Southern California is no stranger to fires. But the dreadful blazes that began yesterday are potentially transformative.
By Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic
When wildfires began ravaging Los Angeles yesterday, the story was familiar in many respects: In dry and windy weather, a small blaze can spread so fast and so far that no one can do anything to stop it, especially in terrain dense with brush and hard for firefighters to reach.
Pacific Palisades, where the first fire began, is such a neighborhood; its roughly 24 square miles are beside rugged wilderness. The roads are winding. Homes are built on parts of a mountain range and in six major canyons. A fire-hazard map proposed by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in 2022 described the area as "very high" risk-the highest possible categorization. And it has burned before, most significantly in November 1961, during a historic blaze.
