Opinion David Wallace-Wells
Which City Burns Next?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/opinion/los-angeles-fires-lessons.html
Opinion David Wallace-Wells
Which City Burns Next?
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/opinion/los-angeles-fires-lessons.html
"....Then came the next generation of disasters: the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa, Calif., in 2017 and the Camp fire in Paradise, Calif., in 2018; the Marshall fire in Boulder County, Colo., in 2021 and the 2023 Lahaina fire in Maui, Hawaii, which killed more people than any American fire in over a century....."
"...In the spring, the pyrogeographer and wildfire YouTuber Zeke Lunder embarked on a bike tour with some fire friends of the foothill communities of the Santa Monica Mountains: Bel-Air, Beverly Hills and Beverly Glen. He later released an indelible five-part video series, “Danger in Plain Sight,” documenting the fire-risk conditions there, which he called “exactly the same as in the Palisades.”
“The hazards are ridiculous from a physical geography standpoint,” Lunder told me. “That intersection of canyons that funnel the wind, the intensity of the Santa Anas, the draftiness of those winds, and then this super flammable natural landscape, mingled with a superflammable urban landscape — you couldn’t really make it much worse unless you installed some giant fans.”..."