Living through the 2025 LA Fires. The Experience, Fire Dynamics, the Political Blame Game, and Political-Geographical Lessons

Abstract

This essay uses the experience of living near the Los Angeles fires of January 2025 to examine the actual dynamics of the two major fires, the Palisades and Eaton Fires. These fires became the focus of global attention partly because Los Angeles is the home of many celebrities but also because the fires were not so much “wildfires” as they were often described but urban conflagrations in which current US partisan polarization showed up immediately in terms of a search for “villains” to blame rather than in terms of understanding how the fires actually transpired. Following a personal “diary” of the experience a series of more analytic themes are developed. These are practical lessons to be learned, how politicization turned the fires into a “blame game,” and how geographically addressing the way climate change is discussed and how local public management of the city might better be organized can militate against future disasters of this magnitude.