January 8, 2025
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In places like California, fast-moving fires can be particularly damaging and damaging because they can surprise people and make evacuation difficult.
High winds blow embers from the Palisades fire as it burns a home on Pacific Coast Highway during a powerful storm in Los Angeles, California, January 8, 2025. A fast-moving wildfire has grown to more than 2,900 acres and is threatening coastal homes in Southern California’s strong Santa Ana winds and dry weather.
The Palisades and Eaton fires raced through the Los Angeles area, engulfing thousands of acres in just a few hours and forcing the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents, some of whom were forced to abandon their cars and flee on foot. There was also At least five people had died in the fire as of Wednesday evening.
サンタアナの強風によって急速に進行する火災は、不幸な傾向の一部です。 According to a paper published in science
The study didn’t examine why rapid fires became more common, but Balch said it’s likely due to the same reasons why the western United States has become more fire-prone in general. . “If you warm the climate and essentially dry out the fuels a lot, it makes fires much more likely to spread,” she says.
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“When these fires occur, they can quickly impact communities with little time to prepare or evacuate,” said John, a climate scientist at the University of California, Merced, who was not involved in the study. Abatzoglou says. “And that’s effectively what we’re seeing with some of the fires in Southern California.”
The largest of the fires, the Palisades Fire, has burned more than 15,000 acres since it started on Tuesday, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The Eaton Fire is also looming, burning 10,600 acres since Tuesday. Two additional fires, the Hearst Fire and the Woodley Fire, also broke out on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, burning more than 700 acres, the majority of which was blamed on the Hearst Fire.
“Winter wildfires should be an oxymoron,” Balch says. But Los Angeles’ experience was similar to another wind-driven event in Colorado, the Marshall Fire, which started on December 30, 2021. A warm, dry winter and strong winds fueled the fire, which burned more than three miles per hour. They set 1,000 buildings on fire and killed two people.
Both the Palisades and Marshall fires hit suburban areas that are often thought of as low risk for fire. But over the past 20 years, about 1 million homes in the U.S. have been within a wildfire line, and another 59 million are within about a mile of a historical wildfire line, Balch said. 「それは私たちが抱えている大きなリスクです」と彼女は付け加えた。
