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Wildfires

A Land Bank Is Buying Property To Protect Altadena From Displacement

March 29, 2025 Eliana Perozo, Next City. , , ,
On the evening of Jan. 7, the Eaton fire hit Altadena, destroying over 10,000 commercial and residential homes and displacing thousands of families. Just a little over two months later, and this historically Black community is facing a new threat. Shortly after the fire, a private developer paid $550,000 in cash for the first vacant lot left behind from the wildfires, about $100,000 above asking price. In the days since, at least 13 more properties have sold, at least half of them by offshore private developers. But community leaders are working to beat back the tide. Earlier this month, a Pasadena-based housing justice nonprofit purchased a burned lot in the neighborhood, marking the first Altadena property that has been removed from the market and protected in a community land bank.

Public Banking In A Time Of Climate Crisis

February 15, 2025 Trinity Tran, Consortium News. , , ,
On the night of Jan. 7, as the Palisades Fire surged to 2,000 acres to the west and the Eaton Fire exploded to 1,000 to the east, I joined thousands fleeing hurricane-force winds that hurled embers for miles. I evacuated out of precaution, but across Los Angeles, many Angelenos were not as fortunate. Like so many here, I spent those first sleepless nights glued to wall-to-wall news coverage, tracking the fires’ paths. But while flames dominated headlines, a slower crisis burns, one that Los Angeles has yet to confront. Caught in a cycle of destruction and recovery that grows more urgent every year, fire season is no longer a season — it’s a year-round threat.

Fast Fashion Is Haunting L.A.’s Wildfire Relief Efforts

February 1, 2025 Maylin Tu, Next City. , , , , ,
The Sunday after the wildfires hit L.A. County, I found myself sorting through piles of clothing with other volunteers outside of L.A. Climate Week’s host, the nonprofit Collidescope Foundation. Even as we packed dozens of 13-gallon trash bags with items sorted by gender, age and type, mountains of more donations were stacked floor to ceiling inside. In a crisis, Los Angeles residents like Halle Berry packed up their dresses, sweaters, jeans, jackets and more for wildfire victims. It’s a heartwarming gesture, but donation hubs ended up with more used clothing than they could realistically pass on to wildfire survivors.

How Federal Disaster Funding Can Slow Rent Increases

January 20, 2025 Robert Davis, Next City. , , , , , , ,
Coloradans often welcome rain storms with the refrain, “We need the moisture.” After the deadly floods in September 2013, many Coloradans sang a different tune. Over five days, a slow-moving storm covered some areas of the Front Range with up to 20 inches of rain. Overall, the floods killed 10 people, displaced 18,000, and caused more than $4 billion in damage to more than 17,000 structures, of which 1,882 were completely destroyed, according to the Colorado Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Management’s after-action report.

Mutual Aid Networks Are Mobilizing Amid Los Angeles Fires

January 18, 2025 Schuyler Mitchell, Truthout. , , , ,
I’ve always said that Los Angeles is a mirror: Whatever you’re seeking, you’ll find it reflected back to you. Sure, the city has its ugly parts — celebrity worship and diet fads and smog that blots out the sky — but Los Angeles’ true core is multitudinous. Home to about 13 million people, the sprawling metropolis brims with countless communities and enclaves, neighborhoods and histories. If the ugly is all you see, then you’re not looking hard enough. Since the Palisades and Eaton fires roared to life last week, Los Angeles residents have shown how much strength and solidarity lies in their communities.

Climate Protesters Storm Phillips 66 Facility Over Recent Wildfires

January 17, 2025 Noah Haggerty, Los Angeles Times. , , , ,
Dozens of climate protesters with Sunrise Movement LA rallied outside Phillips 66’s Los Angeles Lubricant Terminal on Thursday morning, with 16 demonstrators storming the facility’s office building. As Los Angeles reels from what is projected to be one of the most costly natural disasters in U.S. history, the youth climate activist group says big oil companies are culpable, by emitting greenhouse gases while internally acknowledging the practice’s link to climate change, which, in turn, has worsened wildfires in California. Sunrise Movement LA is demanding big oil companies, including Phillips 66, “pay up” to support wildfire relief and aid the state’s transition to clean energy.

As Fires Rage, Activists Put Price-Gouging Landlords On Notice

January 15, 2025 Rebecca Burns, In These Times. , , , ,
A four-bedroom home advertised for nearly $29,500 a month. Bidding wars for vacant apartments. As anecdotal reports rolled in of rent-gouging amidst Los Angeles’ devastating wildfires, tenant organizer Chelsea Kirk thought, ​“We need to be tracking this.” So over the weekend, Kirk launched a public spreadsheet noting Zillow listings that appear to show a more-than-10% hike in the recent asking price, the maximum allowable under state emergency protections currently in effect. News of the crowdsourcing effort spread quickly and a team of more than 40 volunteers is now helping root out potential price-gouging.

Fire Weather

January 14, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , ,
The apocalyptic wildfires that have erupted in the boreal forest in Siberia, the Russian Far East and Canada, climate scientists repeatedly warned, would inevitably move southwards as rising global temperatures created hotter, more fire-prone landscapes. Now they have. The failures in California, where Los Angeles has had no significant rainfall in eight months, are not only failures of preparedness — the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, decreased funds for the fire department by $17 million — but a failure globally to halt the extraction of fossil fuel.

Los Angeles Fires Ravage Communities, Expose Systemic Issues

January 14, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
Several wildfires continue to burn in Eaton, Palisades, and other parts of the greater Los Angeles area, incurring a death toll of at least 24 people. Thus far the total area burned has reached nearly 40,000 acres, larger than each of the city limits of San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Boston and Miami. Over 150,000 people have been forced to flee from their homes, and the Eaton and Palisades fires alone have destroyed over 12,000 structures. As of the time of writing, the Palisades fire is only 14% contained and the Eaton fire is 33% contained.  Wildfires are highly unusual in Southern California during this time of year.

Where Fire Back Means Land Back

September 29, 2024 Ashli Blow, Resilience. , , , ,
On his tribe’s land, enveloped by the state of Oregon, Jesse Jackson stood at the threshold between two ecosystems: On one side of him, an open canopy bathed grasses and white oak trees in sunlight; on the other, a thick cover of evergreen trees darkened the landscape. A forget-me-not wildflower bloomed in the clearing. This is where the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians have been restoring their oak savanna meadows, after decades of fire suppression and the removal of large, fire-adapted trees under federal management. In addition to land they bought from private owners, in 2018, the Tribe received 17,519 acres of land from the U.S. government for the Tribe to manage under its own authority.

First Nations Say They’re Not Wildfire Evacuees, But Climate Refugees

August 31, 2023 Emma Paling, The Real News Network. , , , ,
Indigenous peoples are disproportionately affected by wildfire evacuations and thousands of these evacuees have been displaced for the long term, like Michell and his family. Indigenous peoples make up five per cent of Canada’s population but experience 42 per cent of wildfire evacuation events, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada. This year, 25,000 people from 79 First Nations have had to leave home because of wildfires, Indigenous Services Canada told The Breach by email. In the past decade, 70,824 First Nations people have been evacuated from their communities because of wildfires, the department’s data shows.

After Wildfires, Native Hawaiian Farmers Resist Attempt To Shift Blame

August 29, 2023 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , ,
Fires that began on August 8 have devastated the landscape of Maui, Hawaii, taking the lives of at least 115 people and leaving thousands displaced and thousands of residences burned to the ground. Native Hawaiians, who are already the most impoverished populations in Hawaii and are falling victim to rapid gentrification, are expected to be hit the hardest by the long and short-term effects of the fires. To add insult to injury, a group of Native Hawaiian farmers are witnessing a coordinated attempt by the government and land developers to shift the blame of the fires away from the root causes of colonialism, and on to Indigenous water rights.

The Imperialist History Behind The Maui Fires

August 22, 2023 Emma Lee, Left Voice. , , , , , , ,
On August 8, a wildfire began in Lahaina, Maui, that spread to affect over 3,200 acres of the island. As the former capital of the Hawaiian kingdom, Lahaina is a significant historical and cultural site for Native Hawaiians (Kanaka Maoli). So far, over 110 people have been killed by the wildfires, at least 20 people have been injured, and over a thousand people are still missing. At the center of this disaster is the long and ongoing struggle for water and land rights for Native Hawaiians.

Environmental Racism Links Lahaina And Katrina

August 16, 2023 Monica Moorehead, Workers' World. , , , , , , ,
August 29 will mark the 18th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest hurricanes in U.S. history, which devastated much of the Gulf Coast (specifically Louisiana and Mississippi) and disproportionately struck New Orleans. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration states that this Category 4 hurricane caused at least $108 billion in structural damage, leading to more than one million people being displaced, many permanently, especially the poor and people of color. According to livescience.com, an estimated 1,833 people died in the hurricane and the flooding that followed. (Aug. 27, 2015) That flooding, mainly caused by broken levees, overwhelmed the Ninth Ward, a predominant working-class Black neighborhood in New Orleans.

Maui’s Deadly Wildfires Burn Through Lahaina

August 12, 2023 Mojtaba Sadegh, Scheer Post. , , , ,
Wildfires, pushed by powerful winds, raced through Lahaina, Hawaii, on Aug. 8 and 9, 2023, leaving a charred and smoldering landscape across the tourist town of about 13,000 residents that was once the capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii. At least 36 people died, Maui County officials said. Others were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard after going into the ocean to escape the flames. Fires were still burning on Aug. 10, both in Maui’s tourist-filled west coast and farther inland, as well as on the Big Island of Hawaii. Dry grasses and strong winds, influenced by Hurricane Dora passing far to the south, heightened the fire risk.
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