Three Hard Truths About California’s Fire Crisis

Australia’s catastrophic 2020 fire season shocked the world, claiming twenty-four lives over months of rural and bushland fires. Now, in just days, fires burning through Los Angeles’s densely populated neighbourhoods have killed sixteen people, with authorities warning the death toll will likely rise as they search affected areas. The Palisades Fire alone has destroyed over 1,000 structures, making it the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history. We are witnessing an unprecedented urban catastrophe.

The videos emerging from Los Angeles this January show harrowing scenes: cars streaming away from glowing hillsides, embers raining down on evacuated neighbourhoods, firefighters standing helpless before walls of flame driven by hurricane-force winds.

As Santa Ana winds sweep through Los Angeles, pushing fires through neighbourhoods at the rate of three football fields per minute, two competing narratives have emerged. Critics on the right are focused on the government of California, a deep blue state, highlighting Democrat mismanagement. A clip of the leader of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power declaring that her number one priority is “equity” is hard to watch, especially as it has become apparent that fire hydrants have remained unrepaired, and the Santa Ynez Reservoir has sat empty since February 2024.

There is no question that the local LA government has proven to be incompetent. The Santa Ynez Reservoir, which holds 117 million gallons of water, sat empty for maintenance when the fires began. Smaller tanks holding one million gallons each were quickly exhausted. By early morning on 8 January, firefighters in Pacific Palisades found hydrants running dry as they tried to save homes.

While those on the right are correctly decrying government mismanagement, those on the left are emphasising climate change’s role in creating extreme fire conditions. And unfortunately for the right, this narrative also has evidence to support it. In California, as William Deverell explains on our podcast, the fire season now covers all twelve months of the year. The South Californian region experiences “boomerang cycles”—seven years of hotter and drier conditions followed by three years of colder and wetter periods. These wet periods generate more vegetation, which becomes fuel during the next dry cycle.

Podcast #257: The Tragedy of California’s Wildfires

Jonathan Kay speaks with University of Southern California scholar William Deverell about what he calls the ‘new fire regime in the American West.’

QuilletteQuillette

As I wrote for Quillette in 2020 in response to Australia’s catastrophic fire season, climate scientists “have correctly predicted that long-term climate-change trends will increasingly interact disastrously with short-term climate phenomena in a way that catalyses and exacerbates extreme weather events.”

The Democrats’ position presents a striking irony. California’s progressive leadership has positioned itself at the forefront of climate change policy, championing emissions reductions and denouncing climate scepticism. Yet when faced with the practical requirements of climate change preparedness, whether conducting controlled burns, maintaining water infrastructure, or restricting development in fire-prone areas—they have proven to be inept. They appear more comfortable with grand pronouncements about global challenges than with the unglamorous work of preparing their own communities for climate realities they themselves warn about.

Meanwhile, right-wing commentary focuses intensely on government incompetence and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies while largely ignoring the reality of changing climate conditions that make these fires more extreme. Both narratives contain elements of truth, yet both overlook crucial aspects of the situation. The more partisan the analysis becomes, the more it drifts from the reality on the ground.

The physical reality that politicians are reluctant to acknowledge, but that every experienced firefighter knows, is that once conditions become extreme enough, no amount of firefighting can stop the flames. Joel Shepherd, an author and volunteer firefighter in Adelaide, Australia, explained to me: “When conditions are bad enough, no amount of firefighters can stop it. Where I live, all the experienced fireys say privately that if we get really bad conditions, just leave. Trucks can pick individual houses and try to save them, but when entire neighbourhoods go up in flames, it just endangers crews.”

People believe that with enough firefighters and equipment, any blaze can be contained. But DEI, or no DEI, when fires reach the tree canopies, and when embers are spread by hurricane winds, very little can actually be done. As Shepherd told me, “More people should know how little chance the firefighters have of stopping the really big fires because a lot of people have a false sense of security, and the politicians never want to admit that nothing we can do will stop the really bad fires once they’re going.”

“politicians never want to admit that nothing we can do will stop the really bad fires once they’re going.”

Infrastructure compounds this vulnerability. Shepherd warns about evacuation routes: “Mostly people here are worried about getting everyone evacuated in time, because the roads in and out have limited capacity. If they get jammed with little warning, a lot of people could die.” In Los Angeles, this nightmare scenario played out as abandoned cars burned on highways while bulldozers pushed them aside so firefighters could reach burning areas.

Given these realities, policy-makers must ensure fires never reach this point of no return. This imperative becomes even more critical as climate change makes extreme conditions more frequent. Yet regulatory frameworks make adequate prevention almost impossible. Writing in City Journal, Shawn Regan of the Property and Environment Research Center explains that it takes an average of 3.6 years to begin a mechanical forest thinning project and 4.7 years to implement a controlled burn in the US. For large projects requiring environmental impact statements, the timeline extends even further—averaging 5.3 years for mechanical treatments and 7.2 years for controlled burns.

These delays kill people. Critical thinning projects in California’s Berry Creek area remained stuck in environmental reviews when the North Complex Fire struck in 2020, claiming sixteen lives. In Grizzly Flats, a forest-restoration project designed to protect the community waited nearly a decade for approval. Before work could begin, two-thirds of the town was razed by fire.

The challenge of implementing controlled burns shows how politics fails us regardless of ideology. It doesn’t matter if it is a left-wing or right-wing government, almost all governments fail to provide enough controlled burns. As I wrote in 2020:

In 2002, a Parliamentary inquiry into bushfires noted substantial political resistance to fuel-reduction/controlled-burn strategies. “The fundamental issue in carrying out fuel reduction burning close to urban areas is that many of the inhabitants prefer living in green leafy bushland,” wrote Bill McCormick of the government’s Science, Technology, Environment and Resources Group. “Burning can be unpleasant, reduce amenity, kill plants and wildlife, and cause pollution so there is a build-up of political resistance to increasing the frequencies and proximity of the burns.” Another study found that the pollution caused by backburning aggravated health conditions in vulnerable people, likely causing premature deaths.

Politicians governing fire-prone regions face an ethical dilemma that tests the limits of public service. The air pollution from controlled burns can cause premature deaths among vulnerable citizens—an outcome no leader wants to be responsible for. Yet failing to conduct these burns sets the stage for catastrophic fires that will claim even more lives. In Los Angeles, the reluctance to confront this dilemma has led to the worst possible outcome: both the immediate and long-term losses of life that prevention measures are meant to avoid.

The cost of avoiding these hard decisions continues to mount. JPMorgan now estimates insured losses from these fires will exceed $20 billion, setting a new record for wildfire-related insurance claims in US history. The total economic loss could reach $57 billion. A UCLA study found that California’s wildfire emissions in 2020 were twice the total greenhouse-gas reductions the state achieved from 2003 to 2019. Decades of Californian climate change advocacy has, quite literally, gone up in smoke.

We must acknowledge three uncomfortable truths. Climate change makes fires more dangerous. Government competence matters. And preventing catastrophic fires requires expensive, politically unpopular measures. Such measures include burying power lines despite the cost, restricting development in fire-prone areas despite property rights concerns, and regular prescribed burns despite air quality complaints.

Such measures include burying power lines despite the cost, restricting development in fire-prone areas despite property rights concerns, and regular prescribed burns despite air quality complaints.

Just as in Australia, fire belongs in California’s landscape. What doesn’t belong is a refusal to adapt. The devastation in Los Angeles shows the cost of this refusal: lives have been lost, communities have been destroyed, and one of the world’s great cities has incurred damage that will take years, perhaps decades, to repair.

What would courage look like in California right now? It would mean implementing a comprehensive controlled burning program despite certain public resistance. It would mean restricting rebuilding in the most fire-prone areas, even as residents demand to return. It would mean investing billions in underground power lines and evacuation infrastructure while other pressing needs compete for funding. It would mean abandoning ideological priorities like “equity” in favour of basic infrastructure maintenance and public safety. It would also mean prosecuting arsonists. And given the rising number of fires lit by the homeless, it would also mean the re-institutionalisation of the severely mentally ill.

Until leaders are willing to make these hard choices—to accept the political costs of prevention rather than the human costs of inaction—we’ll keep seeing these disasters unfold. The choice isn’t between competing political narratives of left or right. The choice is between accepting short-term pain or watching communities burn. From Sydney to LA, we know what needs to be done. We just need the courage to do it.