The wildfires in Southern California are in their sixth day. NBC News reports:
Fueled by powerful winds and dry conditions, a series of ferocious wildfires erupted Tuesday and roared across the Los Angeles area, destroying hundreds of homes and killing at least 16 people, including some who died trying to prevent the fires from engulfing their homes.
A Los Angeles County fire official said an untold number of significant injuries were linked to two of the fires, and a city official in Los Angeles described Tuesday night as “one of the most devastating and terrifying” that she had seen in her corner of the city.
I found this post by Keely Covello, “Why Los Angeles Is Burning”, interesting.
The projects he claims have delayed since they were approved were for either northern CA or for southern CA below LA. (The projects approved for southern CA were actually projects aimed at recharging groundwater.) None of those would have helped this fire. It’s also important to remember that the area is elevated so even with more water you would still need a lot more pumping ability.
It’s interesting to note that the largest fire in the LA area before this one was the Sayre Fire. In the current fire you had above average rainfall in 2022 and 2023 promoting growth, then you had 8-9 months with essentially no recorded rainfall. However, the X factor seems to be the Santa Ana winds that were also present in that record fire, which was much smaller than this one. The prior large fire before that was in 1961.
By report the Palisades has had other fires that were quickly stopped. The key factor seems to be the winds. Looking at the pictures of the place before the fire they had lots of gardens and lots of wooden decks. Lots of wood in the construction. Anyway, I am left thinking that the only way to really avoid a bad fire in drought conditions with high winds is to not build there to begin with.
Steve
An additional complexity is that historically Santa Ana winds have been a seasonal phenomenon and are now year-round,.
Last night it struck me that what the world needs most is a system for building fast, effective coalitions with hordes of angry idiots, because the internet has made angry idiots out of everone (else).
Because the big problems aren’t going to wait.
This American Prospect article from October didn’t age well:
“In California, the public-interest group Consumer Watchdog keeps track of unjustified cancellations or rate increases. The stories are gut-wrenching. In 2023, Ann Mitchell, who lives in Altadena, paid Farmers a $3,467 annual home insurance premium. Upon renewal last July, her premium nearly quadrupled to $12,149.
“What I have heard was Farmers had oversold insurance in the foothill areas and so they said, uh oh we have way too many insurance policies along this fire lane and so they jumped it up on some people,” Mitchell told Consumer Watchdog. Her house faces the wooded Eaton Canyon Natural Area and Nature Center. But Eaton Canyon last had a wildfire three decades ago. Insurance companies get to make these decisions unilaterally, without review from state commissioners.”
https://prospect.org/economy/2024-10-15-hurricanes-profit-center-insurers/
One explanation is that thirty years without fire increased the risk of a fire every year with added dead vegetation. Or maybe it’s like a 100 year flood, many of the impacted locations had a one percent chance of fire damage in any given year and this was the year. I don’t trust the linked writer to provide any good answers(*), but it does seem like insurance companies re-evaluated the risk of fire insurance in California last year.
(*) He says that insurance companies exclude flood insurance so they are making up the risk of hurricane damage. There were court rulings in at least Mississippi which effectively overrode the exclusion when damage was caused by both wind and water. I’m not sure I was shocked by that, but I wasn’t shocked that rates would be going up afterwards.
There were homes in the Palisades area that were over 100 years old. I suspect that for many of those older homes the history would show that it was people living there who weren’t especially wealthy and it was just a place to live. For those people I have some empathy for the big insurance increases. However, a lot fo people live there because wealthy people liked living on a hill overlooking LA, surrounded by other hills and wildlife. Those people could afford the insurance costs.
Really, unless there is some public interest in having people living in high fire risk or coastal areas, they should be bearing the costs of the insurance. We have way too much interference at the state level trying to subsidize costs and then when disaster hits federal support inevitably occurs.
Steve
IMO the term “insurance” has been greatly abused. If it were being used correctly systematically there would be less confusion but that would highlight feckless state policies.