George Harvey and N.R. Mallery

Sometimes, as I read a story in the news, I can just picture what it must be like. One such story appeared as “LA Wildfires Push California Insurance Market to Its Limit,” in Bloomberg Green News (tinyurl.com/BGTheBigOne). It noted the life of a man who lived in Pacific Palisades.

It’s the worst fire that 78-year-old Steve Kalb, a retired entertainment lawyer, has seen in more than four decades spent in Pacific Palisades. On Tuesday, as the first of the fires ignited, he evacuated with his computer, his prescriptions, and two pairs of underwear. A neighbor bicycled by his house the next day and sent a video: everything was gone.

The fires in Los Angeles area, the fifth worst in the state’s history, have destroyed over 10,000 buildings including municipal buildings such as a fire department, police department, and even a Chase bank on Sunset Blvd in LA and well as the over 10,000 homes. It displaced thousands of people and at least 24 people have lost their lives. Neighborhoods and even communities are just gone. There is destitution among all groups of people, including the wealthy and movie stars. As this article is written, red flag alerts have again gone up with increasing fire danger due the high winds and unconfined fires continuing through Wednesday, January 15th, 2025.

Many homeowners in California will no longer be able to afford insurance if there are even able to get it. Private insurance companies will not write policies for homes in some areas, and residents will have to depend on the state.

What happened in Los Angeles County?

Los Angeles County has been in a state of drought for most of the last two decades. In 2022 and 2023, however, the area got a lot of rain. The landscape greened up and grass grew. Then the drought started up again, leaving all that lovely green ground cover dry as tinder.

In the fall and early winter, southern California often goes through periods of Santa Ana winds. These winds are hot, dry, and strong, coming from the inland deserts. The winds, generally are in the range of 30 to 60 miles per hour, but gusts as strong as 100 mph accompanied this year’s event.

The fires spread fast. Fire fighters were doubly hampered by the high wind speeds. Many hydrants went dry due to the demands of firefighting. The winds hampered some attempts for dumping water from aircraft.

By now we all know the story and the outcomes. Many questions remain: Will they rebuild there, knowing that more fires will be coming? This can and will happen. For many people the question is where to go.

Is any place safe from wildfires?

Here in the northeast, we like to think that we are relatively safe from fires. However there were quite a number of alarming wildires last year. The ones near Great Barrington, MA were just outside of the community. The catskils of NYS experienced a few fires that raised concerns and too close for comfort. New Hampshire also watched the wildfires closely there. Fortunatley we didn’t have the high winds but did have a very dry year with droughts that were of concern. It they spread to the communities, we woudl also have had a devastating outcome. So far very few even begin to compare to the active fire season in the Los Angelos county this month. Don’t think it could not happen here as well. It could. Our forests are full of underbrush that could quickly allow things to get out of control. Are we prepared for a possible situation here?

How about the midwest? Do wildfires happen in Wisconsin? We ask for a reason. We don’t think of Wisconsin as a place for wildfires, but history tells of the famous Peshtigo Fire happened there in 1871. It was the worst wildfire in American history. More to the point, that fire jumped Green Bay, which is ten to twenty miles across. This is somewhat wider than Lake Champlain at its widest point (around ten miles wide). The reason for bringing this up is to point out that it will not take very much to put us, here in the Northeast, into a situation where we could have a very bad fire causing much devastation. Also, the woods in the northeast are covered with underbrush that would only fuel fires. It could consume whole communities just as quickly as the LA and Hawaii fires did.

Is there more to this?

The fires in Los Angeles County are almost certainly worsened by climate change, according to an article from Yale Environment 360 (tinyurl.com/LAFiresAndCLimate). When we are assessing our own risk, we should take note of the other things we are exposed to by the same source. One of the things climate change exposes us to is drought, which is damaging even without fires. Another is heavy rain and flooding, which has hit the Northeast several times in recent years. Sea level rise is unlikely to have any direct effect on Vermont, but its effect on New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts, likely will put us into the position of having to deal with migrations of Americans moving inland.

Extreme weather today comes in many forms. One thing that we should recognize is that while climate change is a warming trend, it is more broadly a trend toward extreme weather, both hot and cold. An arctic blast can be reinforced by anomalies of climate change.

A greater problem might be availability of food and clean water, which could happen soon. Much of our produce comes from California, and that might not be a reliable source during a climate crisis. Policies that send immigrants out of the country could leave us without agricultural workers at the very time we need them most. Our editor spoke with one very unnerved person still living in LA on January 10th. She said she had no clean water and was packing to leave.

There is a lot more coming with climate change. They include threats to health of our plants, our animals, and ourselves. They include additional problems ranging from invasive pests to shortages. Climate change is not going away for anyone, no matter how wealthy they are. It will continue to affect us all.

So, what do we do?

Clearly, we cannot depend on the insurance industry or the federal government, to have us covered and backed up. Fortunately, we have another choice. What we can do instead is to take control of our own lives, being as resilient and independent as possible. Renewable energy, building with high efficiency standards, sustainable heating and cooling options can all go a long way to prepare for a changing climate. We have energy conservation, sustainable agriculture methods down to growing our own food and many other things in Green Energy Times — all there to help us all learn to meet our future safely.

The truth is, we do not know the specifics of what will be coming. But we do know one thing for certain: Whatever is coming, is on the way. The heating limits of the earth passed the threshold 1.5°C in 2024. What we really need is to prepare and be ready for what’s ahead for us all.