honor of Michael Paidar, a St. Paul fire captain who died of an aggressive form of Acute Myeloid Leukemia on August 26, 2020, while still working for the fire department, the senator said in a press release.

“This is a critical victory for our firefighters who put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe, and for their loved ones,” Klobuchar said in the press release. “This bipartisan legislation will ensure that the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits Program covers service-related cancers—honoring the commitment we make to our firefighters like Captain Paidar and other first responders who made the ultimate sacrifice.”

Eligible firefighters can apply for the benefits on the Public Safety Officers’ Benefits program website. Click here to access it.

Burn scars in western US snow regions to further strain water supplies, research shows

Whitetail Fire South Dakota

Snowpacks in western United States are projected to decline in size and melt earlier when high emissions climate scenarios are combined with more wildfires, putting an increasing strain on vital water resources.

Research in Science Advances notes that wildfires are increasingly burning in snow-dominated watersheds and are altering the dynamics of snow melt. Snowpacks, a vital water resource that recharges aquifers and sustains streamflow during drier months, are projected to decline in the western United States by between 40 to 75% by 2100 under high emissions climate scenarios.

Snowmelt timing and magnitude are major controls on reservoir storage for municipal water supply, agricultural use, hydroelectric power generation, and flood control. Warmer temperatures and expanding population pressures are only increasing these demands. In the western US, snowmelt-derived runoff from mountainous regions contributes up to 70% of total annual flow.

Burned area in western forest snowpack areas has increased by 9% annually between 1984 and 2017, with areas above 2500 m with historically reliable snowpack seeing the largest relative increase in burned area.

Previous research has claimed that the specific day when all snow has completely melted away is occurring earlier and earlier each year in postfire environments. A primary driver of increased snowmelt is due to the black carbon and other charred woody debris shed by burned trees and vegetation onto the snow surface, decreasing the amount of solar radiation snow can reflect and increasing the amount of energy snow absorbs.

Researchers from the Colorado Schools of Mines and the University of Colorado, however, said that previous research has focused on only one to three fires in specific areas, rather than adopting a larger-scale approach. Those researchers have since published their own larger-scale study, using two statistical models and satellite imagery to provide a western US–wide analysis on snowpack in burned areas. They found in virtually every region that has snowpack, snow melts earlier in the first year after a fire than in non-burned areas.

“The Pacific Northwest and northern Sierra Nevada are most vulnerable to snow disappearing up to two weeks earlier after a fire,” the study said. “Additionally, California and Oregon have the largest additional change in the effect of fire on [the snow disappearance date] under +2°C of warming, while the Intermountain West (Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming) experiences small additional earlier melt. In warmer environments, snow disappearance due to postfire energy balance changes can even occur in midwinter, disrupting the anticipated timing of snowmelt runoff.”

Click here to read the full research paper.

Global wildfire management resolution passed by UN environmental conference, led by India

A landmark effort toward fighting wildfires on a global scale took another step forward after a new resolution was passed at the seventh United Nations Environmental Assembly conference in Nairobi, Kenya.

The resolution, drafted and led by India, received wide support from participating nations and aims to strengthen international cooperation and coordinated action for wildfire management, according to a press release from India’s Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.

India’s resolution drew attention to the UN Environmental Programme’s “Spreading Like Wildfire” global report from 2022, which warned that global wildfires are projected to rise by 14% by 2030, 30% by 2050, and 50% by 2100 if current trends continue. The report also called on governments throughout the world to adopt a new “Fire Ready Formula” with two-thirds of wildfire-focused funding to be devoted to planning, prevention, preparedness, and recovery, with the other one-third focused on response, compared to current funding models where response receives over half of related funding.

India emphasized, in its push for the resolution, that the projections emphasize the escalating frequency and severity of wildfires represent a long-term global risk and require urgent coordinated international action.

“Each year, millions of hectares of land are affected by fires, causing enormous destruction to forests, biodiversity, water resources, soil health, air quality, and livelihoods,” the ministry’s press release said. “Wildfires also release significant greenhouse gases, weaken carbon sinks, and heavily impact forest-dependent communities and national economies.”

The resolution built on and strengthened the UN’s Global Fire Management Hub, which was established in 2023 to bring together member nations to assist countries in building wildfire management capacities through knowledge sharing, developing risk assessments, and encouraging policy support. The resolution specifically enhanced international cooperation on climate finance, early-warning systems, satellite-based monitoring, and ecosystem restoration.

Click here to read India’s full recently passed resolution.

Quest for ‘Holy Grail’ of wildland firefighting safety awarded NASA contract

For a decade before Wildfire Today Founder and wildland firefighting stalwart Bill Gabbert’s death, he wrote numerous articles on what he called the “Holy Grail of wildland firefighting safety.”

Gabbert described this Grail as a system that could track the real-time location of firefighters and the wildfire they were fighting. The data should then be available in real time to key supervisors and decision makers involved in the operations and planning sections of wildfire response.

“It can save lives. There is no acceptable excuse for not getting this done,” Gabbert said in a 2019 article, explaining his “Holy Grail” definition. “The five federal land management agencies and the states with significant numbers of wildland firefighters need to implement a Holy Grail system as soon as possible … Government officials who drag their feet on this should have trouble sleeping at night.”

A company claimed to Wildfire Today that it is closer to making this quest a reality. RoGO Communications, which focuses on developing safety technology for firefighters and first responders, was recently awarded a NASA Small Business Innovation Research contract to develop its “DropBlock 2.0.”

The tool, which is about as big as three smartphones stacked on top of each other, would enable all deployed personnel to see near-real-time GPS locations for all firefighters and fire assets, such as bulldozers, water tenders, fire engines, high-value structures, medical evacuation and rescue sites, and makeshift water resources, along with the fire’s current location.

DropBlock would also share hyper-local fire weather information, including wind speed, direction, temperature, humidity, and other sensor data. RoGO also plans to release a mobile phone app in early 2026 that enables point-to-point communications among DropBlocks and crews, and plans to expand support to other first responders for hurricanes, earthquakes and floods.

DropBlocks went through Phase I, or discovery, portion of the NASA contract in the third quarter of 2024. The technology is now in Phase II, or the building phase, and will continue in that phase over the next two years, RoGO told Wildfire Today. Afterwards, it will go into the third and final phase to commercialize it within the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service. RoGO CEO Rod Goossen also told Wildfire Today he is speaking with partners in Canada, Australia, and other U.S. allied nations for the possible deployment of DropBlock there.

RoGO formed after Arizona’s 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire, which became the sixth deadliest firefighting disaster in United States history after it killed 19 firefighters. The tragedy and the five firefighters who died in the Esperanza Fire also caused Gabbert to begin speaking about the Grail.

“All of this technology exists. It would be expensive to implement, but it could save lives,” Gabbert said in 2013.

Are prescribed burns worsening Australia’s bushfires?

A body of research is challenging long-held beliefs that lessening fuel load inherently lowers fire risk.

Studies published by researchers from the Australian National University and Curtin University since 2022 have claimed long-held research that underpinned the Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions’ burning regime is incorrect.

Their study published in August of that year replicated the department’s underpinning research from 2009 and determined prescribed burns had negligible effects on bushfire area. Another study published in March of 2022 found that forests in southwest Australia are at their highest fire risk during the tens of years of regrowth after a fire, but continuously decrease in fire risk once reaching their mature period.

A new study, just published by the researcher Philip Zylstra, an Adjunct Associate Professor at Curtin University, and David Lindenmayer, a Distinguished Professor at the Australian National University, delved further into this dichotomy and examined whether a full phase-out of prescribed burning would decrease severe bushfires and help forests return to their original, pre-frequent disturbance states.

The researchers said their study shows long-unburnt forests limit fire without human intervention, even as the climate changes. They found that 77% of all areas burned in over 500,000 hectares (1,235,527 acres) of forested national parks in southwest AU were due to prescribed burns, with 20% burned from escaped prescribed burns and 23% from backburning.

“If large-scale prescribed burning and incentives to backburn ended, the area burned annually would immediately fall 87%, leaving only fires started by lightning, accident or arson,” the researchers wrote this month in an article for The Conservation. “Our modelling suggests less area would be burned in the hotter, drier climate of 2100 than it is today if both widespread burning policies were ended.”

“Humans have a deep-seated desire to intervene in nature. But our research shows long-unburnt forests act to limit fire without human intervention – even as the climate changes.”

The researchers instead called on authorities to invest in rapid fire detection and attack, better resourcing firefighters, training and employing more specialist remote area firefighters and exploring fire-fighting drones.

They stressed that these latest findings relate only to the forests of south-west Western Australia. However, they quote their own 2023 research to claim that other Australian forests, and Northern Hemisphere forests, may also become more flammable through burning.

A spokesperson from the Western Australia Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Attractions said that any claims that forest flammability declines with age rest on inadequate data and following them would be unwise.

“[DBCA] research confirms that prescribed burning is effective in reducing the frequency, severity and size of bushfires in south west forests when at least 45 per cent of the landscape has a fuel age of less than six years since last burnt,” the Department statement sent to The Conversation said. “Removing fire from fire-prone ecosystems often leads to high-severity fires, as seen in a range of significant bushfires that have occurred in Australia and overseas.”

The same researchers faced similar pushback from the department after they published their March 2022 study. The researchers say that scientists from the department told them that their own records contained flawed data and suggested ignoring all records for old forests. The researchers said their findings only became stronger after they removed the reportedly flawed data.

Read the researcher’s full article in The Conversation.

Idaho to ‘double’ logging efforts under new USFS wildfire agreement

Sheep Fire INL smoke fire

The United States Forest Service announced a new wildfire risk reduction agreement with Idaho officials on Friday that will, in part, double the state’s current timber production.

The USFS and Idaho committed to increasing an annual sustainable timber sale volume of up to 100 million board feet within five years, which would be double the state’s current output, according to a press release from the Service. Officials said the agreement supports President Donald Trump’s Expansion of Timber Production Executive Order to increase timber harvests on national forests by 25% by 2028.

“For too long, federal red tape and hands-off policies left our forests overgrown and our communities at risk,” U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in the press release. “By doubling timber production through Good Neighbor Authority and speeding up active management, we’re protecting Idaho families, supporting rural jobs, and making our forests stronger for generations to come.”

Idaho Governor Brad Little previously signed his own “Make Forests Healthy Again Act” executive order in April to increase collaboration between the state and federal government for the purpose of wildfire reduction and general forest management.

The governor held a press conference announcing the new agreement on Friday, calling the agreement essential to meeting the “forest health crisis” on federally owned land.

“Years of inadequate management have led to millions of acres of forest service lands becoming high-risk for insects, disease, and wildfires,” Little said at the press conference. “Idahoans are tired of megafires, endless smoke, and soaring suppression costs. We have a rare opportunity to shift the trajectory.”

The increased logging may face legal hurdles. Multiple conservation groups in nearby Montana recently sued the USFS over a logging road project on their state’s border with Idaho, according to BYU-Idaho Radio. The Beaverhead-Deer Lodge National Forest recently signed off on a new project to burn trees and put new logging roads in the Continental Divide, which the groups say will inflict unnecessary danger to local wildlife, including endangered grizzly bears and sage grouse.

Democrats demand answers for Trump’s cutbacks at the USFS

Wolf Trap National prescribed fire

A letter signed by 12 Democratic Senators is demanding answers from U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz after a report found that the Service is far behind its usual wildfire risk reduction efforts across the nation, stemming from the administration’s mass layoffs.

The letter demanded the answers to multiple questions, including the number of vacant wildland firefighter positions, whether current staffing levels are sufficient to meet current wildfire risk, and the total number of acres treated over the past calendar year. It was written by Senate Interior-Environment Appropriations Subcommittee Ranking Member Jeff Merkley from Oregon, Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry Committee Ranking Member Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Martin Heinrich from New Mexico, and signed by nine others.

The concerns addressed in the letter stem directly from an analysis by Grassroots Wildland Firefighters that showed hazardous fuel reduction work across National Forest lands was down 38% in 2025 compared with the same period over the previous four years. Fuel reductions between June and August were barely half of what they were compared to previous summers.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: USFS far behind usual hazardous fuel treatments nationwide, due to DOGE cuts

“You have continued to maintain that the Forest Service has adequate resources and staffing to manage wildfire preparedness and response on federal lands, and that, while the Forest Service is significantly behind on hazardous fuels reduction work overall, there have been more positive results in certain regions like the Pacific Northwest,” the Senators said in their letter.

“You have also claimed that in certain Western states, the Forest Service has even exceeded annual hazardous fuels reduction goals. However, it appears that to make these claims, you are referencing all Fiscal Year 2025 data, which began under the Biden Administration and includes five months of work prior to the beginning of the Trump Administration and its mass staff firings, forced retirements, and unnecessary pauses on projects.”

Grassroots’ analysis blamed the personnel and budget cuts to the USFS that Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, made at the start of the new administration. Around 6,000 United States Department of Agriculture employees were terminated on February 13 before an independent federal court ordered the department to rehire all 6,000 employees a month later. Grassroots previously told Wildfire Today that around 75% of the temporarily terminated employees had secondary wildland fire duties.

The Senators gave Schultz a deadline of December 12 to answer their questions.

Alaska’s largest city to update decades-old wildfire plan after several record-setting seasons

Pyrocumulonimbus cloud / smoke from the MacDonald fire south of Fairbanks, Alaska, which ignited on June 8, 2024. The fire burned the Tanana Flats Military Training Area and grew to more than 172,000 acres before merging with the Clear Creek fire. The fire was caused by lightning and was propelled by strong winds and dry conditions.

Anchorage is set to update its city-wide wildfire plan after nearly 20 years to face the increasing threat of wildfires throughout the state.

Alaska has experienced several record-setting fire seasons over the past two decades, including 6.6 million acres burned in 2004, 5.1 million in 2015, 2.9 million in 2019, and 1.7 million in 2022, according to the city’s new community wildfire protection plan. The United States Department of Agriculture’s Climate Hubs said most of the increase in the state’s burned area has been in tundra and boreal forests.

“From 2000 to 2020, 2.5 times more acres in Alaska burned than in the previous 20 years, and 3 of the 4 highest-acreage fire years have occurred since 2000,” the Department said on its website. “By 2050, burned area is projected to increase by 24 to 169% in Alaska. Changes in climate will cause longer wildfire seasons, increased fire frequency, size, and total area burned, and possibly increased wildfire severity.”

The state also had an early season in 2025, which forced its famous Iditarod Sled Dog Race to change, and was attributed to early snowmelt.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Early Alaska wildfire season has quick snowmelt to blame

“These evolving conditions continue to affect life safety, forest health, air quality, and overall community resilience,” the Anchorage document said. “This plan represents a proactive step toward a more wildfire-resilient Anchorage, developed collaboratively by the Anchorage Fire Department and partner agencies.”

City officials presented the plan to community members at a town hall on Nov. 12, which aims to provide an analysis of fire behavior across the city by grouping the most densely populated areas into suppression planning units with similar wildfire hazards and recommending actions to reduce those hazards.

Click here to read the more on the Community Wildfire Protection Plan.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Circumpolar wildland fire and permafrost thaw – Global climate implications: Wildfires in the Arctic

Global wildfire mapping tool under development by Europe’s Earth observation program

Scientists across Europe are currently developing a new tool aimed at allowing researchers, authorities, and media across the globe to easily access wildfire information.

Researchers are working to develop the “Fire Front Radar” to meet public safety, air quality, and environmental management challenges as climate change continues to intensify wildfires. The tool was unveiled as part of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts’ “Code for Earth” program, which acts as an annual catalyst for innovation in climate and atmospheric science, according to the website of Europe’s Earth observation program Copernicus.

The “Fire Front Radar” project will allow people to use an interactive world map to analyze time series, assess fire risk across multiple timescales, and generate regional visualizations once it finishes development, a press release from the Centre said. The tool will build on existing data from the Centre and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.

“As global temperatures rise and vegetation drys out, the conditions for extreme wildfires are even more common and are turning what were once manageable events into major disasters with people being displaced,” said Lucy Colley, one of the participants in the project, at a presentation on the project. “Because the app is using probability indices, we are hoping to provide more insight into foreseeing and eventually planning for such events.”

The tool will also support trend analysis, data downloads, custom overlays, and report generation to turn complex datasets into clear and actionable insights, according to the Centre’s press release.

“Fire Front Radar establishes an effective and flexible platform for understanding the environmental conditions behind wildfire emissions that we monitor in CAMS, it is a tool that will provide extra context in my day-to-day work on wildfire emissions and their impacts on global atmospheric composition and air quality,” according to CAMS Senior Scientist Mark Parrington.