The Particular Horror of the Los Angeles Wildfires
Southern California is no stranger to fires. But the dreadful blazes that began yesterday are potentially transformative.
When wildfires began ravaging Los Angeles yesterday, the story was familiar in many respects: In dry and windy weather, a small blaze can spread so fast and so far that no one can do anything to stop it, especially in terrain dense with brush and hard for firefighters to reach.
Pacific Palisades, where the first fire began, is such a neighborhood; its roughly 24 square miles are beside rugged wilderness. The by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in 2022 as “very high” risk—the highest possible categorization. And it has burned before, most significantly in November 1961,.