6.2.3 Case Study #3: 2007 Southern California Fire Complex

“Firefighters had wrapped whatever photos and mementos they could salvage and left them in front of burned-out houses” Wildfire Today, 2009.

A pyric event of Pandorian proportions, though the 2007 sCA fire complex [Figs. 63, 67] ignited over 230,000 more acres than that of four years previously, lessons already learned helped more than halve the number of lives lost, and limit loss of residences to over 550 fewer (Grijalva et al, (n.d), hence considerably lowered insurance losses (Ibid). However, nothing short of a herculean effort was required, as fire and support crews in their thousands utilised both state, out-of-state and out-of- nation airtankers, helitankers, and other firefighting arsenal in a military-like battle of humanity vs. firestorm.

As occurred in the October 2003 fire complex, whether unintentional or otherwise, all known causations were anthropogenic, including ignitions sparked from power lines being blown about in the Santa Ana winds, from embers that escaped during equipment usage, an electrical fire, a structural fire, and two counts of arson, therein met with the regional WUI ignition trend of the late 20th and early 21st century. However, while human-action may have advanced the ignition date, the fuel-state and quantity was such that, as in London in 1666, and other urban, peri-urban, and wild landscapes that have been discussed throughout this thesis, fires of their scale and severity were inevitable, as fire crews, and fire-educated citizenry more widely, were largely aware.

But, typically of the ephemeral element of fire, for all the many protocols and practices that were to hand, at many sites, the complex escaped the control boundaries that fire crews attempted to apply. Having manifested in atmospheric conditions aligned to those that have emerged over and again in eons past, and that fit well within the parameters of those that theoretical and climate models suggest may imminently arrive, one of the primary ‘weapons’ of firefighting choice, that being air- borne water dispersal vehicles, were rendered ineffective where wind-speeds were especially high.

While, models suggest that the order of magnitude of increases to wildfire activity to 2100 are lower than in some other western U.S. regions, regionally, not merely is the WUI expanding with sustained rapidity, but when climate-change induced migration is accounted for, the rate thereof could multiply yet more, and within a mere few decades. Thus, though they that have lived and worked in this acutely fire-prone region tend understand the fundamental dynamics that underpin its flammability, and the risks that reside therein, many as are remote therefrom do not, which, as discussed earlier is a statement that extends to numerous architects, planners, and other built environment professionals of the research, practice, and communications kind. Not so much a clock, but a WUI firebomb ticking, imperative is the need for the community at large to grapple with the difficult, complex, and highly technical choices humanity need make if, as indigenous communities, such as Native Americans, we are to path-find a route to coexistence with fire.