Can the LA wildfires happen in Western WA? The answer is complicated and sobering
Roaring flames, wind-whipped embers and the smoking remains of homes have filled newscasts, websites and social media over the last two weeks. The fires that have destroyed 12,000 structures and killed at least 25 people in the Los Angeles area are on a scale that hasn’t happened in Western Washington.
Given the right circumstances, they could happen here, and our summers of increasing drought and high temperatures are upping the likelihood, say those who study wildfire behavior and ecology.
All it takes is a match and bad timing.
Pierce County has seen several major wildfires blow into densely housed population areas in the last several years. As the climate brings hotter and drier summers to the area, should residents — even in seemingly safe urban areas — prepare for firestorms?
Wind
The wildfires that leapt into housing developments both in L.A. and in Western Washington have one thing in common: wind. Dry conditions were also a common factor.
In California, winds sweep westward out of Nevada’s Great Basin and California’s deserts before descending into the L.A. basin. The Santa Ana winds are dry and hot and perfect for fanning fires.
In Washington, the same phenomenon can occur with winds flowing from the drier eastern part of the state to the western side, said Brian Harvey, an associate professor at the University of Washington’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences. It was those conditions that fed destructive fires in Pierce County in early September 2020.
“Towards the end of the summer, there is a period of time where, if those winds kick up here, there are certainly some similarities (with California fires) in the context to the kinds of fires that we can see on the west side of the Cascades,” he said.
Fanning the flames
There’s probably not going to be an L.A.-sized firestorm taking out a Western Washington city anytime soon. But, if it’s your home that burns in a smaller fire, the heartache and loss will be the same.
“We are seeing more wildfires on the western side of the state in recent years,” said Thomas Kyle-Milward, a spokesperson for the state Department of Natural Resources. Two years ago, the number of west side fires exceeded those on the east side for the first time, he said. The reason: more people.
In nature, fires usually only start via lightning. People, on the other hand, build power lines that fail, toss cigarettes from cars and let campfires get out of control.
The physical properties of fire are well understood and predictable, said Maureen Kennedy, an associate professor at UW Tacoma who studies fire ecology and forest management. Add in factors found in a landscape — fuels, topography, meteorology plus ignitions — and fire forecasting becomes nearly impossible.
“You put all that together, it is infinitely more complicated and difficult to predict,” she said.
Defensible space
Washington’s DNR, like so many other agencies, offers tips on home preparation in defense of wildfires.
“Studies show that as many as 80 percent of homes lost to wildland fire may have been saved if brush around the homes were cleared and defensible space created around structures,” DNR says on its website.
That would come as little comfort to the residents of Altadena, California, who had streets, sidewalks, lawns and other cleared spaces around their homes but saw entire blocks wiped out.
“Once the fire gets into the residential area, particularly high-density residential areas where homes are relatively close to each other ... the fire then does spread from structure to structure,” Kennedy said.
“The homes and structures, if they’re built out of flammable materials, can serve as fuel just as easily for the fire as trees and shrubs around here,” Harvey said.
Embers can travel from a wind-driven fire and land on homes. Residents evacuating from a fire behind them might find another in front of them.
Harvey cited a 2017 fire on the Oregon side of the Columbia River that sent embers across the Columbia River where they started conflagrations on that side.
“That’s a pretty big unburnable fire barrier, right?” he said. “Defensible space is more than just if you’re living deep in the woods.”
Defensible space might not keep embers off your home, but it can allow firefighters a safe area between your house and massive flames.
Whether in the country or in the city, Kyle-Milward said, homeowners can take measures to reduce the risks from wind-driven embers. Those include keeping gutters free of organic material and not piling wood or other flammable material against a house. And, he said, talk to your neighbors.
“There’s strength in numbers,” he said. If all the neighbors on a block follow good fire hygiene, the chances of their homes surviving as a group increases.
Fuels
In wildfire parlance, “fuel” refers to material that feeds fire. Forests have more than chaparral. Chaparral has more than grasslands. But it’s still difficult to label one more dangerous than the other. There are just too many circumstances unique to each situation.
In Western Washington, thick forests are less likely to burn than brush because they are wetter and more removed from human interaction, Harvey said.
Brush and grass, in addition to being more flammable, also have a history of burning at regular intervals before the arrival of Europeans, Kennedy and Harvey said. Native populations would burn prairie land, and the vegetation, in turn, adapted.
Now, landscapes bear the effects of decades of fire suppression, providing them with an abundance of fuel.
“The kinds of fire that you get out of those vegetation types do tend to be really hot and fast moving, and in that sense, it can be a little bit more difficult,” Kennedy said. “If you’re living in an area that’s next to that kind of vegetation, when a fire starts under high winds, that fire is going to move really fast and in sometimes unpredictable ways.”
What is to blame?
If conditions are right, even the best-prepared homes and landscapes can go up in flames. Numerous homes worth tens of millions of dollars each burned in the L.A. fires. The owners had all the money they needed to harden their homes against fire.
“This was an inferno, and there’s just nothing you can do but get out of Mother Nature’s way in those situations,” Kyle-Milward said of the Los Angeles fires.
There’s a lot of hot air in California right now, and it’s not just coming from Santa Ana winds. Politicians and pundits are engaged in a fierce blame game over the Los Angeles fires.
Some of the arguments ignore the fact that there simply wasn’t enough fire equipment, infrastructure and water to beat back Mother Nature when she decided to rampage. Water systems are designed to provide residences and the odd structure fire with water. Not fight entire blocks of homes on fire.
When a house catches fire in Tacoma, the Fire Department typically sends four engines, two ladder trucks, a medic unit and two battalion chiefs, according to department spokesperson Chelsea Shepherd. The trucks themselves carry 500 gallons of water, and fire hydrants provide the rest.
Based on Tacoma’s response, Los Angeles would have needed up to 50,000 fire engines during the first two days of the fires. Windy conditions prevented aircraft from flying on the first day of the fires.
Whether its in response to earthquakes, hurricanes or volcanic eruptions, the number of personnel and equipment needed to fully cover a large city in any disaster would create an astronomically high tax burden on its citizens.
“There’s a massive amount of benefit to the things that you can do in terms of mitigating fire risk,” Harvey said. “But at some point, each of those things have their limit, and it’s really important to be able to recognize that, especially during these really fast, wind-driven fires, conditions can change really quickly, and it’s very important to get people safely out of harm’s way as soon as possible.”
Jumping the line
A fire that’s burning in brush and timber presents differing opportunities and challenges compared to urban fires.
“Humans have become very, very adept at fighting fire in urban settings at a structural level,” Kyle-Milward said. “Unfortunately, wildland fire is totally different. A lot of the tactics that you would use in a wildland setting are not applicable in a city.”
The bulldozers and backfires crews use to stop a wildfire’s advance would be unthinkable in an urban setting.
In California, it’s chaparral — low, shrubby, dense, commercially worthless and full of dead branches — that’s fueling the fires in Los Angeles.
Those same brushy plant conditions exist in Western Washington.
Brush fires
In August 2023, winds flared a human-started fire into a firestorm that overran a mobile home park in Lakewood. By the time flames were put out, nine homes had been destroyed and two men had died at Jamestown Estates.
The vacant lot where the fire began that day was filled with Scotch broom and other shrubs that might have seemed innocuous. On that day, winds were blowing at 8 miles per hour, according to an official report. Combined with dry conditions, those winds soon led to 20-foot-tall flames.
In September 2020, the Sumner Grade fire near Bonney Lake destroyed two homes, burned 500 acres and forced the evacuation of hundreds. It, too, started in brush during a period of high temperatures and windy conditions after a tree was blown onto power lines.
“All we could do was try and stop the forward advancements, but it’s difficult to do with the winds,” then East Pierce Fire & Rescue Chief Bud Backer said at the time. “We were playing fire whack-a-mole.”
The same month, five homes burned in Graham during gusting winds that fanned a brush fire.
“I’ve never seen a firestorm like this come through. It advanced too quickly,” Graham Fire & Rescue assistant chief Steve Richards said at the time.
Changing times
It’s only going to get worse.
“The hallmarks of climate change that have been researched and discussed for decades in the scientific literature are what we’re observing as reality now,” Kennedy said. Those include more periods of drought and higher temperatures.
Western Washington is seeing periods of intense precipitation followed by long dry spells. The rainfall promotes growth of fast growing shrubs and grasses which later dry out.
“Now you have a massive increase in the fuel load that is now dead and dry or has really low moisture,” Kennedy said.
Urban fire departments have seen the future and are rising to the challenge.
Tacoma Fire Department added two brush trucks to its fleet in the last several years, Shepherd said. The trucks are able to access rougher areas that regular engines can’t reach. The department has also increased its wildfire/brush fire training for firefighters.
Everyone, the experts say, should be paying attention to red flag (fire) warnings when they are issued.
“You’re not surprised that it’s going to happen somewhere, but predicting exactly where and when is really difficult,” Kennedy said. “Fire will happen in these areas. That’s not something we can prevent.”