Five football fields a minute: How a perfect storm of extreme weather set off Los Angeles wildfires

Tens of thousands of Southern California residents have evacuated their homes as multiple wildfires continue to devastate the area, abandoning vehicles, property, and other possessions in their haste to escape the flames now spreading at a rate of about five football fields per minute.

In all, more than 27,000 acres have been scorched by the flames, and at least five people have been killed.

“The smoke is a toxic soup,” Brian Rice, president of the statewide California Professional Firefighters union said on Wednesday, imploring tourists to stay out of the vicinity. “It’s not just the brush that’s burning, but homes are burning. Homes contain plastics that are built from petrochemical compounds. If you do not have to be in that area and breathe that environment in, don’t. It’s dangerous.”

Fire crews are operating at their “maximum limits,” Los Angeles City Fire Department Chief Christine Crowley told reporters.

“There’s not a fire department on the planet that could deal with this,” Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The Independent.

Normally, fires burn vertically, according to Corbett, who previously served as assistant chief of the Waldwick, New Jersey FD. In this instance, he said, powerful winds, exacerbated by climate change, are pushing the flames along horizontally, “like a giant fan,” consuming everything in their path.

“They’re picking up burning debris and embers and depositing them downwind, and that’s the recipe for what we’ve got now. There’s nothing the fire crews can physically do to stop this fire. All they can do is try to get ahead of it and hope there are enough natural fire breaks, in the form of rivers, open areas with little vegetation, that maybe can slow it down a little bit. It’s virtually uncontrollable, and they go out, typically, only when they run out of fuel.”

Heavy traffic snarled roads in and out of the Pacific Palisades area of L.A., situated between Santa Monica and Malibu, forcing fire crews to bulldoze cars left behind by fleeing homeowners. Some 3,000 acres in the vicinity have so far gone up in smoke.

“We looked across and the fire had jumped from one side of the road to the other side of the road,” Palisades resident Kelsey Trainor told the Associated Press. “People were getting out of the cars with their dogs and babies and bags, they were crying and screaming.”

Actor Steve Guttenberg, of Police Academy fame, lives in the area and was seen lending a hand to firefighters near his home.

The Palisades Fire, now nearly 16,000 acres, broke out around 10:20 a.m. Tuesday, and its exact cause remains under investigation. Several other blazes are simultaneously burning out-of-control, Cal Fire data showed: the Eaton Fire, which began Tuesday and has burned through 10,600 acres; the Hurst Fire, which also began Tuesday and has raced through 505 acres; and the Woodley Fire, which broke out on Wednesday and has burned up 75 acres of land. All remain zero percent contained at this time, Cal Fire said.

A fourth fire, which started on Wednesday in Riverside County, has eaten up about 15 acres and is 50 percent contained, according to Cal Fire. More than 150,000 homes in Los Angeles County are without power.

While the specific cause of the fires remains under investigation, the flames have been fed by the “tornado-like” Santa Ana winds, which have topped 100 mph in some parts and significantly hindered efforts by firefighters. The effect has been akin to that of an “atmospheric blow dryer,” according to UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, who said the unrelenting gusts have served to “dry things out even further.”

The area will become increasingly susceptible to wildfires as the planet continues to heat up, and certain insurers, including State Farm and Allstate, are no longer willing to write policies to homeowners in the state due to wildfire risk.

“There is a lot of interest in building in areas that shouldn’t be built on,” Corbett told The Independent. “But if you can’t get insurance, people will think twice about living there. That’s the only influence we can have. People want to live the way they want to, but sometimes physics gets in the way.”

The California Air Resources Board, a government agency charged with improving the state’s air quality, says climate change is a major factor in the frequency and severity of wildfires. The area burned by California wildfires has increased steadily since 1950, with warming temperatures and an earlier spring snowmelt to blame, according to the board. This has created the ideal conditions for “extreme, high severity wildfires that spread rapidly,” it says on its website, which notes that eight of the state’s 20 largest-ever fires have occurred since 2017.

California, where wildfires are not uncommon, “has seen some of the most significant increases in the length and extremity of the fire weather season globally in recent decades, driven largely by climate change,” Professor Stefan Doerr, director of Swansea University’s Centre for Wildfire Research, told the BBC.

The Pacific Palisades fire broke out on Tuesday, fueled by high winds and low humidity amid an ongoing drought that has parched the area in recent months. It swiftly tore through the area, and has now consumed some 3,000 acres. Firefighters struggled to battle the flames, which was zero percent contained as of Wednesday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

There have been no reported fatalities in the seaside enclave, but officials say at least 1,000 structures have been destroyed and a large number of residents who did not evacuate have suffered serious injuries.

Pacific Palisades councilwoman Traci Park told NBC it was “an absolute miracle” that no one in her district had died, saying it has been “at least eight months since we’ve had rain in this area.”

At one Los Angeles nursing home, staff was seen pushing elderly residents — including one aged 102 — down the street in wheelchairs and hospital beds, ushering them to a parking lot where they waited for ambulances and volunteers to take them to safety, according to the AP.

“This could have been simply a wildland fire along the coast, if there were no houses there,” Corbett said.

The Pacific Palisades fire has generated a smoke plume stretching more than 100 miles off the coast. President Joe Biden has been briefed on the situation and promised to provide “any federal assistance” needed.