A nighttime satellite image shows wildfire burning homes and buildings in Los Angeles County’s Altadena region on Jan. 8, 2025. (Satellite image: ©2025 Maxar Technologies.)
A national, nonpartisan study of the Los Angeles fires could improve planning for future disasters
The Los Angeles fires are a national disaster of epic proportions. City officials, Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom and President-elect Donald Trump have traded accusations about what caused this crisis. But as an engineering professor who lives in Los Angeles and has studied extreme events and natural and human-caused disasters for over 40 years, I believe an event with so many lives lost and damages estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars demands a more substantive response.