LA fires ‘like being in a blast furnace’, says journalist and author

We were joined from Orange County, just south of Los Angeles, by John Vaillant. He is a journalist and winner of the Baillie Gifford prize for non-fiction for his book Fire Weather, an account of the 2016 inferno that engulfed the oil town of Fort McMurray in Canada, and an examination of our future in a more flammable world.

Matt Frei: I’m sure you heard the accounts just now, these very personal and searing accounts, of absolute shock when you see your own home for many years burned down by the flames. But at the same time, this stuff to a different degree happens every year, doesn’t it?

John Vaillant: What’s shocking to me and what is really painful to see and hear is the incredulity and surprise of these people, the firefighters and the survivors alike. And they describe something as if it was the first time it happened. And it’s true. It’s the first time it happened to them. But the same thing happened to thousands of people in Valparaiso, Chile, this spring. It happened to thousands of people in Lahaina, Hawaii. A couple of years ago in Paradise, California, just up the highway from Los Angeles. It happened in Fort McMurray, Alberta, in the subarctic of Canada in 2016. And damage as bad as this, fires moving as quickly as this. This is unfortunately not new. It’s just new to them.

Matt Frei: And for those of us who’ve been lucky enough not to have had this experience ever in our lives, and you have had it, describe what it’s like, the winds of these flames.

John Vaillant: It’s really like being in a blast furnace. You know, each region is different climatically, but global warming has supercharged the atmosphere and heated the landscape to the point that fire can move across it with an unprecedented ferocity and speed. And that is the indicator, you know, the marker of what I call 21st century fire. It’s the speed of the flames. And we saw that in in shocking technicolor, if you will, over the past couple of days in in Los Angeles County. But the same thing happened in Paradise, California, in Lahaina, Hawaii and Fort McMurray. You know, I could go on.

Matt Frei: The list is long and sadly it gets longer every year. Now, of course, the political blame game is inevitable. You know, many people are pointing fingers at Donald Trump, who’s about to move into the White House, saying he is a climate change denier or sceptic and worse will happen under him. And he’s pointing the finger right back at California and the governor, Gavin Newsom, saying you guys weren’t prepared for this kind of fire. Who’s right?

John Vaillant: The cynicism of weaponising and politicising a global problem is, you know, frankly, criminal. Enormous harm is going to be done by this, enormous damage. It will divide the country even further. And it’s also, frankly, he’s not the president yet, but it is unpresidential to speak in this way when a state, the fifth largest economy in the world, namely California, is in crisis. People have been killed. And it’s a nation-dividing rhetoric. And there’s there’s no benefit to it. And even the parties, even the winning parties, you know, will not benefit from it in the end.

Matt Frei: We’re looking at pictures now of Los Angeles in a terrible state. I mean, is there anything that the the state authorities in California could have done, should have done, that they didn’t do to prevent this?

John Vaillant: All of us are living in a kind of, a certain amount of, psychological fantasy, and that is the status quo of our normal lives. And despite the fact that California is a famously flammable state, the residents of Los Angeles County, who live in steep, flammable hillsides, imagined that they might somehow magically be impervious to this. It’s a fire-prone landscape. The LAPD is massive and experienced. The water system and the hydrant system are actually excellent. But when you’re driving that much water uphill with pumps, that’s when you start to lose pressure. That happened in Fort McMurray, too. That’s another wealthy city with good infrastructure. You cannot blame it just on the infrastructure.

Matt Frei: But finally, John, is your message to our viewers, and to people who read your books, that actually this is the new normal? This should not be seen as a kind of searing exception. This is the new normal.

John Vaillant: As long as governments and the financiers and banks who enable them stay loyal to the petroleum industry, this is going to be repeating itself over and over again in more and more extreme forms. And the message here is an international one, and that is to decarbonise. And that can be a peaceful mission and it can be a uniting mission. And that’s the message from nature to all of us.

Matt Frei: Let’s see if it’s received by the people who matter.