As the death toll rises from Los Angeles' devastating wildfires, it is easy to feel complacent about New Zealand's comparatively damp, cool climate.
But wildfire experts say climate change is set to make parts of this country more flammable, and make it harder for some homes to get insurance as a result.
All wildfires involve an element of bad luck - a spark in the wrong place at just the wrong time for the wind to ignite devastation.
But climate change is loading the dice in favour of fire in some of the hottest and driest places, and researchers say New Zealand's dry regions - like the East Coast and Otago - are no exception.
One 2022 study found that as greenhouse gases build up in the atmosphere, parts of New Zealand could experience very extreme wildfire weather conditions that they do not experience today. They would match the levels seen during Australia's Black Summer bushfires in 2019 and 2020.
Wildfire and ecology researcher Dr Nicola Day, a senior lecturer at Victoria University in Wellington, said it was time to prepare for the kinds of conditions that were commonly associated with our hot, dry neighbour.
"The modelling suggests that in the next decades, we will have a climate that's sort of similar to Australia, which is kind of alarming for us because we have not really had to think about fire a lot."
The expected pattern is dry areas getting drier, and wet areas getting wetter, as average temperatures climb.
Many hot, dry areas also have a lot of flammable vegetation, Day said.
"We really need to be more prepared for wildfires in the future. If you think of Otago, it is full of those beautiful iconic tussock grasslands, and those catch fire really quickly and will help a fire travel really fast."
Day said dry pine, grass, and manuka burned particularly well - and suggested planting less flammable native species around homes and public spaces as a firebreak.
She said people should have 'go bag' packed.
Most importantly, she said people should write to their MPs and tell them to cut planet-heating emissions in order to help stop the risk from getting much worse.
Last year was the hottest on record globally, coupled with record carbon dioxide emissions.
For New Zealand, 2024 was the eighth-hottest ever.
Scion lead fire scientist Shana Gross said New Zealand was lucky that dry lightning strikes - a common fire starter in other countries - were rare here.
That meant almost all fires were started by people, which meant people could cut the risk through changing behaviour.
That included thoroughly putting out any fires they started deliberately with lots of water, and being aware of the fire conditions.
Gross said some parts of the country were set to get several more high-risk days for fire a year, while others may get one or none.
But she said adding even a single day a year of fire-friendly weather to the calendar can make all the difference, if that was the day a big fire started.
If an order came to evacuate, her advice was to not wait to find out if the order turns to have been needed.
She said evacuations were ordered based on experts tracking how a fire behaves, and conditions could change very quickly.
"The more you delay, if other people are all delaying sometimes you can't actually get out quickly. Certain evacuation routes might be a single road or a single lane, and you really don't want to delay that," she says.
Then there was the cost of the rebuild from fire.
California's insurance industry is bracing for what could be its costliest-ever fire.
Insurance and climate researcher Belinda Storey said that like some homeowners in LA, some New Zealanders will likely see insurance withdrawn as fire risk grows.
"Last year, one of their insurers pulled out of (Los Angeles') Pacific Palisades by a significant number of policies and it's very likely that a chunk of those houses have now been hit this year. There are locations in New Zealand where the fire hazard is already threatening communities and those will be the ones where insurance may become harder to get... Port Hills comes to mind."
Storey said well-intentioned efforts by the California government to provide public insurance for those left without private cover have only led to more people living in high-risk areas, and she would not like to see New Zealand copy that model.
While New Zealand's fastest-changing insurance risk is coastal floods, Storey said fires were a likely second.
The researchers said Los Angeles was unlucky to have fires catch light near both flammable forests and high populations - the kind of bad luck New Zealand will be hoping to avoid as some of our most fire-prone places get drier.
