The Los Angeles wildfires are self-inflicted
I don’t ordinarily write about events “in the moment” but for this I will make an exception, as I was personally affected. Caveats aside, my family and I are safe, we evacuated for several days, and due to heroic efforts by professional firefighters and psychotically brave neighbors, my house and most of my neighborhood escaped destruction. We were the lucky ones – by far. In 2019, as my wife and I were house hunting, we inspected multiple homes in the Pasadena area. Every house we looked at in Altadena burned to the ground last week.
I watched the Eaton fire burn across the face of the San Gabriel mountains from the window of a hotel we found, roaring upwind even against hurricane force winds until, by a twist of fate, around 1 am the winds died down and the fire fizzled out just outside the back doors of my neighbors across the road.
A fire requires three things to burn – fuel, heat, and oxygen. Various firefighting strategies attempt to address one side of the triangle. Water takes away heat, smothering takes away oxygen, and turning off the gas main or clearing brush takes away fuel.
