Los Angeles wildfires: What we know so far
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16-year-old Ada Foster and her family are combing through the gray rubble of what was once their home in the Pacific Palisades. Then you come through here and you see it all and it's like, it is a nightmare. This is just, this isn't real. You never think it's going to happen to you and then it does. ♪

The fires that have ripped through L.A. County have flattened whole neighborhoods, charring them beyond recognition. Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna says it could be a while until we know how many people have died. Looks like a bomb, an atomic bomb dropped in these areas. I don't expect good news.

And we're not looking forward to those numbers. So many people have lost their homes and businesses. The beautiful coastlines of Malibu and the celebrity mansions upon it have been turned to ash. But so have historic neighborhoods and the homes of regular working class people. On this weekend episode of Reuters World News, we'll ask our correspondents how this fire raged out of control and what might this mean for the future of Los Angeles. I'm your host, Jonah Green. ♪

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We're joined now by climate reporter Allie Withers, entertainment reporter Lisa Richwine, and political reporter Andy Sullivan. Hi all, thanks for talking today. Hello, Jonah. It's a delight to be here. Thank you. Thanks for having us. First, Lisa, I understand you're in Hollywood Hills, right? So you're the one who's closest to this fire. How are things right now? And I should note, we're talking midday Thursday.

Well, the fires are still burning quite briskly. You know, hopefully we are through the worst of the damage. It was a real shock seeing, you know, waking up on Wednesday morning and seeing the devastation that was caused overnight. I mean, the Pacific Palisades area on the on the coast has been essentially wiped out and destroyed.

That fire is still burning. So everybody's very anxious because you don't know where the next fire is going to come and how quickly it might be put out. So everybody's hoping that the worst as far as the immediate impact is over. But of course, there will be the long term impact and the financial losses. People have lost their homes and really just the city's been changed. Landmarks are

Parts of Malibu, a bunch of charming businesses on the coast that, you know, all people visited are just gone. So everybody's going to have to kind of look around and see what's still left and then recover from everything. Allie, what struck so many of us was that these are wildfires in winter. So this is not just a natural disaster. This is about climate change.

Sure. So experts will say there's no such thing as a natural disaster because the way that humans build cities or roads or where people choose to live, how you allocate resources influences to a large extent how bad a disaster will play out. So in this case where you know you have these sort of hot, dry winds that roll seasonally off these hills, and yet you have developments in

in these areas. Of course, they're very attractive places to live, but it's not entirely unsurprising that they wouldn't, of course, meet some amount of fire. In this particular situation, it wasn't the standard Santa Ana winds. In fact, it was a completely different weather system that we saw winds of 100 miles an hour that

that completely dried out that vegetation in that valley. So while the cause or the spark of the fire is not yet known, the conditions for fire to happen have been boosted by a warmer climate where you have drier seasons, sometimes more prolonged droughts. So when that spark happens under these extremely strong winds, also with a lot of vegetation that is not natural to that landscape that is full of resin that just pops embers everywhere, it's

It's not totally unsurprising that you saw these catastrophic scenes of people trying to flee in their cars, but those roads being blocked sometimes by fallen boulders or trees that were knocked down in the windstorm and just the chaos that ensued from there. And that chaos is partially why California officials are coming under some criticism for their response, most notably from our incoming president. But there were water shortages that caused some hydrants to run dry in the Pacific Palisades.

And the mayor of LA said that those hydrants were just not designed to deal with such a massive disaster. But is there a conversation about the response or mitigation efforts? There's a conversation around needing to do better fire management. This would include prescribed burns,

at safe times of the year. California actually did have a record year for doing these sorts of prescribed burns in 2024. But, you know, L.A. County, L.A. Basin, it's hard to do such a thing. In fact, I don't think it happens. And that's because it's so densely populated. There's complaints. There's air quality concerns. There's red tape. It's less likely to happen there. Last night in my own neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills, there was a vegetation fire that spread to 60 acres.

and they contained it within several hours, and there was no structure damage, and they were able to get the planes and helicopters and the aerial water drops that make a big difference. And my understanding is that they couldn't do that on Monday, and that's why they got that out. And that probably saved my house last night that they were able to do that. Once the fires subside,

There will be a lot of homeowners, many of them extremely wealthy, who will be eager to rebuild on what is still some of the most valuable property in the world. But it is clear that they live in an area prone to this kind of sudden catastrophe. And so, Andy, you have written on the insurance angle here, which is increasingly an issue for other nice areas hit by climate change, like in Florida. At this point, who will insure these areas? Is that going to be a problem going forward?

during what is likely to be a long and expensive recovery. Yeah, we've seen a sort of growing crisis in home insurance playing out in the United States over the past five or six years.

as insurers have really struggled to keep up with this cavalcade of natural disasters. You know, recall Hurricane Milton in North Carolina last year. There's been a string of other hurricanes, and California's had sort of a steady drumbeat of damaging wildfires since 2018. The interesting thing about California is that insurance prices have not really risen along with the risk

Insurance is much more affordable in California, relatively speaking, than it is in other states. I crunched a bunch of numbers and found out that Pacific Palisades is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the entire country, and yet people pay on average about as much for home insurance as they do in the lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, which is a much poorer, much more modest neighborhood.

And that is because California has very consumer-friendly insurance laws, which make it hard for insurers to raise rates, makes it hard for them to adjust rates based on risks like wildfire.

The downside of that is that insurance companies have increasingly been saying, well, forget it. We're not going to do business in this state. Seven out of the 12 top insurers have either been pulling out or scaling back their coverage in recent years. And so the states recognize this. The top insurance regulator unveiled a set of reforms at the end of last year that will allow companies to raise rates to reflect risk and to take forward-looking climate models into account.

but it'll also require them to write more coverage in risky areas. So there's a bit of a balancing act that he's trying to pull off here. What that means is that certainly going forward, people in California are going to be paying more for their home insurance, which is going to add to the crisis of affordability in what is already a very expensive state to live.

Will these fires change how people rebuild? Is there a conversation about materials and the technology or the landscaping that might prevent

prevent something like this from happening again? Yeah, the industry in general has been trying to encourage more responsible home building in fire-prone areas, not just in California, but in places like Colorado and much of the West, too. And I think these new regulations would give homeowners a bit of a break if they were to do these things. That's like

Not having bushes right near your house, making it harder for fires to jump across your lawn to reach your house, more resistant building materials, etc. So I imagine when people rebuild, they'll be taking that stuff into account.

So some of the palisades is going to have to adhere to fire code in rebuilding that will suggest needing to use more fire resistant materials, for instance, or technologies. But what a lot of experts say is that we in general need to learn how to live with fire. We are in what some experts call the pyrocene. So we are in a time of extreme fire and increased fire. And that is because we have a warmer climate and warmer atmosphere, drier forests.

So everybody should be thinking about this, but especially if you're building. And that would go from everywhere from city planners to where homes or businesses are allowed to be located to, of course, the design of a building itself.

What's been the impact to the entertainment industry? Well, the immediate impact is some productions are shut down. The Oscar nominations have been delayed by two days. We've just kicked off award season with the Golden Globes. Everybody was feeling optimistic about a new year and now other red carpet events are being postponed. So that's kind of put a cast over the whole thing that is, you know, not as joyful in the celebratory season.

But beyond that, Hollywood has been through a lot. First, it was the pandemic where there was no production. Then we had two strikes last year where a lot of people were out of work. And the industry has still been recovering from that, especially the crew members, the working class people who work on TV and movie sets. A lot of them have been out of work for a long time. And this is just another disruption. Hopefully, this is a shorter temporary one. But, you know, it also makes you wonder about the long term impact.

impact. There's been production leaving L.A. anyway because it's expensive to film here. And, you know, I know there are people asking questions like, oh, gosh, is this another negative for L.A. as far as when people are deciding where to shoot? Are they going to once again decide we want to go somewhere else? And a lot of people in the entertainment industry live here. They love it here and they prefer to work here if they can. I just want to note there's been a lot of coverage about the fact that

Among the victims of this fire are rich and famous people, but there are also plenty of not rich and not famous people whose homes have been destroyed and some have lost their lives. So what do you know about the level of destruction beyond the celebrity mansions that have been covered? I mean, I think they're already saying that this is likely to be one of the most expensive disasters in California history ever, if not the most. Yeah.

Yeah. And there are also a lot of people who are not well-known and super rich who live particularly in the fire that is on the east side of town in Altadena and Pasadena. That is not the exclusive, exclusive area of the Palisades. And even in the Palisades, there are some families, you know, who have lived there for generations.

And are not among the very wealthy, bold-faced names that you're all reading about. And also in the Palisades in particular, a lot of people worked there and a lot of restaurants have been destroyed. They, you know, they worked, you know, landscaping for these beautiful mansions and doing other jobs and they're not going to have jobs to go back to. So there's going to be a ripple effect among Palisades.

many different people, not just the wealthy people who can certainly afford to rebuild their lives. And do you know people who have lost their homes? The closest I know is we have a colleague who lost her house. It completely burned to the ground. She had to evacuate the first night and

When I first checked in on her, she was in a hotel. And then the next morning, she learned that her house was gone. I know of other people, friends and friends of friends who've been affected for sure. It's not just the A-list stars that were on the red carpet a few days ago that have been affected. It's everyday working people who saved up to buy their house and now it's gone. I know you're safe right now, which is good news. But how does it feel to be there right now and see all of this outside your window?

It is. I mean, I have like a knot in my stomach. It's just it's.

Yeah. You know, everyone keeps saying heartbreaking and going to cliches. And, you know, I'm having a hard time finding words other than that. But aside from the financial losses, again, you know, it's watching part of your city burn and a beautiful part of the city. And even if you didn't live over near the coast, people visit there. And it's part of what they love about L.A. is we have these beautiful coastlines and hiking trails that a lot of people in the city use. And it's what they love about California.

California. And we don't know what's left. And like there, you know, there were these little like fish shacks on the shore in Malibu that have been there forever. And those have been destroyed. It's just it's changed the city and a lot of the things we love about it. I mean, that said, I've been thinking about this the past few days, like people ask, well, why do you live there? Well, the weather's beautiful and we have some we have disasters and other problems. But

It's the weather, it's the nature and the creative community here. It's, I think, what everybody loves, putting those things together. And, you know, those things will still exist, even though, you know, we've lost a chunk of it. You know, it's still going to be a vibrant and desirable place to live, I think. To stay ahead in fast-moving markets, you need to transform quality data into tailored, practical and valuable intelligence.

Thanks to Lisa, Andy, and Ali for their reporting and their time.

Reuters World News is produced by Gail Issa, David Spencer, Christopher Wall, Jasper, Sharon Reich-Garson, and me, Jonah Green. Our senior producers are Tara Oaks and Carmel Krimens. Our executive producer is Lila DeKretzer. Sound design and music composition by Josh Sommer. We'll be back on Monday with our daily headline show. Make sure to follow on your favorite podcast player or download the Reuters app.