It was terrible timing. In the late morning of Tuesday 6 January, a “life-threatening and destructive” windstorm was heading for the northern suburbs of Los Angeles. The local office of the US National Weather Service published a strongly worded alert at roughly 10:30am local time. At almost that exact moment, a fire erupted in the Palisades neighbourhood of LA.
The fire was able to get started, get a foothold, and then the wind came in and pushed it really, really hard, says Ellie Graeden, co-chief executive of RedZone Analytics, which makes wildfire modelling products for the insurance industry. This is really as bad as it can get.
The fire exploded, followed by other wildfires in nearby areas. Thousands of homes and other buildings have been razed. Sunset Boulevard is in ruins. At the time of writing, LA’s fires have killed at least 10 people. Officials have ordered nearly 180,000 people to evacuate. The fires now rank as the most destructive in LA’s history, with losses already expected to exceed $250bn (£206.2bn).
There are also efforts to use high-tech camera-based surveillance systems to watch for developing wildfires, and supercomputers that try to predict when fires are most likely to occur. However, these systems were in place in LA last week but that did not stop the latest fires claiming lives and leaving vast areas in ruins.
Homeowners who live in wildfire-prone locations need to think about their own vulnerability, says Ms Graeden: “This is a risk that is not necessarily seasonal anymore. This is the type of risk that people need to be taking very seriously at all times.”
She recommends clearing as much vegetation from around residential properties as possible, and installing a fire-resistant roof or a sprinkler system. Having an evacuation plan in place could also save lives.
When efforts to repair and rebuild homes in LA eventually get underway, it is possible some may turn to fire-resistant materials such as bricks made of earth.
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