Wildfires in Southern California have taken over the area, but the first rainfall in months presents citizens with a new safety hazard just twenty days later: mudslides.
California has experienced an extreme record of a drought this past water year, since early October. The last “dry year” for California was 2020-2022. The wildfires began as of January 7, 2025 in several different areas of Los Angeles and spread rapidly due to dry land and over 100 mph winds.
The series of fires have taken the lives of at least 29 people, over 57,000 acres of land, and destroyed over 16,000 homes and other structures in Southern California.
“Our population density is also what led to this, because once one of these (houses) goes up, it's going to spark another one,” NHS science teacher Trent Harrison said.
The Palisades Fires began just east of Malibu in L.A. as a neighborhood brush fire, which at the time was said to be 95% contained by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (referred to as Cal Fire). These fires took 12 lives, and had taken up 23,448 acres, including almost 7,000 buildings and structures in the area.
The Hughes Fires arose in Northern L.A. near Castaic Lake and was last recorded to cover 10,425 acres and was 98% contained according to Cali Fire.
The Eaton Fires erupted in a canyon found in national forests near downtown L.A. and had taken over 14,021 acres and destroyed 9,418 structures. It was said to be 99% contained. The Eaton fires took 17 lives.
Just about a year before the fires, the Santa Ynez Reservoir, with a capacity of 117 million gallons, was drained in February 2024 due to a tear in its cover. The reservoir was under repair to maintain safe drinking water levels for homes in the Palisades.
As a result of “extreme demand” on the water supply in L.A. in the early morning on January 7, the remaining water supplied by the three 1 million gallon water tanks ran dry, said officials.
"Four times the normal demand was seen for 15 hours straight, which lowered our water pressure," Chief Executive and Engineer, Janisse Quiñones, told CBS News in a press conference..
California Governor Gavin Newsom announced on January 10, that he would be launching an “independent investigation into the loss of water pressure to local fire hydrants and the reported unavailability of water supplies from the Santa Ynez Reservoir,” on X.
But would the reservoir have made a difference in the combat against these wildfires?
"The reservoirs above Pacific Palisades were not designed to support fire-fighting at the scale of [this] fire," David Freyberg, a hydrologist and water resources specialist at Stanford University, said. "Water supply reservoirs are typically designed to cope with house fires, not wildfires."
People like Hunter Simon and his family, who lived just 2,000 ft from the reservoir, firmly believe their house could’ve been saved if the reservoir was active.
“You never evacuate really thinking that you’re saying goodbye to something,” Simon said to the Los Angeles Times.
“The Santa Ana winds, the fire spreads faster than fire breaks or water would be able to contain. It was the embers, as the wind would blow those embers would jump. Wind beats water,” Harrison said.
After experiencing a long drought these past few months, L.A. finally has had their first significant rainfall, providing Burn Zones with over an inch of rain. And in a recent report, the Palisades Fires are completely contained as of January 28.
L.A. being covered in ash and dry soil has now led to dangerous mudslides and flash-flood warnings. Roads have been engulfed in mud, trapping all kinds of vehicles, including first responder vehicles that were on site during the fires.
These series of natural disasters are an alarm for the whole world to realize that Global Warming is a problem that will affect our day to day life, and threaten our safety. A call to action is essential for our climate to get back to its normal routine.
“The only way we can reverse global climate change, is to find a way to take carbon out of the atmosphere faster than we are producing it, and that involves plankton in the ocean. We would have to decrease our carbon output, and lastly we would need to decrease our population. We have exceeded the carrying capacity,” Harrison said.
As a result of these new dangers, four schools in Malibu have closed, “due to dangerous road conditions,” the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District said in a statement to AP News.
“We had a normal range [in weather], and now we are in extremes, we go from extreme drought to extreme drain. That is going to cause the incidents to flare up in certain areas,” Harrison said.
The state of California has launched several support services for those affected by the fires including the LA Disaster Relief Navigator, Altadena Recovery Commission, and several other fundraisers including a FireAid Benefit Concert that was held in Intuit Dome and Kia Forum in Inglewood with over 30 artists.
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