Wake up and smell the fires

We live in a 'magic bubble' of denial but the LA infernos and Covid before it demonstrate why we must be better prepared

- CHRIS BLACKHURST

If we build on flood plains, properties will flood. If we build in earthquake zones, there will be destruction. If we cover the hillsides that are home to scrub and prone to drought and exposed to fierce winds, there will be fires.

Which bit of this do we not understand? And guess what, I've not even mentioned climate change.

California was the wildfire state of the US long before the planet started getting warmer. The rising temperatures have fuelled the chances of more conflagrations, but the conditions for the horror unfolding in Los Angeles were present already.

John Vaillant, author of the bestselling and quite unputdownable Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, likes to say we think we live in a "magic bubble" of denial. His terrifying account of the burning of Fort McMurray in 2016 ought to have served as a wake-up call. Here we are, nine years later and LA is ablaze.

As Vaillant wrote about a huge fire in Vancouver in August last year: "While researching Fire Weather, I interviewed a lot of people who've seen their towns and cities burn. There are common themes: no one thinks it's going to happen to them, and no one can believe how fast it happens once it does."