In the Los Angeles area, the scene has become all too familiar. people running while watching helplessly as unrelenting fires destroyed homes and entire neighborhoods.
Crystal Scott spent her childhood playing in the San Gabriel Mountains. But the Eaton Fire destroyed thousands of homes at the foot of the mountains.
“I’m devastated.” Scott, CBS News: “Our families worked hard to get us here and establish us.”
The family home of the couple was a realization of their dream. However, like many other homes of this type, it is also part of an urban and suburban sprawl that has encroached on previously wild areas.
Climate change also plays a part in the increase of risk.
As the rainy season intensifies and the dry season lasts longer, neighborhoods in Los Angeles’ foothills are more vulnerable. This cycle leads to increased vegetation that fuels fires. Los Angeles last saw rain of more than one inch around Easter last year. Long-term weather forecasts do not predict any rain in the near future.
Stephanie Pincetl is a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the Director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA. She says that the destruction while “awful” was “not terribly shocking,” given the history of fires of this intensity in the West.
The Marshall Fire, near Denver grew from a grassfire into the most destructive fire in Colorado history three years ago, incinerating over 1,000 suburban homes.
The Yarnell Fire, which started in Arizona , killed 19 firefighters as they tried to protect homes at the bottom of the mountain.
We still think that we as humans can overcome nature. Pincetl stated that “we’re not so powerful.”
All of these fires have one thing in common. They all occur at the interface between wildland and urban space, which is a technical term that describes where humans have crossed into nature. This type of space is home to one-third of American homes.
Pincetl suggested that those who are looking for a culprit should consider “suburban sprawl.”
But people don’t hold suburban sprawl accountable. She said, “We are all complicit in the land-use pattern.”
Los Angeles fires continue to burn, despite the deployment of all resources to combat them. On Monday, the number of personnel assigned to fighting fires in Los Angeles County was more than 15,000. Pincetl says that the fight is not one that can be won.
Why would we think this way? “Winning means that we are still trying to dominate the natural patterns we have pushed beyond what they were before,” she said. “We can’t win against nature.”
