Yes this will happen. No they can’t be fought off.
This almost happened in the 2003 Cedar Fire, which was the CA WOAT until the 2018 Camp File. The Cedar fire was started by a hunter shooting flares out in the east county wilderness, and burned to the I-805/CA-52 freeway interchange in San Diego city, which is well within the urban core.
There have been smaller cities that have burned, but there are reasons forest fires are common that don’t apply to cities. Aside from the obvious (trees), a big one is hills/mountains. Pretty much all the residential semi-urban areas that have burned in CA in my life (Laguna, Oakland) have been in very hilly areas. Certainly some communities, like Santa Clarita, are at a big risk, but the big flat urban/suburban areas are much safer.
San Diego (not like the city center) is definitely a risky fire area - lots of rolling hills.
And of course in LA there are lots of hills too - it’s mostly a basin and valleys, but hills like in Hollywood and Topanga and PV are all over the place.
So, to clarify, it’s not like fires can’t hit metropolitan areas. The Oakland fire in 1991 burned almost 3000 homes. But, that was not like burning down the city.
Cities don’t burn because people rake the leaves.
This was primarily in the very steep hills east of Oakland and Berkeley.
Yep. I lived about a mile away when it happened and later lived in a house in the Claremont canyon right across the street from a burned area. (Just behind the Claremont hotel)
Yeah, the iconic pix of that fire is the hills ablaze framed high above the Claremont. Reggie Jackson lost his car collection too.
The flat land cities can burn too. I know you are a reader. Have you read Ecology of Fear?
Nope.
Here are a few photos of examples of this. These are both shooting toward fires that started in Acton, CA. The hill burning is probably about 2 miles from where I lived but there would have been almost no chance of the fire getting to where we were due to topography and how the area was constructed. The 2009 fire was horrific (drove through it every day to get to work) and at the time it was thought it was going to destroy a small town in the area due to its ferocity. It started the march down the hill toward the town, and then all of a sudden blew itself out. If you ever drove the ‘back way’ from LA to Vegas, you’ve driven through the affected area.
2004:
2009:
Here’s one taken a few days later than the first:
The foreground plume is right above a fire area. It was probably about 7 miles or so from us.
Why are hills riskier? Because sparks from above can travel farther if they’re moving downhill, so it can “jump” farther? Or does it have to do with wind patterns?
Fires burn uphill faster. It’s also usually windier. Also fewer fire breaks. Also harder to fight the fire.
If you want to feel sad, take a minute and think about what this must have been like.
1-year-old from Renton killed, parents burned while fleeing Cold Springs fire in Washington state
A 1-year-old boy died and his parents were severely burned while fleeing the Cold Springs fire in Okanogan County.
The family’s abandoned and wrecked car was found Tuesday afternoon and had been burnt, according to the Okanogan County Sheriff’s Office. On Wednesday morning, search-and-rescue crews found the family along the riverbank of the Columbia River; the man, 31, and woman, 26, had third-degree burns and their son was dead. The family is from Renton, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Well I’m sad now.
Shiiiiiit, it was 350 here two days ago
Fortunately, the N95 masks we’ve hoarded to protect us from the deadly global pandemic come in very handy if we need to venture outside into the unhealthy air. Yet another thing for which to be grateful!
BBC has some crazy photos of the devastation today.
Seems like some of this went through typical suburban-looking areas. A widespread fire in a suburb of a major city seems like a nightmare scenario we need to be prepared to fight against.
