The Palisades Fire may well turn out to be the most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles history, even while today it remains uncontained and growing.
The wildfire was 0% contained and had destroyed more than 1,000 structures in and around the city’s Pacific Palisades Neighborhood less than 24 hours after igniting, officials confirmed at a press conference.
Whatever the cause of ignition, a combination of hurricane-force winds, drought, and an abundance of newly-grown vegetation that had quickly dried, created the perfect storm for rapid and destructive wildfire spread.
The Palisades Fire, and at least four other fires that ignited on the same day, were often called “unprecedented” by officials and the media, but they were anything but.
These fires may well be the most destructive for L.A., but are only considered unprecedented by those who have forgotten the past history of fire in the area – or forgotten the precedents of the Camp Fire of 2018 or the Australian Black Summer Fires of 2019-20 or Greece of 2023, and others.
The wildfire risks for these parts of L.A. have been well documented over many years, and a similar conflagration happened in the city less than two decades earlier. One of the most read articles on Wildfire Today this week – possibly mistakenly due to their similarities – is a round-up of the 2019 fires around L.A.
L.A.’s previous most-destructive wildlife was 2008’s Sayre Fire, which destroyed more than 600 homes in the city’s Sylmar Neighborhood, according to reporting from the Los Angeles Times. It spread at the same time as two other fires and left more than 20,000 acres burned.
The Sayre Fire’s destruction was largely driven by 50 to 80 mile-per-hour gusts from the Santa Ana Winds, a phenomenon the National Weather Service (NWS) said happens yearly from September through May. The extreme winds occur when a region of high pressure over the desert Southwest flows toward low pressure near the Californian coast, which drastically increases wildfire risk due to their speed and dryness.
The same hurricane-force winds fanned the Palisades Fire’s flames.
“A LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE, Widespread Windstorm is expected Tue afternoon-Weds morning across much of Ventura/LA Co,” NWS said a day before the wildfire started. “Stay indoors, away from windows, expect power outages….The strongest wind areas of LA and Ventura Counties will see widespread N-NE wind gusts of 50-80 mph, with isolated gusts up to 80-100 mph in the mountains and foothills.”
Drought and an abundance of dry vegetation also fueled both the Palisades Fire and the Sayre Fire, and many other not-so-record breaking wildfires of recent times.
The United States Forest Service reported the Sayre Fire consumed 95% of all vegetative cover across 5,500 acres of the Angeles National Forest right after California saw its driest 8-month stretch, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.
Similarly, Los Angeles has now experienced its second-driest period in almost 150 years of record keeping. Ample vegetation, which grew and thrived during record-breaking rain seasons in the city during 2023 and 2022, dried up and was ready to burn.
Apart from the “perfect storm” scenarios of the Palisades and Sayre, experts have known for decades that much of California’s land is dependent on fire.
Nearly 10 years ago, researchers concluded that weather (mostly the Santa Ana winds) and the spatial distribution of built property were the key determinants of risk in the southern California landscape: “adequate planning of the changes in the built environment…is going to be vital for managing risk from fire under future climates.”
Almost 20 years ago, experts drew on studies from the early 1970s on ways to specifically stop conflagrations from burning in Southern California, saying “Through strategic fuel management planning, we could influence the total number and size of the (conflagration) occurrences as well as their geographic distribution and thereby mitigate the impacts of too much of the ‘wrong kind of fire'”.
Wildfire Today will hold off on any deep dive into the causes of the current fires out of respect to all those still being impacted by active fires today.
Longer and more intense periods of wildfire weather are expected across the nation in the near future, especially, but not solely, in Southern California. Let’s take this “opportunity” to work out what we know, what we can learn, and what we need to do to make meaningful change.
