The Dichotomy of a Deadly Paradise—How Urban Sprawl and Climate Change Fuel LA’s Fires

The Eaton Fire northeast of downtown Los Angeles and the Palisades Fire to the west on the Pacific Coast Highway have destroyed 12,000 homes and other structures, with 11 deaths now attributed to the conflagrations.

Anthony Honore was accustomed to seeing brush fires far up in the San Gabriel Mountains above Pasadena during yearly dry seasons. But last Tuesday night’s blaze was different. 

Fueled by Santa Ana winds of up to 100 miles per hour and unusually bone-dry vegetation in what is typically a moist time of year, the Eaton Fire quickly leapt from plants to homes. Honore’s childhood neighborhood was ablaze. But the life-long Pasadena resident had no time to grieve. 

He had a family member to rescue. 

“I was running through the streets to find my auntie,” he said, recalling when the evacuation orders were issued. “Cars on each side of me [were] engulfed in fire. It was like a movie. I still feel the heat.”

The two of them made it out. But the home he grew up in about a dozen miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles is now gone, claimed by the blaze that has now swallowed over 7,000 structures. More than 5,000 have been destroyed in Pacific Palisades by the Palisades Fire, west of downtown above Malibu.

Lake Avenue, at the border of Pasadena and Altadena, looks like a scene out of an apocalyptic hellscape: the skeletal remains of abandoned cars lining sidewalks and the charred facade of unrecognizable buildings hollowed to ash. 

Honore’s story is similar to those of thousands of Angelenos who have experienced devastating losses after half a dozen blazes have laid waste to communities across Los Angeles County, the country’s largest with 9.6 million people.  

Four days in, the Palisades Fire has consumed over 22,000 acres along the Pacific Coast Highway, and the Eaton Fire in Pasadena and Altadena has burnt through 14,000 acres in the San Gabriel Valley, according to CalFire’s numbers. Over 150,000 people in those and other areas are under mandatory evacuation orders. 

Angelenos Face Heightened Health Risks 

Residents across Los Angeles will continue to suffer from the worsened air quality and should take precautions to protect their health, said Rima Habre, a professor of environmental health at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.

“Do not go outside. Avoid it at all cost, if possible. And if you don’t have the choice, try to wear a mask that is well-fitting,” said Habre. Indoors, families should have air filters and close their windows. “When you have structures burning, you have lead, asbestos, toxic metals” in the air. 

The elderly, young children, pregnant people and those with pre-existing conditions are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of wildfire smoke, she added. 

“If people have the option to go somewhere else with less air pollution from the fires, that’s great and recommended,” Habre said. 

In Pasadena, the wildfire has also contaminated the water, leading the city to issue a “do not drink tap water” advisory on Thursday until further notice.

Why Did the Fires Burn so Intensely and Fast?

Help is arriving from all over the state—even from as far away as Mexico—as resources have been strained to suppress the spread of the wildfires. As of Saturday morning, the Palisades is only at 11 percent containment while the Eaton Fire is at 15 percent.  

Several factors have made it difficult for first responders, said Luca Carmignani, a San Diego State University engineering professor who served as a wildfire advisor in Southern California last year. 

“We had a really dry January and December where there wasn’t as much rain,” said Carmignani. Downtown Los Angeles only received 0.16 of an inch, just 3 percent of the anticipated usual 5 inches of rain expected for the winter season. The drought conditions exacerbated the lack of water to battle the flames. 

Helicopters and airplanes were also grounded by the Santa Ana wind gusts, and firefighters were forced to trek by foot through the windy and narrow roads of Malibu and Eaton Canyon to battle the blazes. 

“The main priority becomes helping people evacuate and defending the homes,” said Carmignani. “With these very, very bad fire conditions, there’s only so much you can do.”

The wildfire-urban interface in Southern California, with homes built in close proximity to forested areas, is especially susceptible to fast and destructive fires—chaparral plants have oils and resins that provide ample fuel. 

And last year’s atmospheric rivers that brought historic rainfall and flooding to Los Angeles County to create a “weather whiplash” event didn’t help, according to Jennifer Balch, a fire ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder. The subsequent bloom of vegetation has now dried out to feed the current fires. 

Climate change will continue to further the severity of these extreme weather events, she and other experts added.

“Over the past two decades, we saw a 250 percent increase in fire speed across the West that I don’t see slowing down anytime soon,” she noted of the drought-stricken region. Many communities are ill-prepared to be fire resilient, she said. 

“Think about the number of petroleum products that we use to build materials which are all flammable, including interior couches and wood flooring,” she said. “We’re living with a lot of risk, and we have not adapted our homes and our communities to that.”

Beautiful and Deadly

Since 1960, the Los Angeles metropolitan area’s population has nearly doubled from more than 6 million to over 12 million today. And the ever-expanding urban sprawl contributes to climate change, said Stephen LaDochy, a geographer and climatologist at California State University, Los Angeles. 

“You have warmer temperatures due to more people, more cars, more burning of fossil fuels,” LaDochy said. 

Many people are drawn to live in Southern California because of its Mediterranean climate and proximity to nature. But the region is no stranger to all kinds of natural disasters: landslides, heatwaves, earthquakes and wildfires. And, according to LaDochy, the housing shortage in LA has put some people in the path of firestorms. 

“All the valleys and low spots have been taken up, and so you start to build on the hillsides and up into the mountains, so that’s putting people at risk,” LaDochy said. Those rural areas are more susceptible to fires, especially in canyons where the Santa Ana winds come hurtling through. 

Making matters worse, areas like the Pacific Palisades and Malibu can be difficult to evacuate. Frantic videos posted online from earlier this week showed people blocked in by abandoned cars impeding roadways out of Pacific Palisades, one of LA’s most affluent neighborhoods. 

“People are at homes in these little cul-de-sacs, and there’s one road going in, one road going out,” LaDochy said. “It’s very dangerous.” 

Reimagining Fire-Resilient Communities 

Urban planning expert Stephanie Pincetl directs the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA and said she’s been warning policymakers of these wildfire dangers for years. 

“This area of California has always burned,” said Pincetl of Malibu and the Pacific Palisades. Put aside the L.A. Fire Department budgeting gripes—she said even the world’s largest firefighting brigade would have difficulty suppressing these aggressive fires. “It was to be predicted, and preparing for this in advance is impossible.”

Controlled burning to clear flammable vegetation as Indigenous tribes once did is not enough to stop this type of destruction, which requires much more complex solutions, said Pincetl. 

“There’s an enormous pressure from the building industry and unions to continue building out into the urban fringe, and a lot of NIMBY opposition to densification,” said Pincetl. LA County needs to be reimagined as mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods in contrast to the current preponderance of single-family homes, she said.

Lawmakers, Pincetl argued, haven’t done enough to prevent homeowners from building into fire-prone landscapes. In Mike Davis’ classic book, “Ecology of Fear,” a chapter titled “The Case for Letting Malibu Burn” detailed the hubris of developers who began building homes in the path of yearly firestorms in the 1920s, enticed by Malibu’s idyllic picturesque coastline. 

“If you are building in harm’s way, is that a natural disaster?” Pincetl asked. It’s important to mitigate future risks by moving away from these hazardous regions, she said. “We can repatriate people into already older neighborhoods where there’s less likelihood of being exposed to fire,” she said of the people who’ve lost their homes. 

Amidst the terrifying conditions, there is still a spirit of resilience at evacuation centers. On Tuesday night, cars from all over LA County were rolling up to the Pasadena Convention Center to drop off food, masks and water. A team from the Sacramento Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had even driven six hours downstate to help the Pasadena Human Society care for adoptable animals. 

Honore had been redistributing vegan food from restaurants the same day his family’s home was destroyed—and he remained upbeat, despite the loss. 

“Luckily, I have another house in San Gabriel,” where he said his friends and his aunt are now staying with him. As he passed out eggrolls, he also offered a smile and a comforting hug to his neighbors. 

Black residents like Honore who lost their homes in the Eaton Fire face a distinct loss in contrast to the star-studded Pacific Palisades. Their residences were passed down intergenerationally, dating back to the Great Migration, when millions of Black Americans fled racism and poverty in the South. Now, for many, that middle-class American dream has burnt to the ground.

“I’m here for the community,” Honore said. He hopes that the storied history of Altadena as one of California’s first middle-class Black communities won’t be forgotten. “We just got to be there for each other and support one another the best way we can.”

Cover photo: In Altadena, whole blocks were leveled by a fire that jumped street to street. Credit: Jireh Deng/Inside Climate News