Experiencing the LA Wildfires
- psen66
- Mar 5
- 4 min read
David Bee Olmedo
BNHRC Climate and Weather Masters student David Bee Olmedo has been on an exchange visit with the University of California Los Angeles and witnessed the wildfires firsthand. He shares some personal insights on the role of the media and mobile apps during the crisis, and of climate change in the lead-up.
A month after the devastating fires in Los Angeles first broke out, I would like to reflect on my experience both from the perspective of a concerned visitor in the city and that of a climate science student.
But first, I want to recognise the good work of all the first responders and firefighters who worked tirelessly to manage the fires and aid those directly affected. My thoughts go to all living beings affected by the fires.
After living through an event such as this, many questions arise about the event itself: what happened, what caused it, who was affected? I can only speak to what I experienced and my thoughts on the wildfires, along with the insights I gained from members of the atmospheric science group I am visiting at UCLA.
When the fires broke out, I was visiting Prof. Alex Hall’s atmospheric science group at UCLA. The winter quarter had just kicked off after the Christmas break. The Palisades fire (the largest of the fires by acreage) burned west of UCLA and while no part of UCLA was directly affected, the fires reached as close as two neighbourhoods away.
I recall being able to see the fires from my partner’s apartment. Seeing the flames blaze in the strong winds made us realise that this was no small threat.
The first question we were faced with was how seriously to consider the threat of the fires reaching our neighbourhood. Speaking with locals and volunteers from the local emergency shelter eased our concerns to an extent, as they explained that the fire would have to jump over the Interstate 405 highway in order to reach us.
As one friendly volunteer put it, “If it crosses the 405 then that would be crazy.” But the consolation was short-lived when they added, “But no one expected the Pacific Palisades to burn to the ground, so we are already dealing with crazy.”
Another key question was how to access relevant information for our specific location. Online news outlets poured out articles providing evacuation advice and vivid frontline images. While useful for general updates, it was hard to use these news outlets to determine the level of risk for our particular area.
Fortunately, a solution came to us (and many others) in the form of the Watch Duty phone app, which was recommended to us on the first night when we visited the emergency shelter.
The app, which is operated by volunteers (some of whom are active or ex-firefighters), brings together the most relevant and accurate information concerning the progress of the fires and evacuation orders. It has a highly polished map-centric interface with a timeline of updates provided for each fire. If a new fire broke out, the Watch Duty app would be the first to let you know.
The striking feature of this service is the way the information is retrieved. This partly involves the volunteers listening in to live radio communications of first responders actively dealing with the fires to provide real-time updates on the app.
Watch Duty also brings together updates from official sources such as the CALFIRE and LA Fire Departments, which enabled us to stay up to date with containment lines and the progress made by firefighters.
The app was invaluable to us and to hundreds of thousands who downloaded it that week. Even with this huge influx of users, at no point did the service crash.
Naturally though, once the immediate threat of the fires had subsided, I began to think of fires in the context of climate. Many people have spoken out about how unprecedented these fires were, especially during the LA winter when it usually rains as atmospheric rivers make landfall.
Alex’s group at UCLA was quick to publish an article concerning the contribution of climate change to the development and severity of the wildfires. The quick turnaround of the article was possible as members of the group had already been considering questions and model data relating to wildfires in southern California. They found that climate change may have had a role to play in the dry conditions leading up to the fires.
Additionally, a key component as to why the fires spread so quickly were the strong Santa Ana (downhill) winds during the fires. Newly appointed UCLA post-doc Raymond Sukhdeo is currently investigating the synoptic meteorology during the wildfires to determine how large-scale configurations contributed to the strong Santa Ana winds. The results from this work are yet to be published.
This and other research work on the event will no doubt help to explain why the fires burned so effectively and the extent to which anthropogenic factors contributed to the fires.
This work and the broader climate research will help to improve our knowledge and readiness for the wildfires of tomorrow. It was a spectacle to see the group come together to provide a climate perspective on the event in the span of a single week.
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