Wildfires and other fire incidents

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Credit: Guardian

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https://www.reuters.com/world/us/los-an ... 025-01-08/

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Altadena has been almost completely destroyed.

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More on the roll the Santa Ana winds played in fanning and spreading the fires:

How Santa Ana winds fueled the deadly fires in Southern California
by John Keeley
This article was originally published January 8, 2025, and has been updated with new details on the fires.

Extract::

(The Conversation) Jon Keeley, a research ecologist in California with the U.S. Geological Survey and adjunct professor at UCLA, explains what causes extreme winds like this in Southern California, and why they create such a dangerous fire risk.

What causes the Santa Ana winds?

The Santa Ana winds are dry, powerful winds that blow down the mountains toward the Southern California coast. The region sees about 10 Santa Ana wind events a year on average, typically occurring from fall into January.

When conditions are dry, as they are right now, these winds can become a severe fire hazard.

The Santa Ana winds occur when there is high pressure to the east, in the Great Basin, and a low-pressure system off the coast. Air masses move from high pressure to low pressure, and the more extreme the difference in the pressure, the faster the winds blow.

Topography also plays a role.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/how-santa- ... a-246965


Santa Ana winds blow down the mountains toward the coast, drying and warming as they descend.
USGS

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16 dead, 16 missing as fire crews try to corral Los Angeles blazes before winds return this week

Source: AP

By CHRISTOPHER WEBER and HOLLY RAMER
Updated 11:28 AM CST, January 12, 2025

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Firefighters scrambled Sunday to make further progress against wildfires that have killed 16 people in the Los Angeles area as forecasters again warned of dangerous weather with the return of strong winds this week. At least 16 people were missing, and authorities said that number was expected to rise.

The National Weather Service issued red flag warnings for severe fire conditions through Wednesday, with sustained winds of 50 mph (80 kph) and gusts in the mountains reaching 70 mph (113 kph). The most dangerous day will be Tuesday, said weather service meteorologist Rich Thompson.

“You’re going to have really strong gusty Santa Ana winds, a very dry atmosphere and still very dry brush, so we still have some very critical fire weather conditions out there,” Thompson said at a community meeting Saturday night.

Fierce Santa Ana winds have been largely blamed for turning the wildfires sparked last week into infernos that leveled entire neighborhoods around the city where there has been no significant rainfall in more than eight months.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles- ... 32ff54ee6f

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Fire at one of the world's largest battery plants in California forces evacuations

Source: AP


Updated 10:34 AM CST, January 17, 2025

MOSS LANDING, Calif. (AP) — A major fire burning Friday at one of the world’s largest battery storage plants in Northern California is sending up flames of toxic smoke, leading to the evacuation of 1,700 people and the closure of a major highway.

The blaze in Moss Landing started Thursday. Fire crews were not engaging with the fire but were waiting for it to burn out on its own, The Mercury News reported.

The blaze was still burning early Friday and it had not gone beyond the facility, according to Monterey County spokesperson Nicholas Pasculli. As of late Thursday, a few dozen people were at a temporary evacuation center and the rest had gone to friends or family or made other arrangements, Pasculli said.

The Moss Landing Power Plant, located about 77 miles (125 kilometers) south of San Francisco, is owned by Texas-based company Vistra Energy and contains tens of thousands of lithium batteries. The batteries are important for storing electricity from such renewable energy sources as solar energy, but if they go up in flames the blazes can be extremely difficult to put out.


“There’s no way to sugar coat it. This is a disaster, is what it is,” Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church told KSBW-TV. But he said he did not expect the fire to spread beyond the concrete building it was enclosed in.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/battery-stor ... 4722a8b1f8

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A Neighborhood’s Death Foretold
by Stephen S. Eisenman
January 17, 2025

Introduction:

(Counterpunch) News about the fire arrived in fragments. First, that the blaze in Eaton Canyon was spreading rapidly, then that a few homes in the foothills were consumed, then whole neighborhoods, including my former one on the southern perimeter of the Angeles Crest National Forest. The house I owned on Jaxine Drive, designed in 1959 by Randell Makinson, burned to the ground. The loss to the current occupant is obviously much greater than mine. I hope that she finds solace in the love of family and friends, and that she may rebuild if she chooses.

I haven’t lived in Altadena for more than 25 years, and most of my friends from there have also moved on. But the place still figures large in my memory. It was there that the sweetness of life in Southern California was revealed. Of course, the distance of time and space enhances flavors, so there may be some unintentional exaggeration in what follows.

Life in Altadena felt easy — il dolce far niento. My (former) wife Mary and I entertained friends – mainly artists and academics — on the redwood deck of our house, beneath the shade of a 400-year-old oak tree. About 200 yards up the road lived Bill (a lighting and set designer) and Joyce (a sculptor). They often invited us over to use their pool or for a barbecue. Their rambling house, cluttered with Mexican artesanias and other folk art, was often filled with the music of the Grateful Dead – Bill was a dedicated Deadhead. Their little boy Matt liked to play with our daughter Sarah, and because there was almost no traffic on our cul-de-sac, they could walk up or down without supervision.

Additional extract:

In California, 17 of the largest 20 fires in state history occurred in the past 18 years, with 5 of the 6 largest coming since August 2020, not including the Palisades, Malibu, and Eaton conflagrations. The recent fires may prove to be the most damaging and costly in U.S. history. Estimates are approaching $200 billion.

Read more here: https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/01/1 ... oretold/

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The Fires Aren’t Unbelievable. We Are
by Joe Mathews
January 13, 2025

Introduction:

(Zócalo) If you’re going to live the California dream, you’ll never escape the nightmares.

I’m a boy-dreamer from Pasadena. The second morning after the firestorm, I put on my press pass and headed up to Altadena, the unincorporated foothill town on my hometown’s northern border. It’s a journey I’ve made a thousand times.

I drove through my life. Past the Pasadena Jewish Temple, where my three boys went to preschool, now destroyed. Past the Altadena Town & Country Club, where my sister got married, now a ruin.

Past Eaton Canyon, where I hiked on school field trips and my honeymoon, now synonymous with one of the most devastating fires in state history.

The higher I ascended the mountain, the more burnt-out houses I saw. Many belonged to friends, old and new. By the time I reached Loma Alta Drive, almost everything was smoking rubble. Overwhelmed, I parked the car next to a little road leading to a trailhead.

Read more here: https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/the ... -we-are/

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Our Relationship with Fire is Creating the Burning Equivalent of an Ice Age
by Stephen Pyne
January 23, 2025

Introduction:

(Science Alert) Los Angeles is burning, but it isn't alone. In recent years, fires have blasted through cities in Colorado, the southern Appalachians and the island of Maui, along with Canada, Australia, Portugal, and Greece. What wasn't burned was smoked in.

Is this another case of a future not only dire but strange, without a narrative to join past to present or an analog for what is to come?
I'm a historian of fire, and my reply is that we have both a narrative and an analog.

The narrative is the unbroken saga of humanity and fire, a companionship that extends through all our existence as a species.

The analog is that humanity's fire practices have become so vast, especially in recent centuries, that we are creating the fire equivalent of an ice age.

Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/our-relat ... -ice-age


A plume of black carbon particles, commonly called soot, spans eastward from wildfires in Canada and across more than 2,000 miles of the Atlantic Ocean on June 26, 2023. Red and yellow areas denote the densest concentrations of particles.
NASA Earth Observatory