Southern California wildfires raging for over a week: Why firefighters are struggling to contain them

California Wildfires: Firefighters are struggling to contain these wildfires due to environmental, infrastructural, and human factors. Here is a look at these factors

One of the main reasons why firefighters have struggled to contain wildfires is because they have been spreading at a rapid pace. (Representational image/Reuters)

Written by: Alind Chauhan

5 min readNew DelhiJan 15, 2025 05:03 PM IST First published on: Jan 15, 2025 at 04:10 PM IST

Pacific Palisades Wildfire in Los Angeles Explained: A new fire erupted in Southern California on Monday (January 13) night, adding to a string of fires that have been torching the region since last week. The blazes have killed more than 20 people, put hundreds and thousands under evacuation orders, and charred more than 40,000 acres of land.

Known as the Auto fire, the new wildfire had burnt 56 acres of land as of Tuesday early morning. The two biggest fires — Palisades and Eaton — have remained far from being entirely contained. While the Palisades fire has been 14% contained, the Eaton fire has been 33% contained, according to NBC Los Angeles. There is another fire — the Hurst fire — which has been 99% contained.

Firefighters are struggling to contain these wildfires due to environmental, infrastructural, and human factors. Here is a look at these factors.

Low water pressure and fire hydrants running dry

Efforts to curtail the wildfires have repeatedly been hampered due to low water pressure and fire hydrants running dry, particularly in elevated areas. That is because Los Angeles’s urban water system is designed to fight local, small-scale fires over a limited time period, and not large-scale, long-lasting fires.

There are 114 tanks that supply water to LA residents and all of them were full before the fires erupted. “However, the three water tanks in the elevated Palisades were unable to be refilled due to high demand,” according to a report by Al Jazeera.

On January 8 — a day after the wildfires ignited — Janisse Quinones, the chief executive of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, told the media, “We pushed the system to the extreme… Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure.”

The situation was worse in elevated areas. Hydrants functioned at lower areas but ran dry in hilly areas such as Palisades Highlands — where the storage tanks hold water that flows by gravity to communities below.

Urban sprawl

Jennifer Marlon, a senior research scientist at the Yale School of the Environment, told Anadolu English that the wildfires have had such a devastating impact because people are building infrastructure in vegetation areas that naturally burn and are more vulnerable to burning.

“There is certainly inherent danger in building in places with flammable fuels that periodically dry out,” she said.

Experts have also pointed out that LA has been increasingly expanding into the wildland-urban interface — where urban sprawl meets fire-prone landscapes — which has raised the ignition risks and exposure to wildfire damage.

David Demeritt, professor of Earth & Environment at Boston University, told Anadolu English, “The source of fuel and ignitions is not vegetation burning on the landscape but homes themselves. This is despite really strict building regulations and a program of over 10,000 inspections by the city and county of Los Angeles to ensure homeowners comply with building regulations and requirements.”

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Relentless winds and climate change

One of the main reasons why firefighters have struggled to contain wildfires is because they have been spreading at a rapid pace. This is happening primarily due to Santa Ana winds (click here to know more about them) which blew up to the speed of 161 kmph last week. These warm and dry winds are known to make vegetation dry, making them more vulnerable to wildfires.

Alexander Gershunov, a research meteorologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of San Francisco, told Time magazine, “The winds are like pointing an air blower at a fireplace… except it is not contained and it is on a much larger scale.”

The conditions were already quite dry before the Santa Ana winds began to blow in Southern California. California experienced its hottest ever June and July, and the second hottest October in 2024. Much of Southern California has had no rain since July, even though half the normal rainy season has already passed. This is the second driest spell in the region in 150 years.

Behind extreme heat and no rain is the usual suspect: climate change. The rise in global temperatures has led to warmer springs and summers, and earlier spring snow melts. Together, these conditions lead to longer and more intense dry seasons, putting more moisture stress on vegetation and making forests more vulnerable to fires.