Environmental impacts of the LA fires

Environmental Compliance News

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Three fires

There were three main fires that contributed to this disaster:

Palisades: The fire in this Los Angeles neighborhood, located east of Malibu, began January 7 as a brush fire.
Eaton: Just hours after the Palisades fire began, this blaze began near a canyon just north of downtown Los Angeles.
Hughes: On the morning of January 8, this fire began in the northern area of Los Angeles County near Castaic Lake.

“AccuWeather, which also measures the costs of weather events, now estimates total losses at between $250 billion and $275 billion, almost double what it estimated last week,” notes media company Deutsche Welle.

The fires, characterized as a worst-case scenario, are predicted to have devastating impacts on the environment, both in the long and the short term.

Urban fires cause more damage to the environment than fires in the wilderness because of the toxins created by the burning of all sorts of toxic materials, which release volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into both air and water.

Air damage

“A 2023 study of smoke from fires in the wildland-urban interface – areas where urban neighborhoods bleed into the wildlands – found it contained a vast array of chemicals harmful to humans. They include hydrogen chloride, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, dioxins and a range of toxic organic compounds, including known carcinogens such as benzene, as well as toluene, xylenes, styrene and formaldehyde. The researchers also found metals in the smoke, including lead, chromium, cadmium and arsenic, which are known to affect several body systems, such as the brain, liver, kidney, skin and lungs,” according to Colorado State University. “The short-term effects of exposure to smoke like this can trigger asthma attacks and cause lung and cardiac problems.”

Ashes stirred up from fires can also release VOCs into the air. People in these areas are advised to wear N95 masks and gloves to avoid potential exposure.

Damage to water

Approximately eight water districts in Los Angeles County issued advisories telling residents not to use the water for any purpose.

“If a water system loses water pressure, that allows contaminants such as bacteria and vaporized VOCs and other toxic chemicals to get inside,” says Dr. Gina Solomon, chief of the Division of Occupational, Environmental, and Climate Medicine at UC San Francisco, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“‘Normally our water systems have positive pressure — they’re full of water, so nothing can get in the pipes,’ she said. But if the pipes lose pressure, such as water hydrants running dry, ‘It can create situations where you get suction instead of pressure, and in this case, it’s not a backflow of [contaminated] water but air full of toxic chemicals, including VOCs.’”

After the 2018 Camp fire in Paradise, California, researchers found “95 contaminants in water systems that came not just from melted pipes but also from ‘the intrusion of smoke,’” the Los Angeles Times continues.

As a result of the study, the California Health and Safety Code Section 116596 was passed into law, which requires water districts to test water and find it free of contaminants after structures are burned in wildfires of 300 acres or more before residents can freely use the water.

“So basically we are guilty until proven innocent, based on this law. … And I’m not saying that’s wrong. Some of us may be guilty, but I just want people to understand that putting out a [water advisory] notice doesn’t mean you have a problem. We’re just following the law,” Tom Majich, general manager of the Kinneloa Irrigation District, the smallest of the five water districts with water advisories in the Altadena area, says in the Los Angeles Times.

Although boiling water can eliminate bacteria, it does nothing to remove VOCs. In fact, boiling water containing VOCs releases benzenes and other harmful chemicals into the air.

When a water system issues a “do-not-use” or a “do-not-drink” advisory, that water shouldn’t be used for anything, including bathing or water for pets.

“Once a water system gets the all-clear, people should feel confident about the quality of their drinking water,” Solomon notes. “I know a lot of people will be fearful, and may not trust the results, but I have great faith in the actual testing data. … Once they’ve done the testing, and the area is negative [for contaminants], it means people can breathe a sigh of relief that they’re not in an area impacted by water hazard.”

While damage to public drinking water after a fire is generally a short-term problem, damage to groundwater and the environment can have longer consequences.

“Debris from the scorched homes near Malibu's Big Rock will end up in the ocean as well -- by wind and sea -- due to the proximity to the coastline,” said Costas Synolakis, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Southern California, according to ABC News. “Elsewhere, toxic byproducts created by the fire will seep into the earth and eventually get carried into the watershed by rain.”

Newsom’s actions

California Governor Gavin Newsom is entering his seventh year in office. Having previously served as lieutenant governor of the state and the former mayor of San Francisco, he’s familiar with the challenges his constituents face due to wildfires and has moved quickly to support emergency services and provide help to victims.

Newsom’s strategic actions to date include:

Ordering pre-positioned firefighting personnel and assets on January 6 ahead of the severe fire weather that started on January 7 and again on January 12 in anticipation of a second round of severe fire weather;
Deploying 16,000+ personnel, including firefighters, California National Guard servicemembers, highway patrol officers, and transportation teams;
Activating more than 2,500 California National Guard servicemembers to augment firefighting operations;
Proclaiming a state of emergency to support communities responding to the fires and subsequently issuing two Executive Orders to support response and recovery efforts;
Requesting and receiving a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration to support ongoing response efforts;
Requesting from former President Joe Biden additional federal assistance to cover 100% of California’s fire management and debris-removal costs for 180 days—up from the traditional 75%;
Securing three Fire Management Assistance Grants (FMAGs) to help ensure the availability of vital resources to assist firefighting efforts on the Palisades, Eaton, and Hughes fires;
Issuing an Executive Order (EO N-4-25) to streamline the rebuilding of homes and businesses that were destroyed, suspending permitting and review requirements under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and the California Coastal Act;
Fast-tracking temporary housing and protecting tenants and homeowners by issuing an Executive Order to make it easier to streamline the construction of accessory dwelling units, allow for more temporary trailers and other housing, and suspend fees for mobile home parks;
Mobilizing debris removal and cleanup by using federal hazmat teams to begin cleaning up properties and hastening efforts to remove debris, bolster flood defenses, and stabilize hillsides in affected areas; and
Directing immediate state relief by proposing that California provide at least $2.5 billion in additional funding for ongoing emergency response efforts and to jump-start recovery efforts for Los Angeles.

Rebuilding

For those interested in rebuilding, it’s important to note that the process will take years due to the massive amounts of toxic materials to be removed and the topography of the region in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains.

“In places like the Pacific Palisades, one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods … the terrain will make it challenging for cleanup crews to operate,” says Deborah Sivas, a professor at Stanford Law School who specializes in environmental law, according to ABC News. "It’s not like a big, flat city block and [crews can] go bulldoze the whole thing."

Although Newsom issued EO N-4-25, which suspends permitting requirements under the CEQA and the California Coastal Act to facilitate the faster rebuilding of businesses and homes, these permitting suspensions only apply “to properties and facilities that are in substantially the same location as, and do not exceed 110% of the footprint and height of, properties and facilities that were legally established and existed immediately before this emergency.”

“Although EO N-4-25 purports to provide a full waiver of CEQA and the Coastal Act for eligible projects, it is unclear how significantly this order will, in fact, impact rebuilding,” advises Paul Hastings LLP in a Lexology article. “The waiver essentially mirrors an existing provision of the Coastal Act, which provides a permitting exemption for properties rebuilding after disasters provided the new buildings are sited in the same location and not more than 10% larger or taller than the destroyed structures. And CEQA, which requires public agencies to consider and mitigate the environmental impacts of proposed projects, already provides exemptions for single-family residences as well as the replacement or reconstruction of existing structures located on the same site and with ‘substantially the same’ purpose and capacity as the prior structure.”

It's important to note that projects must still comply with local zoning, building, and permitting codes.

Insurance

One important cornerstone in rebuilding all the areas damaged by the fires in Los Angeles County is receiving funds for covered losses.

Due to the many wildfires in the area, some insurers have stopped writing new policies in the Golden State.

“Some companies, such as Allstate and State Farm, recently stopped selling new home insurance in California. They blamed regulatory caps on home insurance price rises in the state, which they say make it increasingly difficult to operate in a region that has been hit by many severe wildfires in recent years,” Deutsche Welle says. “That has left many homeowners without private insurance and reliant on California's public insurance system, known as Fair Plan. Fair Plan is estimated to have exposure of around $6 billion in the exclusive Pacific Palisades area alone, one of the areas worst affected by the fires.

“High losses for Fair Plan could force private insurers to step in, as the public plan has provisions for private insurers to pay for the claims it can't meet.”

Analysts have suggested that the entire insurance market in California be redesigned to account for the rising number of wildfires in the state.

One of the most expensive housing markets in the nation, Los Angeles County’s median home value is approximately $1 million as of December 2024, according to Realtor.com. And, the average sales price of homes in Pacific Palisades, one of the hardest-hit areas, is $4.2 million.

Urban planning

Fire is nature’s answer to clearing dead brush and other unwanted vegetation. Areas with large dry brush are naturally designed as tinder, so building residences in these areas using traditional wood-framed homes is a recipe for disaster. Learning these lessons is imperative for success when rebuilding in Los Angeles County.

“Azeen Khanmalek, executive director of the nonprofit Abundant Housing LA, which advocates for affordable housing, said jurisdictions throughout the county need to reevaluate low-density zoning restrictions that forced people to move farther into wildland areas where fire risk is higher,” reports USA Today. “Around 72% of residential land in Los Angeles is reserved for single-family homes, according to a 2022 study by the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.”

Building back the same way will risk similar future disasters.

“If we're to minimize both financial costs and human costs and save human lives in the future, we have to be willing to spend a little bit more money now in order to build in a more safe and resilient manner,” Khanmalek continues. “We can't go back to businesses as usual.”

Khanmalek and others favor government incentives like tax credits for building with fire-resistant or fireproof materials.

Experts recommend rebuilding using Chapter 7A of the California Building Code, which focuses on best practices for construction in areas prone to wildfires.

“This includes stopping the use of wood for construction and using a noncombustible material instead; ensuring there are no holes are crevices were embers can accumulate; making sure windows have at least a double pane with glass that is tempered to fire, so that it doesn’t shatter; and constructing roofs out of noncombustible materials,” says Michele Barbato, a civil and environmental engineering professor at UC Davis who has researched sustainable structural solutions, according to ABC News.

Wildfire Prepared provides tips for building in wildfire-prone areas that include:

Creating a 5-foot buffer around the home where there’s no vegetation
Using noncombustible fencing
Installing ember-resistant vents
Using fire-retardant roofs
Building the first 6 inches of exterior walls with noncombustible materials, like brick

“Urban planning will be important going forward because a lot of the communities and where they were situated ‘weren't safe to begin with’ when taking fire safety into consideration,” says Scott Stephens, professor of fire science at the University of California, Berkeley, according to ABC News.

“While the desire to rebuild may be fervent, the logistics surrounding the placement of homes, what they're constructed of and the reality of living on potentially uninsurable land could hamper efforts," the experts said.

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