I hesitate to add to all the commentary on the Los Angeles fires.
But this one was pretty close to home.
At night, from his house, my brother could watch the flames of the Eaton Canyon fire. His place was just outside the evacuation zone.
During the day, he said, all you could see was smoke.
This satellite photo was taken Tuesday night a few miles from his house:
From his office, closer to downtown, my brother could see the Palisades fire. That one burned up the house belonging to his boss.
It’s a hard to figure out how to react to catastrophe.
Even one death is, of course, a tragedy. As I write, the toll is ten.
That, in my opinion, is a blessing — and to L.A.’s credit — given the speed at which the fires spread. It could have been much higher.
It also feels callous to discuss property damage, at last estimate in the neighborhood of $150 billion, exceeded only by Katrina.
A decent interval, as they say, should pass.
But that will have to be done, and probably better done sooner than later.
One additional causality of the fires is almost certain to be California’s insurance industry.
If history is any guide — I’m thinking about the 2001 electricity crisis, in which the State of California decided to step in and cover the shortfall— that crisis in turn will have the potential to take down the state government, financially speaking.
The seriousness may explain why some of the facile commentary annoys me.
On Wednesday (1/8/2025), from the safe remove of London, the BBC opined that “climate change … is fuelling the Los Angeles fires…”
Anyone expecting True Believers in the eschatology of climate alarmism to be in touch with reality is, I know, asking a lot.
I could make the exact opposite point: there were fires in Los Angeles last week because California’s climate hasn't changed.
If you know any one thing about California ecology, it should be that its intimate relationship with fire goes back at least 1,000 years, and no doubt farther.
What has changed is the number of people living in, or in proximity to, the so-called woodland-urban interface.
On California climate for the last 1,000 years, I prefer the science studies of the good old days, before Michael Mann muddied the waters with his hockey stick.
Or the climate orthodox — as documented in the Climategate e-mails — decided among themselves to ‘get rid of’ the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age.
In 1993, Science published a study concluding that burn scars on California’s giant Sequoias indicate “frequent small fires occurred during a warm period from about A.D. 1000 to 1300, and less frequent but more widespread fires occurred during cooler periods from about A.D. 500 to 1000 and after A.D. 1300.”1
Another 1993 study, of the tree-rings of subalpine conifers (no bristlecones!) in the Sierra Nevada, showed that rainfall in California follows decadal-scale oscillations. It also showed two major drought periods in the last millennium.
As for California’s recent upward temperature trend, that study noted the state only started to come out of its Little Ice Age around 1850, a heartbeat in climate time.2
Cycles and oscillations are undeniable facts of California’s climate.
Which get denied when they don’t fit the alarmist narrative: the modern warming trend is all that matters.
In mid-2022, the End of Days was upon California because there had been two years of drought.
Then, that November, the rains came. Some areas of the state got 50 inches in 3 weeks.
If you’ve actually lived in the state, it only takes a few years to grasp the importance of the El Niño/La Niña cycle, about every 2 to 6 years.
Warm-wet years alternate with cool-dry ones.
For the forests and grasslands, vigorous growth leads to a fuel buildup, which is then followed by a dry-down.
From that, of course, comes the fire risk.
In most years, Los Angeles would have had some rain by Thanksgiving. The fire danger after that would have been much reduced.
Last year, it didn’t.
I would call that, along with the extraordinarily strong Santa Anna winds, a serious piece of bad luck.
I’m not trying to be flip.
California being California, that issue is going to be litigated.
The insurance policies of those homeowners whose houses burnt down may well contain that boilerplate phrase, ‘Act of God’.
That’s the legal phrase for an event caused by no direct human action.
On April 8, 1966, Time magazine ran a famous all-black cover — its first ever without a photo or image — with the question “Is God Dead?” in large red text. A previous article had investigated a trend among 1960s theologians to write God out of theology.
There’s a trend among some California legal scholars to declare ‘Acts of God’ dead.
Based on those legal scholars’ certain knowledge that climate change is anthropogenic. Right down to last week’s weather, apparently.
Indulging that bit of human hubris is going to put a lot of people out of business.
And playing the liability lawyer blame game — like playing pickleball — will become a serious distraction from real work.
In the high winds, tree limbs hit electrical wires or the wires hit each other, causing faults and sparks.
So one or more the Southern California utilities will go bankrupt, as PG&E did in 2019.
Ralph Nader’s Proposition 103, which barely passed in 1988, limited the ability of insurance companies to raise homeowner policy rates in California.
In May 2023, State Farm stopped accepting new applications for property and casualty coverage in California because of soaring wildfire and construction costs and “a challenging reinsurance market.”
Allstate had stopped selling new policies the year before.
That pushed more homeowners — who must have insurance if they have a mortgage loan — into the FAIR Plan, a state-mandated insurance pool. Between 2019 and 2022, enrollments in FAIR plans increased 70%.
The FAIR Plan Fact Sheet is wort of a quote:
The FAIR Plan exists to provide insurance to Californians who cannot find coverage through no fault of their own. The FAIR Plan serves as a temporary safety net for property owners until traditional insurance coverage becomes available.
The temporary safety net is not going to hold. As of September 2024, the California FAIR Plan had more than $5,984M in coverage exposure in Pacific Palisades alone.
Fire mitigation — aka clearing brush — is hard work.
And a bit boring. So spending time playing pass the blame parcel on Twitter or X has its appeal.
I lived, for a short time, in one of those quasi-rural California ‘woodland interface zones’.
My city friends concluded I had vowed to become a hermit. My excuse was that I was working on something that needed a lot of concentration.
Anyway, out in the country I learned about fire.
On a cold morning, it’s definitely your friend.
It’s also, potentially, an enemy.
I would put it to a child: “Don’t be afraid of fire. But respect it.”
The sylvan view out my window was great, but that in fact was a problem. I checked the minimum distance recommended/required between tree line and house. Some of that sylvan shrubbery had to go.
You need the proper tools. A gas-powered chainsaw, for one.
If God made teenage boys for any reason, clearing brush is it. One of those and a checkbook is an excellent choice.
The property, as all did, had a ‘burn pile’.
The burn pile, of course, needs located away from any structure and have a big ring of clear dirt around it, like a Smokey the Bear campfire.
For ‘burn days’, on which you could burn the burn pile without the Fire Marshall showing up, you had to check the hotline of the local volunteer department, where I sometimes helped out.
A good burn day was a Goldilocks thing: not too much wind to blow sparks, but enough to dissipate the smoke for air quality.
When you finally got around to burning, you had to gear up: heavy gloves, sturdy boots, eye protection. A shovel and garden hose within reach. You need a glug of diesel to get the fire going.
When the burn pile is burning, you keep an eye on it.
And you keep your cool. Mesquite could go up like a scary torch.
Like it apparently did in Pacific Palisades.
I don’t have the answers.
I wish my old home state some good luck.
By my calculations, it’s due up.