On Jan. 22, the Hughes Fire exploded in northwest Los Angeles County. Fueled by roaring offshore winds, it’s grown to more than 10,000 acres and counting, forcing tens of thousands to evacuate. Across the county, Angelenos are still contending with the devastating Eaton and Pacific Palisades Fires that killed at least 28 people, leveled entire communities and left countless people homeless. At one point, 200,000 residents were under evacuation warnings.
In a warming climate, wildfires burn hotter, spread faster and pose a greater threat to densely populated areas across the West, including Utah. Emergency planners must rethink their disaster response protocols to account for unprecedented wildfire behavior.
Tom Cova, professor in the School of Environment, Society & Sustainability, gives us insight into the LA wildfire disaster response and best practices for keeping fire-prone communities safe. Cova studies environmental hazards emergency management, including wildfire evacuation. To contend with this new reality, he and collaborators proposed a new framework for simulating dire wildfire scenarios, a situation in which there is less time to evacuate an area than is required.
Wildfires are getting worse, and this is a product of frequent, extreme drought and wind events caused by climate change. To date, the 2024-25 rainy season in Los Angeles is the driest on record and, prior to the early January fires, no measurable rain had fallen since April. If extremely strong, dry winds occur in a drought-stricken area, the only missing element for a wildfire is an ignition. There are so many ignition sources in a populated area, accidental and intentional, that a wildfire almost seems inevitable.
When a fast-moving wildfire ignites close to a community, it can offer little time to respond. If the community is densely populated and only has a few ways out, then everyone will take the primary exits at the same time and gridlock can occur. Residents in the Summit neighborhood of Pacific Palisades had likely never experienced everyone leaving at once on Palisades Drive.
The most important factor is the amount of time available to protect people. Most scenarios offer significant time for officials to clear threatened areas, and the resulting routine evacuations rarely make national news. One of the most important factors for safe evacuation is the ability to warn everyone quickly, which has been greatly improved with cellphone-based wireless emergency alerts. Cellphones also allow residents to warn each other quickly. Other factors include ensuring adequate mobility, such as drivers and vehicles, as well as functional evacuation routes. Fire-prone neighborhoods must have a road network that can accommodate the number of residents leaving in the right direction to flee danger.
We can’t build more homes in fire-prone areas that aren’t fire-resilient—those days are over. Also, given the many existing homes that wouldn’t likely survive an extreme fire like the Palisades or Eaton Fire, there is a great need to make existing structures more fire-resilient. Communities should also have sufficient roads to travel in and out of neighborhoods to serve the number of households. Building a one-way-out community and then adding more and more homes and hoping a fire won’t occur is a recipe for disaster. In fire-prone communities that are already built out, wildfire shelters need to be designated and/or constructed to protect people in case where everyone can’t evacuate in time.
MEDIA & PR CONTACTS
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Lisa Potter
Research communications specialist, University of Utah Communications
949-533-7899 lisa.potter@utah.edu