Firefighters up against climate change and dry, gusty weather conditions 'made to spread fire'

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00:00But first for you this hour then, as the flames of the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires

00:15continue burning for a third week, though they are now under control, another mammoth

00:20blaze is presenting new challenges for firefighters in Los Angeles. The Hughes fire broke out

00:26on Wednesday, ripping through some 41 square kilometers northwest of L.A. The region's

00:32now under a red flag warning for critical fire risk, though officials rather optimistically

00:37added that the winds are not as strong as those that had fueled the Palisades and Eaton

00:42fires. Thoron Marche reports.

00:47This wildfire erupted north of Los Angeles on Tuesday. The inferno burned through more

00:52than 4,000 hectares in just a few hours, fueled by strong winds, low humidity and

00:57dry brush. 50,000 people received evacuation orders and warnings.

01:02We have over 4,000 firefighting personnel assigned to the incident and we had a very

01:07robust ground and air response to the incident that you see behind me.

01:14Fire crews are backed up by dozens of engines and several water bombers sprayed tens of

01:19thousands of gallons of fire retardant from the air. Los Angeles County's fire department

01:24chief said morale among firefighters was excellent and that his teams were making headway in

01:29containment efforts. A stretch of Interstate 5, a major highway linking Los Angeles to

01:35Central California, was temporarily shut down before reopening on Wednesday evening. The

01:40county's sheriff also noted that almost 500 inmates from a nearby prison had to be evacuated.

01:46Several schools in the area are closed. As of Wednesday, the Palisades and Eaton fires,

01:52already three weeks old, are mostly contained. More than two dozen people have been killed

01:57so far and forecaster AccuWeather projects economic losses to total more than $250 billion.

02:05Only 80 kilometers north of Los Angeles, the Hughes fire places a new burden on firefighters

02:11working around the clock to control the blazes.

02:15Well, from some more context then behind these fires, Chloe Brimacombe joins us on the program.

02:21She is a climate scientist and extreme heat researcher with the Wegener Center at the

02:26University of Graz in Austria. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Chloe.

02:31So already prior to the Hughes fire, the Palisades and Eaton fires were expected to be among the

02:36worst ever to hit L.A. From a policy perspective, what do you think could have or should have

02:41been done to prevent so much damage?

02:44Yes, so they are predicted to probably be the worst ever seen in the area. And, you

02:51know, these were these are real people. So the Palisades isn't a hugely wealthy region.

02:57These were regular families. And I have a colleague who had families and friends that

03:02sadly lost their houses in that region. And so it's going to be a massive effort to rebuild

03:08that area, which will take a strong policy. But, you know, we saw criticism of there not

03:14being enough water in the area. Also, in the case of California, up to 20 percent or more

03:21of firefighters are actually prisoners. So like people that have been convicted of crimes,

03:27which is not something that I had heard of in other places previously. So it's just going

03:33to take strong policy in terms of reducing emissions. And this would be something that

03:38globally needs to be tackled, but also in terms of making sure that resources are there

03:44to fight these fires. But in this case, it was just, you know, you could just say very

03:49bad luck because we had these strong Santa Ana winds. We had the impact of climate change.

03:56We had the impact of the atmospheric ocean oscillations such as ENSO, but also the Pacific

04:02Decadal Oscillation, making these winds stronger than the seasonal average in the area. And

04:10also just these fires being in the right place, kind of at the right time for a condition.

04:17And we're seeing that now in other parts. However, you know, authorities are saying

04:22they'll get it under control and they are slightly further away from houses and the

04:26winds are slightly lower in speed now. So that's that's very promising to to, you know,

04:33make the devastation any worse, because it honestly it looks terrible. Like my colleague

04:39yesterday who has friends and family areas like it was like a tornado, a fire tornado

04:44had hit. There's there's nothing left of those people's houses. So that's very devastating

04:49for many, many people in the area.

04:51So Chloe, in listening to you, it doesn't really sound like you as a researcher, again,

04:55specialized in fires and fire risk. It doesn't sound like you think that L.A. officials deserve

05:02a lot of the criticism that they've gotten.

05:06I think that, you know, there's always things in every single disaster when people look

05:11back that could have been done better. We know that that was the case in some of the

05:16European flooding in recent years as well. I think that, you know, they could have done

05:21things better in terms of there was a lack of water in the area, which could have like

05:27prevented it maybe spreading. But in terms of climate change and also the winds and weather

05:34conditions that they had, they were fighting conditions that were were made to spread fire

05:41and made to make a catastrophe. And that's something we're seeing increasing these sort

05:45of fire conditions, increasing with climate change and these fire danger days.

05:51So really, unless you reduce the emissions and you have that mitigation in terms of climate

05:56change, you are going to see an increase in these conditions, whether that's in California,

06:01but in other wildfire risk areas of the world. I mean, we've seen devastating fires in the

06:08Mediterranean region in Europe previously and in North Africa, just to name a few other

06:13places. So it really does take this mitigation as well as having the right resources in place

06:19to fight the fires.

06:20Chloe, the fires in L.A. and like you say, in other areas have kind of increasingly drawn

06:25more attention to natural building materials that would ideally make homes and other structures

06:30less vulnerable to the damage that we've seen in California and in other places. Can you

06:35talk about some of the alternative building techniques that you think would would be better?

06:40So I'm not really a necessary expert in this area, but, you know, I think that the thing

06:49is that if you are in a wildfire risk, it's the same as if you build in a floodplain,

06:54right? There's only so much you can do to protect your houses. I think that it would

06:59be using the natural materials is good because it means that your house, if it was affected

07:07by fire, might not be so catastrophically destroyed. However, I think that we do need

07:16to rethink about where people live and also building mental resilience and putting in

07:23place sort of insurance and adaptation measures for people so that they, in the case that

07:32the house is hit by something like a wildfire, but also a flood, they know that they can

07:36rebuild or have the option to move out of that area that is actually a massive risk.

07:43We don't really see measures like that in place at the moment. And that is something

07:47that we'll need to see in the future, because, you know, there's people that are hit by wildfires

07:53or floods, not necessarily year on year, but increasingly over periods. And at the moment

08:00that they have now nowhere to live. But if the house was hit by a wildfire again, there's

08:05nothing really in place to help them, even though they have nothing at the moment.

08:12Chloe Brimacombe, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

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