Fires!
What causes them to be so destructive and what can we do about it?
Attention is once again on fire, as recovery continues in Los Angeles. The Palisades and Eaton Canyon fires were two of the most destructive fires in recent history, with (thus far) more than 10,000 homes destroyed and tens of billions in damage.
What happened? Why did so many houses burn down? And how can we protect ourselves from fire? Are fires that destroy entire towns the new normal?
Understanding what happened in LA and why, can assist you to better understand how to protect yourself from such disasters. Read to the end for step by step actions you can take to protect yourself.
Could these fires happen outside of the drylands of the west?
Hurricane Helene has created tons of dead wood from fallen trees and destroyed homes, much of it gathered in massive piles. It will take many months to remove most of it; some will never be removed. This has created a significantly higher fire risk in Appalachia than usually exists, and fires are burning currently in the mountains.
Straight-line windstorms (derechos), hurricanes and floods have killed swaths of trees in other parts of the country, creating greater fire hazards.
How can we prevent destructive fires or mitigate the risk? It’s vital that we have accurate info about what causes them if we want to prevent them.
It can be helpful to establish some basic rules of how fire behaves and thus provide context for what happened in Los Angeles. These rules apply to other destructive fires and in some cases other forms of natural disaster.
In the case of LA fires there were several elements that created the conditions for conflagration, ranging from natural causes to human error.
Weather and site conditions
Los Angeles had a record rainy season in 2023 and early 2024. This supported massive growth in the wild forest and chaparral areas surrounding Los Angeles.
From spring of 2024 onward, Southern California had a record dry year, with less than 1” of rain in the 8 months preceding the fires.
It was also hotter than average. The combination of dry weather and heat created the conditions for mass evaporation which resulted in explosively dry landscapes in wild areas.
Record Santa Ana winds created hurricane conditions that further dried out the region and caused the fires to burn super hot and spread rapidly.
Fire usually enters a home via gaps in vents, under eaves or elsewhere. Wind-driven fires get so hot that they can even melt window frames and break windows, allowing sparks inside homes that way as well. They can cause spontaneous combustion in nearby structures.
Because of the heavy wind, sparks started new fires as much as 2 miles or more ahead of the fire line. This ranges from difficult to impossible to guard against. Firebreaks are much less useful during heavy winds.
Many of the homes in the neighborhoods that burnt were older homes that were built out of wood and not fire hardened. Newer homes have more fire resistance, by code. Beyond the code, there is still room for improvement in fire resistance; we’ll share some tips here.
Many neighborhoods host invasive or exotic species of trees and landscaping that are highly and explosively flammable in fire conditions, such as eucalyptus and some forms of palm trees.
Once fire gets going under these conditions, it is extremely challenging to control.
A. Water aimed at such a fire can evaporate before it hits the fire because of the fierce wind and heat.
B. Firefighters have little to no prediction on where new fires will spring up behind them.
C. The wind prevents planes or helicopters, which can deliver high volumes of water or fire retardant chemicals, from flying at the low altitudes needed to make a difference.
D. Even if flying was possible, water or chemicals air dropped would blow away and become too dispersed to do much good.
So excessive fuel, dryness and wind created the “perfect storm” for an unstoppable fire. If we want to honestly address such scenarios, we need to take a holistic approach to designing solutions.
Human error
What started the fires?
While investigations are ongoing, it appears that utility company infrastructure could have sparked the Eaton fire. This was also the cause of the fire that burned down a good portion of the town of Paradise in Northern California a few years ago.
In both cases, utility companies knew that heavy winds created huge risks and could have turned off utilities in wild areas near human infrastructure. This would have created temporary inconvenience, but saved lives and billions of dollars in damage.
It’s been known for many years that utility company infrastructure in wild areas poses a significant risk. Utility companies have been slow to correct the problem. An obvious solution would be to force them to do so.
This might make rates go up, which is understandably resisted. However, insurance rates have gone up for most of us in disaster prone regions and even regions that aren’t so vulnerable. Disasters cost us money via taxes, lost income and rising prices as well.
It’s important to crunch the numbers and determine which is more expensive - prevention? Or recovery? This doesn’t factor in the emotional cost of loss of homes or lives. To make it harder, insurance and utility companies have different interests and of course different owners wanting different things.
Whole Systems Design addresses such problems by enhancing beneficial connections within the system - reducing energy needs and waste while increasing efficiency. We address multiple needs, thus becoming more valuable to a wider range of interests.
This multi-solving approach to design results in affordable, doable, more resilient and regenerative win-win solutions.
Through the use of whole systems design, it’s possible to create a much more hardened and resilient system that would ultimately cost all of us less - not more. This is in the interest of everybody except those who profit from the situation or are unwilling to respond to changing needs.
Through the use of whole systems design, it’s possible to create a much more hardened and resilient system that would ultimately cost all of us less - not more.
One example would be to use distributed or cooperative energy networks - neighborhood level nodes of electricity that largely get their power from local renewable sources like solar, wind, hydro or geothermal energy.
This reduces the need for electric lines running through fire-prone remote wilderness areas and is overall more resilient. It can be less expensive and have fewer blackout issues. Neighborhoods could own their own electric supply, while still enjoying the advantages of connection to other networks.
What if we rebuilt neighborhoods devastated by disasters more regeneratively?
Did the city run out of water?
While rumors have abounded that the city ran out of water, in truth, the city of LA had and has a record amount of water storage available because of the heavy rains last year. There was no shortage of water in Los Angeles during the recent fires, in spite of some reporting to the contrary.
The problem is that the water distribution network in Los Angeles is not designed to provide the huge streams of water needed to fight massive wildfires on multiple fronts. This is true of most cities and rural areas. The infrastructure is not designed to meet the extraordinary needs that arise during such a major disaster.
This is not a partisan issue - it is a society wide issue of how we think about designing all of our infrastructure to be resilient in the face of major disasters.
Brittleness (or lack of resilience) in the design of communities and major infrastructure has been the way we’ve done things for decades, though this is improving in some ways. I believe in large part many people do not understand how vulnerable we are to these disasters.
We do have the power to demand more thoughtful development, and this is vital if we want to prevent or even reverse the damage from natural disasters.
The media and other sources have taught us to expect governments to be prepared to handle these increasingly extreme situations, but are we willing to pay the costs that would enable them to do it, and are we willing to accept the inconveniences that might come with creating real resilience?
This aspect is vital if we want real change. This isn’t something governments can do without our understanding and cooperation. Currently, politicians risk being voted out of office for funding resilience projects that are infrequently needed over other interests. Hopefully this article can help increase understanding of the stakes and remedies.
An uncomfortable reality
I feel deeply for everybody who lost their home, pets or loved ones. Only by being honest about why these disasters are becoming more destructive, and by making some significant changes in how we view and do things can we ultimately reduce those numbers.
People naturally want to rebuild in their familiar neighborhoods and recreate the lives they had. It’s traumatic enough to lose your home without losing the community some people have grown up in, and everything else you know.
The problem is, many communities aren’t actually sustainable - meaning that they were never built in a way or a place where they could last in the first place. Long term survival of the home or neighborhood was not a primary goal of the builder in numerous, or even most, cases.
The problem is, many communities aren’t actually sustainable - meaning that they were never built in a way or a place where they could last in the first place.
This is probably a shocking thing to hear for some people - I know it was for me the first time I ran across the concept. But the more deeply I got into regenerative design and the more thoroughly I studied the flaws in the design of our existing buildings and infrastructure, the harder it was to avoid this conclusion.
We continue to not only rebuild but expand development in flood plains, in the path of fires, in hurricane storm surge zones, and other places where the odds are great that some of what we build will be destroyed in our lifetimes.
Let’s see what that looks like financially:
This trend will continue as long as we continue to expand and develop without designing for resilience.
We have been betting against the odds for a long time, betting that weather patterns would remain in a predictable range, that “1000 year” disasters that are now happening almost every few years in some places won’t happen again in our lifetimes.
Almost none of our infrastructure is built to withstand record breaking weather situations. In addition, we continue to pollute, degrade or destroy ecosystems that could mitigate extreme weather.
The way out of this predictable ongoing and worsening debacle is to confront the underlying causes of the situation and, at the design phase, create a more regenerative way of operating.
We are not going to fix the situation without changing how we operate and make decisions at some fundamental levels. There are vested interests that won’t like this. But the vast majority of us will benefit greatly from a more regenerative design of our communities.
Ironically, even the most corrupt vested interests could benefit and thrive if only they could rise above their fixed viewpoints and habitual way of looking at the world.
The good news is that using a regenerative design approach to preventing or reducing destruction in natural disasters also brings numerous other benefits including better health, a better economy, and stronger communities, resulting in increased overall quality of life.
Regenerative design can also remedy issues like climate change and environmental degradation, two factors we haven’t touched upon in this article but which contribute significantly to the cost of disasters.
What can be done about it?
On a personal level, there are meaningful triage steps you can take to protect yourself. If you’re in a region that is at high risk for fire, do everything you can to “fire harden” the structures where you live and work. It’s possible to retrofit existing homes to make them safer. There are numerous websites that provide information about how to do this (see below for some links).
It’s obviously vital to keep sparks from entering your home. Often, homes burn from the inside out.
This passage from The Atlantic brings the risk home:
In an ember storm, every opening in a house is a portal to hell. A vent without a screen, a crack in the siding, a missing roof tile—each is an opportunity for a spark to smolder. A gutter full of dry leaves is a cradle for an inferno. Think of a rosebush against a bedroom window: fire food. The roses burn first, melting the vinyl seal around the window. The glass pane falls. A shoal of embers enter the house like a school of glowing fish. Then the house is lost.
Four top priority actions to prevent or mitigate fire damage
1. A top priority is to prevent embers from entering the house. This can be done by affixing screens manufactured to block sparks on all openings in your home including dryer vents, attic vents, chimneys, etc.
2. Remove any foliage or wood mulch against the house. “Ladder” flames from a bush under a window can provide the heat needed to compromise the window and allow flames inside your home.
3. Remove combustible fences that attach to your house, such as wooden fences.
4. Cut back or remove limbs overhanging your house.
5. Create a fire lane around the house with little to no fuel for the fire.
Additional actions
Ensure your landscape is fire resistant and doesn’t include highly or explosively flammable foliage, such as eucalyptus. Native plant nurseries, permaculture designers, and other local resources offer information on fire resistant landscapes.
If your roof is highly flammable, replace your roof with fire resistant material. For example, there are fire resistant Class A shingles available.
If you can’t do that, and if you have a pool or other water catchment, add the capacity to pump the water onto the top of the house where it can flow down and catch flying embers, or install a pump sprinkler system to water your roof.
You want a backup way to keep it running if the electricity goes out. Installing sprinklers on your roof that run on your main water line is relatively inexpensive and could save your home if that is your only option.Fully seal places such as windows and doors wells - sparks can get through any gaps.
Single pane windows crack easier from the heat and allow flames into the house. Double or triple pane with tempered glass gives better protection if you can do it.
Have a bug out bag and evacuation plans and routes worked out, and practice it! This includes extracting pets, meeting family members at a remote location if you’re separated, etc.
Every year, people lose their lives because they didn’t evacuate. If you have limited evacuation routes available, know this and understand when you need to get out to avoid having the route blocked by fire.Neighborhoods with mostly fire hardened homes tend to survive better as well. Encouraging and helping your neighbors fire harden their home can help save yours.
Even if you can’t do all of these, doing even one or a few of these could save your life and your home in a normal fire situation. If you need to protect from extreme winds and a desiccated landscape, try to do all of these, and more.
There are some excellent, more in-depth resources in the reference list below to assist you.
What we’re doing
We recognize the need to make information on how to both build and rebuild more regeneratively much more broadly available. Both individuals and organizations should be able to more easily access and use this information, which currently isn’t sufficiently well known or well-communicated.
We’re partnering with Association for Regenerative Culture, Permaculture Institute of North America (PINA) and WeRegenerate.earth to document successful and regenerative emergency management approaches to natural disasters, climate change and other pressures on our society. The goal is more resilience to natural disasters, healthier communities and more resilient and healthier ecosystems.
We are creating a series of manuals that go more in depth than I can in this article on how to survive and regeneratively prepare for a variety of disasters. In tandem with these, we’re creating a public online library of best practices and regenerative resources in this field.
If you have knowledge, skills or ideas you would like to contribute to this project, let us know! This is a community-based, community-led project. We have regular town halls and open meetings, and an online forum to further discuss these issues. If you’d like to join, sign up.
If you are interested in volunteering, please contact us at volunteer@growpermaculture.com
If you have information or resources you’d like to share, please fill out this form or write us.
Let’s work together towards a better future!
Resources
Home assessment app and other resources for fire resistance. How resistant is your home? What can you do about it?
https://firesmartcanada.ca/
In-depth how-to guide for individuals and communities for resiliency to wildfires.
https://cafiresafecouncil.org/all-resources/planning-preparation/
What caused the fires?
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/01/15/climate/los-angeles-housing-fire-risk.html
Costs of disasters
Towns with limited evacuation routes - is yours on this map?
https://www.streetlightdata.com/limited-emergency-evacuation-routes-map/
Indigenous practices reduce fire risk
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-19/tongva-ancestral-land-burned-eaton-fire
Grow Permaculture Curriculum and Courses:
Are you ready to take your next step in Permaculture? If so, we’ve got you covered from novice to all-star. Our our courses are under the direct supervision of Koreen Brennan, educator, diplomate, and PINA board member.
Online Permaculture Design Course
The internationally recognized Grow Permaculture Online Permaculture Design Course comes with hands-on practical and mentoring. Now more than ever, people have attention on creating more choices and resilience in their lives. We want healthy food, a clean environment, happiness and security for us, our children, and future generations. This course offers practical steps to achieving these things in your own life, regardless of your circumstances. You can get started right away! Sign up now!
In-Person Permaculture Design Course
This is Grow Permaculture’s internationally recognized In-Person Permaculture Design Course. This course will be held in St Petersburg, FL, and at our farm in Brooksville, giving people an opportunity to see permaculture in action on both the farm while also studying in an urban environment. Space is limited sign up today!
Check out our full lineup of Grow Permaculture Courses & Events!
Thanks for reading PermaLife! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.