Its location in a basin and on scrubby hills in desiccated Southern California makes its existence and expansion over the years all the more extraordinary. With its harsh, desert-like environment, and an often hot and always dry climate, the ongoing availability of water is the city’s No. 1 concern.
For all its swaying palms, Mediterranean-inspired buildings, sandy beaches, wealth and Hollywood stardom, flashing white teeth and bodies beautiful, it is also a city of great inequality, with thousands living in slums and more than 40,000 homeless at a recent count.
The postcard image of Los Angeles is a chimera, a desert mirage. Environmentally it is a city living on the edge.
The dehydration has caught up with the city. Fanned by fierce Santa Ana winds blasting towards the Californian coast from the interior — think of the strongest, driest Canterbury nor’wester you can imagine — fires broke out across the metropolitan area about a week ago.
With relative humidities which dropped to less than 1%, ignition of vegetation, which had grown up quickly during wetter years in 2022 and 2023 and then withered in last year’s drought, was explosive.
So far there are no indications that foul play is behind any of the conflagrations.
Sparks from power lines and lightning have also been ruled out.
The Hollywood-esque scale of the multiple fires is breathtaking. The largest of them, the Palisades fire along the Pacific coast near Malibu, was the first to ignite and is vast, having burnt through nearly 10,000ha by yesterday morning. It’s difficult to make a direct comparison, but that’s approximately an area from the Octagon west to beyond Green Island.
Despite huge efforts from firefighters on the ground and brave pilots skilfully manoeuvring aircraft full of seawater or fire retardants in treacherous flying conditions, this fire has continued to grow and spread east, and only a small proportion of it is contained.
As the death toll from the fires continues to rise, the extent of the damage is becoming clearer. In the Palisades fire alone, the devastation has been horrendous, with more than 5000 buildings, including homes, razed to the ground.
The fear now is that the reprieve from the gusty dry Santa Ana in recent days may not last long enough to enable fire crews to get on top of all the flames. Yesterday, more than 100,000 people remained under evacuation orders.
While the courageous firefighters carry on putting their lives on the line for the residents of LA, the politicians are safe and up to their usual shenanigans.
Questions as to how the fires started, how well the city was prepared for a disaster on this scale, and why hoses ran dry in some places have already been asked and need answering. It appears there has been a breakdown in communication between mayor Karen Bass and local fire chiefs, and there have also been budget cuts to fire departments.
California Governor Gavin Newsom wants an investigation into the loss of water pressure in some hydrants and why a local reservoir was empty when the fires began.
Neither could United States president-elect Donald Trump resist piping up.
Never a great fan of liberal California at any time, he couldn’t ignore the chance to take a swipe at the leaders, calling them incompetent for refusing to sign a water restoration declaration which BBC truth verifiers have found does not exist.
Wildfires have always been a significant risk for this part of Southern California, but the scale of the current infernos may have come as a surprise to a state more prepared for a major earthquake on the nearby San Andreas Fault.
With climate change supercharging environmental disasters, let us hope the people of Los Angeles catch more than just a break in the weather soon.
