Tragedy struck on January 7th in California, as a huge wildfire broke out leaving a ton of people without homes across the entire state. At first, no one thought that it was going to be an issue. The people in California are used to and prone to wildfires but this time the wildfire was nothing like before.
As the news about the fires broke out, the fires lasted and continued to grow for days forcing the LA residents to evacuate. This evacuation was not all due to the outbreak of the wildfires but climate change as well as the rising temperatures and the prolonged droughts that have made the region more susceptible to fires.
The source “World Weather Attribution” says, “Climate change worsened the January Los Angeles wildfires by reducing the amount of rainfall and drying out the Vegetation, killing 29 people, burning over 50,000 acres, and destroying over 16,000 structures”. A fire is more likely to start between October and December, when the peak Santa Ana wind season begins, due to the roughly 23 more days of fire-prone weather brought on by human-caused climate change. A 12th grader named Ayesha who goes to BASE says “LA has always been at risk for wildfires- I think, or at the very least for the past few years, and the risks of said fires has only increased since then. Water is already scarce since LA is in a desert and because of that everything around there is low moisture. I also think that climate change may have also been increasing the wildfire risk LA was already facing.” Due to its semi-arid climate, the need for imported water, and the effects of climate change, such as decreasing precipitation and more intense droughts, the region of Los Angeles is experiencing a shortage of water.
I interviewed my English teacher at BASE High School to see if he had the same perspective as me on this topic and when I asked him why he thought Los Angeles was so prone to wildfires he said, “I think climate change is the results in one than one factor coming together and causing catastrophic events so the fires were made.” This was his response to what he thinks are the causes of the wildfires and his point agrees with our claim that climate change is the reason for these wildfires. He had added that wildfires would destroy Los Angeles if people in the city did nothing. In a few years, “If we can build in a way that will take the climate threat more seriously with fire core doors LA might be able to rebuild if we refuse to be realistic about the threat and how humans are creating climate disruption I fear LA will look similar to how it looked after the fires.”