THE GREAT LOS ANGELES 🔥
unstoppable by choicechoic
(By Shariqa maryam kubravi)
Emptiness is painful. Attachment to place is something we all feel. It is not about owning the land. It is about loving it, paying close attention, knowing who lives there. Local landscapes mean most to us, wildlife on our doorsteps imbued with personal affection, intertwining our own life with the natural world, which is where it belongs.’ Keggie Carew, Beastly
LOS ANGELES County is a biodiversity hotspot that harbors over 4,000 species of plants and animals. The most populous county in the nation, L.A. County offers a unique environment where more than 10 million people coexist with wildlif

From October 11th, world leaders will gather online for part one of the UN Convention on Biodiversity, COP-15, in Kunming. This is a critical moment to raise the level of ambition and commitments for nature. What is needed is a global rescue plan: a bold roadmap for protecting biodiversity, with new goals for the next decade that all countries support and finance. Those goals must transform not only our environment, but also our societies and economies, for COP-15 to be the breakthrough our earth needs to sustain us.The area of California is also dominated by naturally very fire-prone shrub vegetation.”While fires are common and natural in this region, California has seen some of the most significant increases in the length and extremity of the fire weather season globally in recent decades, driven largely climate change,
In California, the situation has been made worse by the topography with fires burning more intensely and moving more rapidly in steep terrain. Southern California experienced a significant drought from 2012 to 2016, which was exacerbated by warming due to climate change. Defined by unprecedented high temperatures and low annual precipitation, it was the driest four-year span in the last 1,200 years. As a result, overall vegetation health and cover has most likely been affected (e.g. decline in greenness, high vegetation mortality in chaparral-dominated communities). Changes in vegetation health and cover create favorable conditions for wildfires and landslides.
With 1 million animal and plant species globally facing extinction due to human activity, efforts to better understand the factors that shape biodiversity in Los Angeles could help shape global conservation efforts
Out-of-control wildfires are ripping across parts of Los Angeles, leading to at least 10 deaths, burning down hundreds of buildings, and prompting evacuation orders for nearly 180,000 residents across the county.
Despite the efforts of firefighters, the biggest blazes remain totally uncontained – with weather conditions and the underlying impact of climate change expected to continue fanning the flames for days to come.
Los Angeles County, some 180,000 residents are under evacuation orders – many of them leaving their homes simply carrying whatever belongings they can. Another 200,000 residents are under evacuation warning, meaning they could be required to leave their homes soon.Authorities say at least 10 people have died and their remains are still being identified.
Earlier on Thursday, officials confirmed the first two deaths from the Pacific Palisades fire, although they said the death toll from the Eaton fire was three, not five, as they had stated a day earlier.Looting and theft has risen in some evacuated Neighbourhoods,
Suspicious Factors!
A new blaze, the Kenneth fire, erupted on Thursday in the West Hills area of the city. Police quickly detained a man on suspicion of arson in relation to that fire.
Out-of-control wildfires are ripping across parts of Los Angeles, leading to at least 10 deaths, burning down hundreds of buildings, and prompting evacuation orders for nearly 180,000 residents across the county.
Despite the efforts of firefighters, the biggest blazes remain totally uncontained – with weather conditions and the underlying impact of climate change expected to continue fanning the flames for days to come.
Some 5,300 structures have been destroyed in the Pacific Palisades fire, which is the most destructive in the history of Los Angeles, and another 5,000 structures have been razed in the Eaton fire just outside the city.
Among celebrities who have lost their homes are Leighton Meester and Adam Brody, who attended the Golden Globes just days ago, and Paris Hilton.
The insurance industry fears this could prove to be one of the costliest wildfire outbreaks in US history, with insured losses expected above $8bn (ÂŁ6.5bn) due to the high value of properties in the paths of the blazes.
A growing number of wildfires spread rapidly across Los Angeles, fueled by powerful Santa Ana winds, low humidity and dry vegetation due to a lack of rain.
At least five fires were active in Los Angeles County including the Palisades Fire, which grew from 10 acres to more than 17,000 acres in just three days and the Eaton Fire, which has swelled to more than 10,600 acres east in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, .The causes of the largest fires are still under investigation, according to Cal Fire. The environment was primed for ignition. The National Weather Service office in Los Angeles warned that low humidity and widespread, damaging winds up to 100 mph in some areas would fuel massive blazes “with extreme fire behavior.”
The vegetation is very dry already and then on top of this, with strong winds like Santa Ana winds that are very dry and gusty, the fire risk was really very high,” said Luca Carmignani, an assistant professor at San Diego State University and former fire advisor for the Wildland Urban Interface in Southern California. “So it’s not surprising that once the fire started it spread that quickly.”
Natural factors contributing to LOS ANGELES FUELLING!


1.Santa Ana winds fuel fires
One of the nation’s most notorious wind events has helped fuel the destructive wildfires.The Santa Ana winds, which occur most often in the fall and winter, push dry air from over the inland deserts of California and the Southwest toward the coast, the National Weather Service said. As high-pressure systems move east to west over the Santa Ana Mountain range, wind is forced down where it’s compressed and warms up.
An area of high pressure over the Great Basin, the high plateau east of the Sierra Nevada, combined with a storm in northwestern Mexico to create the conditions for strong winds over Southern California starting on Tuesday!The Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains also have canyons and valley, which may act as funnels for the Santa Ana winds and further accelerate the spread of wildfires in these mountainous areas.
2.Lack of rain, low humidity create dry conditions
The rapid spread of the fires were likely also aided by the extremely dry season that preceded them..
Over 83% of Los Angeles County was in a drought, according to the most recent U.S. Drought Monitor. Los Angeles has not received a quarter of an inch of rain since April, Several wet winters allowed vegetation to flourish, which the current drought turned into an abundance of dry fuel, Extremely low humidity also helps dry out vegetation, making it a better fuel for fires.
3.Climate change has made the grasses and shrubs that are fuelling the Los Angeles fires more vulnerable to burning,
4.Rapid swings between dry and wet conditions in the region in recent years have created a massive amount of tinder-dry vegetation that is ready to ignite.
Decades of drought in California were followed by extremely heavy rainfall for two years in 2022 and 2023, but that then flipped again to very dry conditions in the autumn and winter of 2024.
Scientists say in a new study that climate change has boosted what they call these “whiplash” conditions globally by 31-66% since the middle of the 20th Century.
The wildfires have spread across parts of the Los Angeles area, leading to at least five deaths, burning down hundreds of buildings, and prompting evacuation orders for more than 180,000 people.
First, by greatly increasing the growth of flammable grass and brush in the months leading up to fire season, and then by drying it out to exceptionally high levels with the extreme dryness and warmth that followed.”
The researchers say that with every degree of warming the atmosphere is able to evaporate, absorb and release 7% more water.
This “expanding atmospheric sponge” as the scientists term it, not only leads to flooding when things are wetter, but it pulls extra moisture out of the plants and soils when the drier conditions set in.Researchers believe that a warming world is increasing the conditions that are conducive to wildland fire, including low relative humidity.
These “fire weather” days are increasing in many parts of the world, with climate change making these conditions more severe and the fire season lasting longer in many parts of the world, scientists have shown.
.As part of this compact, the UN has urged countries to commit to protecting at least 30 percent of their land and sea territories by 2030.The costs produced by our broken relationship with nature are rising every day.
The ongoing destruction of the planet’s biodiversity also quickens climate change and makes us even more vulnerable to it. This is because the ecosystems – such as forests – providing habitats to other species also absorb our greenhouse gases. Climate change in turn, also harms biodiversity, making these two challenges two sides of the same coin.
To make matters worse, damage to our ecosystems also threatens human health, by diminishing our sources of food, medicine, water and even oxygen. By encroaching into wild habitats and exploiting the creatures within them, we also risk new diseases jumping from animals to humans, as COVID-19 did.Humankind can therefore only survive, let alone prosper, if our world remains biodiverse.
Our earth can only continue to sustain us if we protect its biodiversity: the individual, yet interconnected chain of plant and animal species that hold our world together. Every life form, however tiny, is essential to the whole. As Sir David Attenborough put it: “Every breath of air we take, every mouthful of food that we take, comes from the natural world. And if we damage the natural world, we damage ourselves.”
It’s true that man has suffered in his separation from the soil and from the other living creatures of the world; the evolution of his intellect has outrun his needs as an animal, and as yet he must still, for security, look long at some portion of the earth as it was before he tampered with it.’….
(Author is working as Env lect.
&can be mailed to:shariqamaryam@gmail.com)