The causes of the California wildfires are closer to home than you think

When Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass was questioned about her decision to cut millions from fire prevention in southern California, she was rendered speechless – but aren’t we all in a ‘magic bubble’ of denial about natural disasters, asks Chris Blackhurst

If we build on flood plains, properties will flood. If we build in earthquake zones, there will be destruction. If we cover the hillsides that are home to scrub and prone to drought and exposed to fierce winds, there will be fires.

Which bit of this do we not understand? And guess what, I’ve not even mentioned climate change.

California was the wildfire state of the US long before the planet started getting warmer. The rising temperatures have fuelled the chances of more conflagrations, but the conditions for the horror unfolding in Los Angeles were present already.

John Vaillant, author of the bestselling and quite unputdownable Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, likes to say we think we live in a “magic bubble” of denial. His terrifying account of the burning of Fort McMurray in 2016 ought to have served as a wake-up call. Here we are, nine years later and LA is ablaze.

As Vaillant wrote about a huge fire in Vancouver in August last year: “While researching Fire Weather, I interviewed a lot of people who’ve seen their towns and cities burn. There are common themes: no one thinks it’s going to happen to them, and no one can believe how fast it happens once it does.”

That inferno began in a condo and quickly spread. “The trees were on fire,” said one Vancouver resident. “Lawns were on fire,” said another. “Roofs were on fire,” said a third. “There weren’t enough firefighters.” “It made its own wind.” “You could feel the heat from blocks away.”

For Fort McMurray, read Vancouver, read Pacific Palisades and Sunset. Yet as the fires in her city started, LA mayor Karen Bass was 7,400 miles away, in Ghana, on a taxpayer-funded trip with a Biden-administration delegation celebrating the inauguration of its new president. This, despite meteorologists warning of a coming Santa Ana windstorm, which local experience suggested, boosted the likelihood of wildfires.

As residents fled and exhausted firefighters fought in vain, they were left to regret Bass’s earlier decision to cut the annual Los Angeles Fire Department budget by $17.6m, in favour of the city’s homeless population. To add more tinder, that money is largely unspent.

The trim was not even as much as Bass wanted. Her intention was to lop $23m from the LAFD. Overall, the fire service will receive $837m this financial year, versus $1.3bn for the destitute.

While some right-wing US commentators have been quick to seize upon the anomaly as grotesque, that isn’t the point. No one can begrudge helping those without anywhere to live (although to them can be added a growing number of LA residents who’ve seen their homes reduced to ashes). More, it’s the fact that Bass should be cutting the cash for fire prevention and safety at all in a place vulnerable, and increasingly so, to wildfires. Hers, too, is a city that has seen its fire hydrants run dry. They don’t have enough water for their hoses. Back to Vaillant’s bubble.

That Tinseltown, soon to host the Oscars, should be struck carries a rich irony. This is a city that rose above, that seemed untouched by whatever was occurring elsewhere. That’s how a large part of LA made its living, selling glitz and glamour and pure fantasy. With that, as well, went a certain smugness.

What they, and we, have received is a stark reminder of nature’s power. It’s not dissimilar to Covid. There was globalisation connecting us, linking businesses, markets, travel. There were disasters but they were localised. Then, everything everywhere simply stopped, and not because of a cyber-attack or computer meltdown, but because of a tiny, invisible virus.

History told us it had happened before, with plagues and influenza outbreaks. We thought in the 21st century we were impervious. Then look. Today, LA is ablaze (LA!). Please, now, can we pay due heed and say, and ensure, never again?