For the past week, California wildfires have dominated global trending topics. Starting on January 7, these fires have persisted for nine days as of the airing of this program on January 15.
You may have seen numerous reports on the issue, but today, we’ll take a different perspective and focus on one key question: Why has this wildfire been so difficult to extinguish?
Let’s begin with some background. The California wildfires are not a single large blaze but a combination of over 100 individual fires. As of January 14, California had recorded 105 wildfires, with a combined affected area surpassing the entire city of San Francisco. As of yesterday, these fires had caused 24 deaths, 29 missing persons, and, according to last Sunday’s data, over $100 billion in damages, dealing a severe blow to California’s GDP.
The fires have even reached Hollywood, delaying this year’s Oscar nominations.
In an effort to extinguish the fires quickly, California has deployed all local firefighting resources, supplemented by firefighters from other states. Reportedly, 1,000 inmates have also joined the firefighting efforts.
Progress of Firefighting Efforts
Among the 105 wildfires, the largest is the Palisades Fire, covering 95.96 square kilometers, with only 14% containment. The second largest, the Eaton Fire, spans 57.13 square kilometers and is 33% contained. As of yesterday, even the largest fires had yet to achieve 50% containment.
Why Are the Fires So Hard to Extinguish?
Given advancements in modern firefighting technology, many wonder why the fires are taking so long to control. One of the key reasons is that these are forest fires. The primary method to combat such fires isn’t extinguishing them but burning controlled areas ahead of time. This involves setting smaller fires intentionally to burn away dry vegetation, so when monsoon winds arrive, there’s no fuel left for the wildfire to spread. Technically, this doesn’t extinguish the fire; it interrupts its progression.
However, once a wildfire spreads into urban areas, controlled burning becomes nearly impossible—you can’t intentionally set a city on fire. This year’s fires are precisely the kind that are difficult to contain.
Why Did This Happen?
First, California experienced abundant rainfall over the past two years, leading to lush vegetation growth. Under normal conditions, such vegetation isn’t highly flammable. However, last year brought a severe drought to California, drying out the vegetation and turning it into ideal fuel for wildfires. But fuel alone wouldn’t create fires of such magnitude. Unfortunately, California’s unique topography exacerbates the issue. The state’s mountainous terrain forms wide-to-narrow wind funnels, accelerating the seasonal monsoon winds to speeds as high as 160 km/h (100 mph).
The combination of two years of rain, last year’s drought, and this year’s strong winds dramatically increased California’s wildfire risk. Once an ignition point appeared, the fires spread rapidly. The exact cause of ignition—whether a natural wildfire or human activity—is still under investigation.
Political Implications
The wildfires have drawn attention not only for their scale but also for the political controversies they’ve sparked. At the center of the storm are Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Governor Gavin Newsom, facing criticism from the public and attacks from Donald Trump. Trump has accused the two leaders of gross incompetence, stating they lack the capability to address the crisis effectively.
Trump also claimed that California has ample water resources that could have been better utilized to combat the fires but weren’t due to the governor’s refusal to sign certain documents. Trump alleged that the governor prioritized protecting a species of fish, the Delta Smelt, over managing the fires. However, fact-checking efforts by media outlets have found no evidence supporting this claim.
According to firefighters, California’s firefighting challenges are not due to a lack of water but an infrastructure issue. The municipal water supply system was designed for building fires, not large-scale wildfires.
The Broader Issue: Predicting Disasters
This discussion also raises questions about the mechanisms behind such disasters and why they are so difficult to predict.
Extreme disaster prediction has long been challenging. A notable example of predictive failure occurred in Japan. Known for its frequent earthquakes, Japan invested heavily in earthquake prediction efforts. By the late 1970s, experts predicted an 8.0 magnitude earthquake would strike the Tokai region between Tokyo and Nagoya.
The government implemented comprehensive measures, including warning systems and earthquake drills, focusing resources on preparedness in the predicted area. However, when the Great Hanshin Earthquake struck in 1995, it hit Kobe, far from the anticipated region. The unprepared area suffered devastating losses, with the earthquake shaving 2% off Japan’s GDP that year.
Why Are Extreme Disasters Hard to Predict?
American physicist Mark Buchanan explored this topic extensively in his book Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen. He identified a formula for extreme natural disasters, including earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires:
Disaster = Complex System + Critical State + Small Trigger
While the formula seems straightforward, each variable is immensely challenging to predict with current scientific tools.This is also the origin of the book title The Science of Failure.
First, the fundamental element of a disaster is a complex system. If a system contains numerous interacting variables whose outcomes are unpredictable, it can be considered a complex system. Examples include financial systems, natural weather patterns, and the morning rush hour. The hallmark of such systems is the dynamic interplay of a large number of components, all influencing one another. Natural disasters often emerge within these complex systems.
One of the most classic simulations of complex systems is the sandpile experiment. In this experiment, sand grains are continuously dropped onto a flat surface, forming an increasingly taller pile. On the surface, the sandpile appears to be a stable cone. However, within the pile, the grains of sand interact in extremely complex ways, exerting forces on one another. Under the influence of this intricate network of forces, the sandpile becomes progressively unstable.
When the instability of the sandpile reaches a certain threshold, it enters what is known as a critical state.
Scientists have also simulated the sandpile experiment using computers. In these simulations, if a grain of sand rests on a flat surface with no risk of sliding, it is marked green. If the grain is on a steep slope and at risk of sliding, it is marked red. As more sand is added, grains that were originally green and stable become prone to sliding, turning red. When the entire sandpile turns red, it means every grain is at risk of sliding. This state, where every node is on the brink of collapse, is called the critical state.
The problem, however, is that the timing, location, and scale of the final collapse are almost entirely unpredictable. It’s akin to a person reaching the peak of anger, clearly about to lose their temper. Yet, the exact time, trigger, and form of the outburst might be unknown even to the person themselves.
In a critical state, even the smallest variable can trigger the collapse of the entire system. This is the final element in the disaster formula: a small trigger.
At this point, there is both good news and bad news.
The bad news is that disasters are indeed challenging to predict and often follow a power-law distribution. They are rare but, when they occur, they cause massive destruction.
The good news is that while you cannot predict disasters themselves, you can intervene in the system that generates disasters in advance, thereby reducing the likelihood of their occurrence.
Take the sandpile experiment, for example. Why wait for the pile to collapse? You can periodically smooth the surface of the sandpile as the sand falls. Similarly, to address forest fires, it’s common not to wait for the fire to grow out of control but to proactively burn the dead wood in the forest—essentially starting a controlled fire to eliminate the fuel for a larger blaze. However, because this method has become relatively mature, the persistent California wildfires have sparked considerable debate.
In other words, humanity’s battle with disasters has long since shifted from directly confronting disasters after they occur to systemic confrontations. The focus of this battle is not to defeat the disaster itself but to find ways to control the systems that generate disasters.
We’ll leave the discussion here for now.
