With L.A. County’s Sand Fire nearing 100 percent containment, it’s time to reflect on Southern California’s crescive fire situation and what, if anything, can be done to mitigate it.
There was something different about the most recent blaze. Perhaps it was the way it painted the sky like a scene out of Apocalypse Now, but the Sand Fire near Santa Clarita just felt worse than other Southland fires in recent memory.
Size alone did not distinguish the Sand Fire. Although massive (nearly 40,000 acres burned), there have been larger ones in the past 15 years. What the Sand Fire is notable for its large size coupled with the close proximity to a large city. In fact, the Sand Fire is one of the largest blazes to erupt in such close proximity to a city in the past 15 years.
This is a phenomenon which is only growing, Ella Koeze notes in an article for FiveThirtyEight.
“Though the majority of the land scorched in the Sand fire is public and less developed, flames have also spilled into the ‘wildland-urban interface’ (or WUI), which is ‘where houses meet or intermingle with wildland vegetation,’ in the phrasing of the Forest Service,” she writes. These kinds of fires are more costly to fight, and the resources they consume means less funding for measures aimed at fire prevention.
They’re also growing in number. Koeze looks at U.S. Geological Survey data on the locations of fires for the past 15 years and a distinct pattern emerges: California’s cities are increasingly surrounded by flames.
You could probably already guess the reason. With most of Los Angeles County mired in a state of “exceptional drought,” the risk of fire is sky high. Add to that the large number of people living in these WUIs (one-third of California homes) and the impacts of climate change, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
Among the 16 U.S. cities with the most nearby fires between 2000 and 2015, 11 were in Southern California: Los Angeles; Santa Clarita; San Bernardino; Redlands; Lake Elsinore; San Diego; Roseville; Thousand Oaks; Palmdale; Moreno Valley; and Yucaipa. And the situation is only getting worse. According to Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, the fire season is 78 days longer today as a result of climate change.
Both residents and local governments have an important role to play to reduce the fire risk, Tidwell says. Homeowners should retrofit their homes with fire-resistant materials and allow for a “defensible space” that is free of brush or other ignition sources around the structure. Officials, meanwhile, can implement strict brush management policies and on-site inspection mechanisms to see that they’re enforced.
“The unfortunate thing,” said Headwaters Economics geographer Kimiko Barrett “is that awareness often comes after the fact.”
Read more about the growing fire risk for California’s cities here.