In summary, the results all indicate that climate change plays an important role, and the researchers are confident in the findings that global warming increases the opportunities of such fires.
Many other regions are at risk
The researchers were also able to show that the consequences of burning disproportionately worked elderly people and people with disabilities, such as those with limited mobility, as well as population groups who received late warnings. Some of those effects, they noticed, will aggravate historical economic differences in ways that can last for a long time in the future.
“The neighborhood of Altadena with a large black population was on the path of the fires, which destroyed the most important source of generationness for many residents who had previously had to deal with discriminatory Redlining practices,” the scientists wrote in the report.
The fires have exposed critical weaknesses in water infrastructure, which 'is designed for routine fires instead of the extreme requirements of large -scale fires, and shows the need for investments in resilient water systems and other stronger climate adjustment and emergency measures to become more frequent forest fires. “
“This was a perfect storm of climate-compatible and weather-driven fires that influenced the built environment,” said co-author John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at the University of California, Merced.
There are similar fire-sensitive communities in other regions, he added, including Boulder County, Colorado, where the Marshall fire from 2021 destroyed more than 1,000 houses. Similar disasters have recently played all over the world, including the Lahaina Fire from 2023 on the northwest coast of Maui and Vuren in July 2024 in Viña del Mar, Chile.
Williams said that the recent fires around Los Angeles don't even come close to the top 10 for the size.
Many neighborhoods in South California are nestled in the heavily overgrown mountain slopes from Santa Barbara County via Ventura County, La County, Orange County and San Diego County who may be the next, he said.
“I would say that a large number of neighborhoods run a similar risk if the small number of neighborhoods we saw in the fires this year,” said Williams.
This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.
