Comments
PLANNING WATCH - While it hard to know how much of President Trump’s appalling ignorance about the causes and consequences of Los Angeles wildfires is an act or the real thing, we can safely predict that rebuilding will make future wildfires more destructive.
In Donald Trump’s recent Los Angeles press conference there was no climate crisis, and the devastating fires in the Los Angeles area could have been prevented if an imaginary water line from the Pacific Northwest had not been mysteriously turned off.
Why future wildfires will be increasingly destructive:
Deregulation. The rebuilding proposals from President Trump, California Governor
Newsom, and Los Angeles Mayor Bass call for the quick reconstruction of about 15,000 destroyed houses by “cutting red tape.” In practice, this means the deregulation of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), zoning laws, and building codes. It also involves cutting corners on protecting residents and workers from toxins present in the air, ash, and wildfire debris, especially in the Palisades and Altadena areas.
Climate change. Although the pols and corporate media rarely consider climate change when explaining the increasing number and destructiveness of the region’s wildfires, climate change is a major factor, as shown on this New York Times map.
This [is] how UCLA climate scientist, Daniel Swain, summarized the impact of climate change on LA’s wildfires:
The recent fires show that the worse climate for wildfires may not be steadily hotter and drier, but instead one that increasingly lurches back and forth between episodic wet and dry extremes, yielding increasingly large swings between rapid fuel accumulation and subsequent drying, especially in grassland shrubland, and woodland environments.
Housing built in fire zones. The third reason is steadily worse fires in Los Angeles in parallel with permits for residential and commercial projects in dangerous fire zones. According to Katya Schwenk, writing in The Lever:
In recent years, at every turn, efforts to reduce high-fire development have been stymied by powerful real estate and construction interests The industry has successfully fought against limits on development in wildfire safety and even beat back safety standards for house in fire -prone areas.
To the extent there are differences among decision makers, it is how to reconstruct destroyed areas. For the Governor and Mayor, rapid rebuilding of homes burnt to a crisp is their priority, reconstruction accelerated by waiving the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and municipal building codes.
Their ”opposition” is among those, especially “Yes in my Backyard” lobbyists, who call for replacing immolated houses with apartments. This increase in density is good news for real estate companies since lots that now permit apartments instead of houses are worth much more.
There is a catch, however, and that is that apartments replacing houses require major upgrades in infrastructure. To be done right, all supportive infrastructure, such as water and power, needs to be first upgraded to prevent blacks outs and similar tragedies. But never mind these details because the attitude that “no disaster should be wasted” is based on short-term profitability, not long-term livability.
The combination of reckless land use decisions and climate change have made LA’s wildfires much worse. This is why an extremely inciteful YouTube documentary, prepared by the Los Angeles Fire Department 63 years ago, is a must-see: “LAFD – Design for Disaster – The Story of the Bel Air Conflagration”. Despite the media’s current finger-pointing at City Hall, such as low water pressure, the real reasons for LA’s annual wildfires and their enormous destruction have been fully understood since 1962. The culprits are the region’s geography and worsening climate, combined with houses permitted in dangerous fire zones.
If you think local fire departments will no longer be overwhelmed by local wildfires, you only need to watch the 1962 LAFD video about the Bel Air fire to realize that the only force that can stop LA’s wildfires is a change in the weather.
(Dick Platkin ([email protected]) is a retired LA city planner, who reports on local planning issues. He is a board member of United Neighborhoods for Los Angeles (UN4LA). Previous columns are available at the CityWatchLA archives.)
