The origin of the fire was possibly human. A lack of rain combined with powerful Santa Ana winds, low humidity, and dry vegetation to create the perfect environment for a firestorm. By the time firefighters arrived, the blaze had expanded and continued to grow as wind gusts increased in the afternoon. The winds were so powerful that firefighter efforts did little to slow the blaze’s rapid progress. It took days to contain the fire, but not before it burned thousands of acres. Some criticized local fire protection for failing to contain the fire before it burned out of control.
Palisades fire? No. Eaton fire? No. This is not a description of any recent California wildfire. This is the story of the Matilija Fire, which burned nearly 220,000 acres, and which you may not have heard of, because it occurred in 1932 in Ventura County. And what happened nearly 100 years ago is in some ways very similar to what we are dealing with today, although today’s fire risks are much larger, deadlier, and more expensive as California has grown considerably since the 1930s.

What are the potential risks we face today from a major wildfire? Nine of the ten largest fires in California history (measured in acres burned) have occurred since 2017, burning over four million acres. Six of the ten most destructive fires (measured as structures destroyed) occurred in the same period, burning over 40,000 structures. And five of the ten deadliest fires (measured as lives lost), killing 151 people, occurred in the same period.

The script is all too familiar, one that California has experienced far too many times. Low humidity and Santa Ana winds turn a spark into a fire, and the fire turns into an inferno before fire suppression can achieve containment. And once the fire reaches the inferno stage, the best scenario is hundreds, if not thousands, of acres burned, with no lives lost or personal/business property destroyed. A much worse scenario is represented by last month’s Palisades and Eaton fires, with 29 dead, over 16,000 structures destroyed, and an estimated $164 billion in property and capital losses. These estimated costs do not include potential costs of damage to soils and the groundwater in the area.

Santa Ana winds are common in California, occurring about fifteen times from January through February, with each Santa Ana event lasting around two to three days. These winds were described as “a hurricane” back in 1847, meaning they have been battering California since before California entered the union. They are “Public Enemy Number One.” And this raises the question of why state and local governments don’t do more to reduce the enormous fire risks we face and why fire protection appears to be a lower priority than other climate-related programs, particularly since fires immediately endanger lives, property, and economic activity.

If California wants to make the most of its carbon emissions reduction investments, then it needs to significantly reduce the number of wildfires and their size. This would reduce greenhouse gases and save lives. There is a veritable laundry list of expensive programs the state has implemented to address climate change: the cap and trade program; the low carbon fuel standard; the zero emission vehicle mandate, which requires automakers to produce a minimum level of zero emission vehicles; the renewable portfolio standard, which requires utilities to produce a minimum percentage of electricity from renewables; electrification for cargo handling equipment at ports; green building codes; and public transit electrification, including the state’s high speed rail program. Yet all the carbon emission reductions achieved from these and other programs between 2003 and 2019 were offset by the carbon emissions from California wildfires in 2020 alone—by a factor of two.

The impact of wildfires on carbon emissions is soul-crushing, particularly for California’s low- and middle-income households who struggle to pay the nation’s second highest electricity rates and the nation’s most expensive gasoline prices and who believed their sacrifices were making a significant difference. And the calculation cited above leaves out the severe fire seasons that preceded 2020, including 2018, in which nearly 2 million acres burned, and 2017, in which nearly 1.6 million acres burned.

Taken together, the wildfires of 2017 and 2018 burned about 80 percent as much as the 2020 wildfires, which roughly suggests that the carbon emissions from these fires might have emitted 1.6 times more carbon emissions than the reductions the state reported between 2003 and 2016. California has about 100 million acres of land, and nearly 8 percent of that acreage burned in the wildfires of 2017, 2018, and 2020. And there were 180 combined deaths from all wildfires in just those three years.

Climate change is often blamed for the increasing frequency and severity of California wildfires. But there are important policy choices that are central in understanding why so much of California has become a de facto tinderbox and why, when fire does break out, containment is so difficult.

One factor contributing to severe wildfires includes the accumulation of fuel for those fires. California’s environmental lobby has made it difficult to implement policies to thin forests and conduct prescribed burns. This is not a partisan criticism. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein expressed frustration over the environmental lobby blocking forest management over twenty years ago. Some of the environmental blocking of fire safety policies is difficult to reconcile with common sense governance. For example, a 2019 attempt to improve safety near Pacific Palisades by replacing nearly century-old wooden power poles with modern equipment was immediately halted by environmentalists because the activity was risking an endangered plant, Braunton’s milkvetch. Plants are protected under California’s Endangered Species Act. The power department paid a $2 million fine and reversed what it had done, including replanting about 200 milkvetch plants, which were likely incinerated during the Palisades fire last month.

The state is now spending more to treat acreage; the amount of acreage treated for fuel reduction before fiscal year 2019‒20 averaged around 46,000 acres annually and now averages around 112,000 acres annually. However, Los Angeles cut its 2024‒25 budget for fire protection as a share of its overall budget compared to the 2003‒04 budget.

The Los Angeles fire chief argued that she did the best she could with her underfunded department, although others, including former fire chiefs, noted that ten fire engines should have been pre-deployed in the Palisades, given the enormous fire risk that was present at that location. The city has not provided records as to when the first water was dropped on the fire, although one witness has stated that it may have been as long as 45 minutes after the 911 call was placed.

My previous home was very close to the fire. When my family and I lived there, my youngest son, who was around five at the time, and I frequently visited the fire station closest to the fire. Driving at a normal speed, it took about seven minutes to travel from our home to Fire Station 23. What could have been so different had those ten engines been stationed in the Palisades, just minutes away from the fire’s origin? At 11:06 a.m., 27 minutes after the first 911 call came in, the fire was reported to be just 10 acres.

When Governor Newsom first took office in 2019, he stated, “Everybody has had enough,” as he signed an executive order changing how California would deal with wildfire prevention in the future. Newsom indicated the state’s response “fundamentally has to change.”

State and local governments must do much more. This includes dealing with homeless encampments, as the homeless account for roughly 80 percent of downtown Los Angeles fires and about 54 percent for the city. Some of these fires begin when homeless individuals tap into electrical lines, sparking fires.

The state should invest more in advanced technologies for early fire detection. A 2019 report submitted by the Los Angeles city controller’s office to then-Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti concluded that expanding the use of advanced technology detection systems, including artificial intelligence, was important for reducing wildfire risks to the population.

California does use some advanced technology for early detection, although the systems in place don’t seem to be moving the needle. In any case, the LAFD response to the Palisades fire did not seem to use this technology. The ALERTCalifornia detection system, developed in 2023 by University of California‒San Diego researchers, identified the Palisades fire around 10:20 a.m., just ten minutes before the 911 fire calls from Palisades residents. Moreover, it appears that the LAFD dispatcher did not send out crews until the 911 call was received. First responders were at the scene at 10:48 am. Whether a fire department response to the ALERTCalifornia detection at 10:20 am would have made a difference remains an open question.

The 2017 Tubbs fire near California’s Napa Valley prompted Vasya Tremsin, a seventeen-year-old high school student at that time, to submit a science fair project that could detect fires early. “That’s when the thought hit me, why do these things keep happening?” he said. “And why isn’t there a technology that can detect fires early?” He is now delivering that early detection system to customers, including a Fortune 500 utility. He also traveled to Southern California to volunteer the use of his system to high fire risk locations last month.

Just imagine what the state could have accomplished had it made much larger investments in artificial intelligence detection systems years ago. It might have been the investment with the largest rate of return in the history of the state, saving many lives, changing the lives of thousands more, and saving hundreds of billions of dollars in costs.

The Matilija Fire of 1932 was exceedingly difficult to fight, as there were few roads in the mountains, making access difficult and dangerous. Some supplies were delivered by pack mules and horses, communications were limited to early model two-way radios that were unreliable, and rented bulldozers were in poor condition, making it challenging to create new access points and fire breaks. Moreover, the Matilija Fire occurred at the depth of the Great Depression, when budgets were very tight. But despite all this, the firefighter team of 3,000 contained the Matilija Fire before it reached the towns of Carpinteria, Fillmore, and Ojai. No lives were lost, and no structures were burned. In contrast, it has been reported that the LAFD held back firefighters and fire engines from the Palisades Fire until the fire had spread beyond control.

Had different choices been made regarding greater investments in early fire detection technologies, pre-deployed equipment and readiness, and more firefighting personnel, the outcome from the Los Angeles fires may have been very different. This suggests that the Los Angeles fires are a public policy failure, one that may be repeated in the future if our state and local governments don’t begin making different choices regarding fire safety.

Source: Hoover Institution