Chaparral Wisdom
To celebrate the magic and beauty of Nature & the chaparral
How to Respond to the Recent Wildfires
To our friends in the Los Angeles area who have suffered from the recent wildfires. We are so sorry for the devastation and sadness you are facing.
To those of you who want to actively seek change, we humbly offer our advice. After more than 20 years fighting to help Californian’s adapt to wildfire, having our hearts broken from loss more times than we can count, we have learned that success in trying to prevent another devastating wildfire in Los Angeles will not come easily.
To effectively battle the system, one must not waste precious time thinking the system will listen. It won’t. You’re competing with billions of dollars of power and influence. Facts and logic will not matter. Prepare to be ignored and personally attacked. Or perhaps worst, into believing that you are being listened to. So, speaking at hearings, writing letters, etc., should only be seen as a strategic path to establish legal standing to, as attorney Victor J. Yannacone famously said, sue the bastards. Understanding this helps prevent discouragement and burn out. We wrote a brief essay on this kind of thing when confronting the California Coastal Commission: What’s Public Testimony Worth?
Educating and supporting intelligent candidates for office who know you also have the votes to kick them out can be another effective path to take.
Unfortunately, the misinformation and the purposefully anxiety/fear-driven news and social media machines about the wildfires will make the job difficult, much more so than during previous wildfire events. Understand that the messages you are hearing from the left (“it’s about climate change”) and the right (“its about lack of prescribed burns and DEI at the LA Fire Department”) are absurd. Both positions deflect the focus away from immediate solutions that can save lives and communities (see below).
Large, high-intensity wildfires have been a natural part of the southern California landscape for thousands of years (and have increased dramatically due to human-caused ignitions). Like earthquakes, it is a fool’s errand to think we can stop them. Yes, climate change is drying the California environment. Drier environments are more flammable. But it is not possible to determine what role, if any, climate change played in the Los Angeles fires. More importantly, blaming climate change ignores the primary variables responsible for loss of life and property, variables that can be resolved now. Increased prescribed burning will only result in the spread of invasive weeds and grasses, making the environment even more flammable. And that, in 2025, bigots are able to publicly ridicule Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley solely because she is a woman is a disgrace to what our country stands for.
Large, high-intensity wildfires have been a regular, unstoppable phenomena in the Los Angeles Basin, long before climate change and the culture wars. Senator Richard Nixon on roof during the November, 1961, Bel Air Fire in Los Angeles. Photo by Allan Grant, Life Magazine
What to Remember When Seeking Change
First, in whatever change action you plan, the key thing to remember is that there are entrenched interests that have no interest in change. From the federal level down, including research institutions like the University of California, Berkeley, fire bureaucracies, and fire-safe councils, it is mostly about supporting the fire suppression apparatus and the habitat clearance paradigm.
The fact that homes can be made nearly completely fire safe through retrofits/exterior sprinklers, and community-based fire suppression groups, is minimized or rejected because both take away dollars and power from the current system. It is an old story, as many of you have likely experienced in your own lives and careers: “It is useless to argue with a man whose opinion is based upon a personal or pecuniary interest.”
– William Jennings Bryan
Proper defensible space is important, but meaningless in the wind-driven fires that do all the damage or in areas like Pacific Palisades where dwellings are only a few yards apart. Local communities must take more responsibility because there will never been enough firefighters and engines to defend every community, every home, during a wind-driven firestorm.
Most wildfire home losses are preventable. Our booklet, From the House Outward, will help explain why and how to keep your home safe.
Second, we are battling a convergence of forces that make it even more difficult to solve the wildfire problem: the growing rejection of rational thought, the proliferation of false information, and the exploitation of fear about fire/lack of ecological knowledge by the current system. Beyond partisan sources, once trusted purveyors of local information like the Los Angeles Times now habitually embellish and exaggerate disasters to attain readership attention. Triple check your sources. Question authority.
Third, the solution has been fully described after the 2003 and 2007 Firestorms. Most of what you are hearing now is just a rehash of what happened during those fires, plus the 2005 Topanga Fire, 2009 Station Fire, 2018 Woolsey Fire, and the 2020 Bobcat Fire. What has happened in the neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades this time is a repeat of what happened to Coffey Park in Santa Rosa during the 2017 Tubbs Fire. The disaster reveals the horrible price paid for the myopic focus on defensible space and habitat clearance.
The primary job of government is to protect its citizens, and plan accordingly. This has yet to be accomplished when it comes to wildfire. After Coffey Park, every fire prone community with a similar geographic condition, like Pacific Palisades, should have been identified and disaster plans formulated. Pacific Palisades was lost in part because this was not accomplished. Similarly, every area that is prone to post-fire mass flooding, like Montecito, should plan for the same. To our knowledge, authorities have not done so for Mission Canyon in Santa Barbara. A full set of recommendations can be found in our 2019 letter to Governor Newsom, which his administration ignored.
Demand that we learn from the past.
Finally, understand that it is impossible to prepare and predict for every contingency during full-blown disasters. Systems collapse. Plans fail. Firefighters do the best they can with the training and equipment they have. Reject snap judgements. Search for solutions.
The summarized points and supporting research papers providing solutions are available on our website pages:
1. How to protect lives and property.
2. How devastating wildfires actually work.
3. Why the current approach (clearing habitat) through mechanical and prescribed fire continually fails.
4. Why the current belief about “dense” vegetation is false.
5. Most people do not understand that the chaparral fires in Los Angeles are radically different, with different solutions, than forest fires.
Prepare for the long haul. Pace yourself. Realize most decisions at government hearings are made long before you testify. Get a good attorney. Celebrate the friendships you gain, strengthen the ones you have, and enjoy the satisfaction you experience knowing you are fighting for truth.
A fire in Rancho Peñasquitos, San Diego, California, August 27, 1995. From R.W. Halsey (2008). Fire and Survival in Southern California.
Great information! I have started to build affordable and reliable emergency water pumps and have sourced fire hoses, sprinklers and accessories in bulk to offer them at affordable prices to So Cal residents. More info at http://www.robusthomedefense.com
Do you have any opinion or comment about using tech (satellites, drones, robots) to battle wildfires? There seems to be a slight uptick in that space due to the recent disasters. For example, WildfireXPRIZE has a $11M prize (took them five years to get funded) for tech that can find a new fire (2 meters sq. or more) in ten minutes or under and then rapidly extinguish it.
Hi Gary,
The quick identification and location of a fire through observational technology can be an important factor in controlling the spread of some wildfires, but it is most useful during non-wind-driven events. This has been the challenge – nearly all the most devastating wildfires, the ones that destroy the most property and kill the most people, are wind-driven events during severe drought conditions. While the sooner a fire is spotted, the better chance we have of catching it, during severe fire weather, the advantage of early detection drops significantly.
The fires are not an anomaly caused by climate change and I’m glad to see that you’ve addressed that. The Santa Ana winds are common in Southern California during the cooler months from September to May. I also recall the Sundowner winds which can reach gale force and are extremely dangerous during wildfires.
It makes me cringe to hear “climate change” thrown around like it’s the culprit and you are absolutely right that it deflects from solution focused communication and also away from that most of the fires are of human origin, whether intentionally caused or not. Likewise these areas are heavily populated which also increases the likelihood of fires caused by humans.
I’m a native Californian and grew up mainly in the southern part of the state and I vividly recall years of drought followed by horrible fires, mudslides, very strong El Niño years with above-normal precipitation and widespread landslides. I also studied fire ecology and dendrology as it was part of the curriculum for Natural Resources Management. The fires are not an unusual event caused by climate change. As an aside at one time I even considered becoming a firefighter which I attribute to my memories of devastating fires. I was also deeply involved in environmental work/causes. I didn’t because my husband strongly discouraged me. He was concerned that it’s a high risk dangerous job and he didn’t want me to get hurt. The fires are deeply disturbing to me and my heart goes out to people experiencing such devastating losses.
Climate change may not be THE culprit, but it doesn’t mean that it isn’t A culprit. We know that Climate Change is causing extreme anomalies in rainfall (weather whiplash) and this is projected to get more extreme overtime. So while Climate change may not have caused the fires, the rate of spread, even increases in extreme windspeeds could have been a result. More research is needed and time will tell.
Agreed, Drew. The issue we are raising is that the knee-jerk response from the left side of the aisle about the fires being caused by climate change feeds into the right’s characterization of irrational thinking by the environmental community, AND it deflects from actions we can take now that will have immediate impact in saving lives and property. To be honest, based on what we have seen over the past 20 years, we doubt any effecticw change will occur, now that the entire conversation has been hijacked by people who insist on hunkering down in opposing camps, facilitated by a media environment that only transmits fear and panic.
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I just wonder why in California we never really looked at metal roofs as a method of protecting our homes. Would they help? Swimming pools as a source of water to battle fires? Obviously you’d need power and a pump. Next, we’ll need to have radio (wireless, etc.) controlled water shut off valves. We need to treat water as a precious resource.
I whole heartedly agree with all other points. However, consider that fires such as these are not at all typical for January. The desiccating Santa Ana winds that rush in from the warm inland desert against the normal onshore flow, are occurring later into the year. Normally, this being pushed beyond fire season into the wet season would be a great thing, but these are not normal times. Climate change is taking hold. In California, this means both more intense storms and deeper droughts, intensifying climate cycles. The extreme wet winters of 2022-23 and 2023-24 led to an increase in plant growth. Unfortunately, this was followed by record high temperatures, and The driest 6-9 month stretch ever observed. Thus all of this vegetation became bone dry disturbingly swiftly. Well-respected climatologists are pointing to the role that climate change has played in these specific fires. Between 2001-2020, peak daily growth rates of wildfires have more than doubled in the western states (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk5737). While undoubtedly invasive grasses are spreading and altering fire regimes, ignoring the role of climate change would be to our detriment.
Hydroclimate volatility on a warming Earth – https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-024-00624-z
A Shorter, Sharper Rainy Season Amplifies California Wildfire Risk – “Recent fire and climate science research has demonstrated a clear link between worsening California wildfires and climate change, mainly though the vegetation-drying effect of rising temperatures and shifting precipitation seasonality.” – https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2021gl092843
An interesting reality I learned recently on the subject of invasive grasses, may also be of interest to the Chaparral Institute, if it is not already under your radar. A comment from one of the authors, made elsewhere: “The talk about fine fuels (naturalized annual grasses primarily) being enhanced by two wet years in a row is spot on, but there is another contributing factor that almost nobody talks about. The famous LA smog acts as nitrogen fertilizer (NOx and NH3 and reaction products dry deposit onto soils and plants, called atmospheric nitrogen deposition). This fertilizer supercharges the grass growth – some parts of the LA mountain front get 50 lbs/acre/year from dry deposition.” – https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45639859_Nitrogen_critical_loads_and_management_alternatives_for_N-impacted_ecosystems_in_California
You’re absolutely correct about climate change being involved in increasing the flammability of the landscape. Our points are two fold.
One, that these fires are well within the historical norm other than the ignition likely being caused by human activity, which we know for sure is increasing fire frequency beyond the capability of native shrublands to survive.
Two, addressing climate change will do nothing to protect lives and property from wildfire this year, next year, or a couple decades from now. We must focus on the solutions that are readily available to us now that will have immediate impact. Saying these fires are an anomaly caused by climate change, will only deflect from what needs to be done now and reinforce the false notion that large, high-intensity wildfires are unusual events in southern California.
Thank you for the data references. It is refreshing to interact with an informed, rational person – infrequent these days.
Likewise, thank you. I certainly don’t wish to reinforce false notions, nor deflect focus from immediate solutions, only to communicate that without The Collective We seriously acknowledging and addressing climate change, the anomalous is on the trajectory of becoming quite less so. Regardless, the actions the Chaparral Institute is/has been proposing in response to regionally expected fire behavior, will only aid both the natural and built world in both current and future scenarios. Whether society decides to continue kicking that can down such a road engulfed in inferno, or not, I do agree. The desperate (opportunistic?) ramping up of projects that will only compound the damage to native plant communities (habitat, not fuel!) facing climate change, invasive species intrusion, increased ignition sources, degradation/fragmentation, and the other fallout of destructive cultures in tandem with human overpopulation, has my hackles on constant end. The sanity I hear expressed through your group offers some needed courage. Keep up the Good Work, as in, strength to you and yours. A howl goes up.
Hi, I shared your article on my blog but also I’d like to ask. Many commenters on youtube state “one should remove all the trees, shrubs and vegetation around their house, because they catch fire” some even suggest there should be a law not to have any vegetation (native or not) within a 100’ radius. But I saw a man who had his car parked under a tree. The car is safe, the tree is damaged. What would you say to them? Also have you heard of how the Getty museum is protected by wind diversion? Basically, the system changes the path of the wind away from the museum. It withstood many wildfires. Thank you Richard and the team for your effort to protect our native chaparral. Now, it’s going to be nearly impossible.
Hi Angeli,
Those who demand that all vegetation be removed around homes have a fundamental misunderstanding about how wildfire works. Homes ignite from embers generated a mile or more away. The wind powers these embers into every vulnerable spot. So it is NOT direct flame contact that ignites homes during wind driven fires, but embers. Contrary to what people imagine, burning homes typically ignite the vegetation and trees around them, not the other way around. Also, properly irrigated, maintained trees and shrubs create ember and heat sinks that can help shield homes from being ignited.
The story you heard about the Getty sounds like one of those many false stories that are generated these days. Wind flow is determined by geography. There are a number of reasons the Getty has not burned in recent fires, but the presence of some kind of artificial wind diversion system is not one of them. There are a lot of areas that are in geographic locations that appear to naturally protect them from wildfire. The Getty location may be one of them, but such a thing has never been studied to our knowledge. These observations are basically all anecdotal.
Thank you.
An enlightened fire captain in Santa Barbara told me the trees absorb the heat. He said: keep them all, just remove the dead branches.
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My homeowner association is hosting a meeting soon to talk about ways to reduce fire risk in our community (manufactured homes).
I will get a dozen copies of this 14-page handbook to hand out. Good timing. Thanks.
Thanks for this reminder. I am often buoyed by your posts. Reading this one, I wondered why you didn’t mention the human ignition aspect of Southern California so-called ‘wui’ fires. Yes, fires have always been with us, but not in the way they are now with over 90 percent of human origin in our region. Wondering why this and human-altered fire return intervals wasn’t mentioned in this particular post.
You’re correct Jodie. We added a notation to that effect. Thanks.
In the greater Santa Monica Mountains area where I have been mapping fire history for 23 years it is actually more like 99% human-caused. Never say never, but lightning fire starts are exceedingly rare in coastal southern CA. Up in the mountains where summer thunderstorms can happen it is a different story.
HelIo
I been following your group for several years since I read your article about roof top sprinklers saving 188 homes in Ham Lake MN. I know 1st hand about how the system won’t listen as I tried to help a group of fire chiefs and the fire protection engineer Richard Patton who exposed the ionization smoke alarm consumer fraud in 1974 and were ignored by UL NFPA both who were in back pocket of the smoke alarm manufactures and CPSC who did nothing to force a ban and recall for decades. I tried contacting the World Health Organiztion to see if their burn prevention department might help and it took a year before someone responded only to tell me they couldn’t help and I should reach out to local authorities which the group of fire chiefs and Richard had been doing for decades i told them. A couplr years ago I filed a consumer fraud complaint with every Attorney General office in U.S. and they did nothing as well. I also posted petitions on Change.org to get the Red Cross to stop installing ion alarms in lower income housing and to install photoelectric alarms instead. I gained the attention of the RC President who set up a teleconference call with their fire safety manager only to hear him tell me that ion alarms cost less and ion alarms meet fire codes and they would continue to install them. Another petition was to get the CPSC to ban and recall ion alarms and they completely ignored me. Corporations have been getting away with murder for decades and occasionally pay millions in lawsuits in the settlements due to death and burn injuries because a use ion alarms did not activate in time to wake occupants up and the agencies that are supposed to protect the lives of public seem to be incompetent and or in the back pocket of the corporations.