Hello, my name is Artem and today in this post I am going to talk about the recent natural event - Los Angeles wildfire.
1) What is it? Where occured?
Los Angeles wildfire is also called The Southern Californian wildfires. They occured in January 2025 in Southern California in USA. Fires began spreading on January 7th in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. A series of 14 destructive wildfires affected this city and San Diego.
2) How bad was it?
This natural event was very bad. Over 18 000 houses were burned to ember, including Hollywood area. 29 people were killed, over 200 000 evacuated from the horizon event. The wildfire burned over 23000 ha of area (230 km2). This wildfire was the biggest fire occured in the last 35 years.
3) Why it occured?
The wildfires were summoned by the drought conditions of West America. There was no rain at all in this winter. There was low humidity too. Another reason for this event was hurricane-force Santa Ana winds, which in some places reached 160 km/h.
4) Two of wildfires
Most of the damage was from the two largest fires: Eaton fire in Altadena and Palisades fire in Pacific palisades. In fact, you could even see them from the space! (the picture below). Fortunately, both of them were extinguished on 31th of January. The deaths and damage to properties from these 2 fires made them likely the second and third most destructive fires in Californian history.
5) Budget and pricing changes
The budget of Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) was reduced by $17.6 million. After the budget was passed, another loss of $111 million happened because of equipment, firefighters, helicopters and planes, evacuations. In total of over $20.5 billion was lost because of this event to renovate houses, ground, forests and more.
6) Results
To sum up, here's a table of every consequence this fire had brought:
- Deaths: 29+ of people
- Missing people: 31+
- Evacuated: 200 000+ of people
- Total of wildfires: 14 (including in San Diego and other areas)
- House burned: 18 189 houses
- Burned area: 233 km2
- Total budget lost: $12.5 billion
This fire will be remembered by many people for ages. Thank you for reading the post!