https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/01\/14\/the-l-a-fires-are-a-natural-disaster-not-a-policy-disaster<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“In some contexts, those policies do make the damage done by wildfires worse. They’ll certainly complicate Los Angeles’ recovery efforts.
\nBut the connection between bad land use, insurance, and environmental regulations and the damage done by the current Los Angeles fires to people and property is more tenuous.<\/p>\n
On closer inspection, this appears to be a severe natural disaster with natural causes. Bad public policy has played only a marginal role.”<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
“there’s also only so much fuels reduction can do to reduce wildfire risk in the conditions that led to Los Angeles’ current fires: exceptionally strong seasonal Santa Ana winds that reached hurricane levels of intensity.<\/p>\n
“If you have strong winds, embers fly away miles ahead of the fire,” says Carmignani. Clearing a few hundred yards here or there can provide firefighters with areas to operate. But it isn’t going to stop the fire from spreading to new areas when winds are that high.<\/p>\n
If the four-lane Pacific Coast Highway wasn’t enough of a fire break to prevent beachside Malibu homes from burning down, one wonders what would be.”<\/p>\n
https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/01\/14\/the-l-a-fires-are-a-natural-disaster-not-a-policy-disaster\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[304,1749,186,1274,411,1003],"class_list":["post-16195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-california","tag-disaster","tag-fires","tag-los-angeles","tag-policy","tag-wildfires"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16195"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16196,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16195\/revisions\/16196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}