Why did LA's wildfires explode out of control?

Acombustible combination of factors laid the groundwork for disaster as the city struggled with catastrophic blazes

- Gabrielle Canon and Lois Beckett

Dr Edith de Guzman watched the flames of the Palisades fire rolling through the Santa Monica mountains out of the windows of her University of California, Los Angeles, classroom earlier this month.

First, on Tuesday 7 January, flames surged toward the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood, the affluent community overlooking the ocean from the canyons in west LA. Then overnight, they tore through parts of Altadena, a diverse town in the city's east that had served as a refuge for Black Angelenos.

By Wednesday evening, fires were burning in the Hollywood Hills and the San Fernando valley. Twenty-five people would lose their lives. Thousands had lost their homes. LA, and much of the US, was asking how wild fires could rage out of control in one of the world's richest cities - a city with a long history of dealing with fire. What could have, what should have, been done? And who was to blame? "There is an element of human hubris in this to think we can have full control," de Guzman, who works in adaptation policy and has closely studied the impacts of the climate crisis on communities, said. "Nobody would blame officials for not stopping a hurricane-when a hurricane comes, it comes." What hit LA was a perfect storm a combination of extreme weather, a warming climate, human hubris and safety measures that have been delayed or disregarded for decades.

Hurricane-force winds howled across Los Angeles' hillsides, sweeping flames through dry and dead vegetation that had gone months without measurable rain. Separately, the conditions might not have been as notable. Together, they created a tragedy. Cascades of embers rained on to communities nestled in the canyons, creating firestorms that left full neighbourhoods in ruin.