Axios - Beyond the immediate danger posed by wildfires spreading through Los Angeles County is the smoke that poses a worrisome threat to the health of millions in the area. Wildfire smoke can exacerbate conditions like asthma and COPD and has been associated with higher risk of cardiac arrest and stroke. Particulates can trigger inflammation even in healthy individuals.
- The impacts from wildfire smoke can drive up the need for emergency room visits and hospital admissions.
AirNow.gov has marked air quality around much of Los Angeles as "unhealthy" and an even wider area as hazardous to those in sensitive groups.
- Combined with the high winds reported in Los Angeles County and respiratory virus season, there's a perfect storm for irritation to the airways of healthy individuals and those with preexisting respiratory conditions.
Health clinics in the area have been announcing closures. Kaiser Permanente closed nine outpatient clinics and UCLA Health announced the closure of at least a dozen outpatient clinics including its Alhambra Cancer Care on Wednesday. Read more
Public News - “Chaparral fires have been around for at least 20 million years,” says a leading US government scientist. “What’s changed is we have people on the landscape”.... According to the media and some scientists, climate change is causing the fires. “Researchers believe that a warming world is increasing the conditions that are conducive to wildland fire, including low relative humidity,” reported the BBC. But one of the country’s top fire experts disagrees. “I don’t think these fires are the result of climate change,” Jon Keeley, a US Geological Survey scientist, told Public. “You certainly could get these events without climate change.”
Keeley has researched the topic for 40 years. In 2017, Keeley and a team of scientists modeled thirty-seven different regions across the United States and found that “humans may not only influence fire regimes but their presence can actually override, or swamp out, the effects of climate.”
Keeley’s team found that the only statistically significant factors for the frequency and severity of fires on an annual basis were population and proximity to development. “We’ve looked at the history of climate and fire throughout the whole state,” said Keeley, “and through much of the state, particularly the western half of the state, we don’t see any relationship between past climates and the amount of area burned in any given year.”
Time -The devastating nature of the fires is in part due to climate change, experts say, which has exacerbated the size, intensity, and damage caused by the wildfires in recent years. The southwestern U.S. is undergoing the driest 22-year period in the last 1,200 years. As temperatures have risen, so has the aridity, or dryness of the vegetation, which proved disastrous when coupled with the gusty Santa Ana winds. “The hot and dry Santa Ana winds that often affect the southern California region and fuel large wildfires such as the ongoing one, only make things worse,” said Imperial College London Professor Apostolos Voulgarakis in a statement. “Research has shown that the occurrence of Santa Ana winds in the autumn are also likely to get worse with climate change, leading to even drier vegetation, fast fire spread and more intense late-season wildfires."
Science Advances - "In the southern California region, 100% of all SAW [Santa Ana] fires are the result of human ignitions, either intentionally or accidentally. Over the past 71 years, the sources have changed markedly, with arson, and especially powerline failures, becoming more frequent in the latter part of the 20th century"
Time - In an interview on CNN, Once Upon a Time in America actor James Woods broke down in tears talking about how his home had been destroyed by the Palisades fire. “One day you’re swimming in the pool and the next day it’s all gone,” the 77-year-old Woods said. On X, the actor said, “It tests your soul, losing everything at once, I must say.”
On Instagram, Paris Hilton shared a news clip of the fires with the caption, “Sitting with my family, watching the news, and seeing our home in Malibu burn to the ground on live TV is something no one should ever have to experience.”
Oscar-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis also shared on Instagram images of how the fires burned through her neighborhood. “Our beloved neighborhood is gone,” she wrote in one post. “Our home is safe. So many others have lost everything. Help where you can. Thank you to the first responders and firefighters.”
Cary Elwes of The Princess Bride fame shared on Instagram that he and his family had lost their home to the Palisades fire, though they are “grateful” to have survived the “truly devastating” fire.
Grammy-winning songwriter Diane Warren posted on Instagram
a photo of a rock alongside an update about her beach house in the Los
Angeles area, saying: “I’ve had this house for almost 30 years. It looks
like it was lost in the fire last nite.” Warren, who also owns a ranch
for rescued animals in nearby Malibu added, “The animals and the rescue
ranch are OK tho which is the most important thing.” More
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