What really drove the LA fires?

”Total garbage.” That’s how wildfire scientist Jon Keeley describes studies blaming climate change for Los Angeles’ catastrophic 2025 fires. 

Every summer and fall, Southern California braces itself for fire season. On June 2, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department officially declared the start of high fire season, suspending all burn permits and ramping up resources for disaster response until the winter rain season begins. With rising global temperatures and extreme climate conditions, the frequency and scale of wildfires have increased dramatically, right? But what if this story, repeated endlessly by journalists and climate scientists, is oversimplified—and dangerously misleading?

Keeley, one of the nation’s leading wildfire scientists, has spent decades studying historical fire patterns and their relation to climate change. His take is blunt: The role of climate change in driving wildfire patterns in Southern California is often exaggerated. “The evidence is very limited,” Keeley said when I interviewed him over the phone on Sept. 15. Regarding the catastrophic Los Angeles fires of 2025, he went even further, saying, “There were several papers written about how climate change impacted those fires, and I think they’re total garbage.”

Instead, extreme Santa Ana wind events drove the fires, with speeds up to 80 to 100 mph, far beyond the normal range. “That, without a doubt, is fundamentally the reason why these fires were so catastrophic,” Keeley argued. The drought, often blamed by many researchers as a significant contributor to the scale of the LA fires, was not unique either. “There’s at least a half dozen fires … with droughts three to five times longer,” he noted. 

Blaming climate change for these extreme natural disasters is a dramatic oversimplification of the causes of the fire, and doing so overlooks the specific contributions of each factor, which are crucial to understand when combating future wildfires. 

So, if not climate change, then what? Keeley points to two main culprits: power and people.

First, human ignitions. More than 95 percent of fires in Southern California are started by people. Past policies have been able to decrease incidents caused by cigarettes and campfires substantially, but cases due to arson and power line failures have persisted. In fact, the No. 1 cause of area burned in Southern California is power line failures, according to the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force’s Southern California regional burn profile.

Second, population growth. For decades, California has added hundreds of thousands of residents annually, leading to urbanization in fire-prone areas. “When you put more people on the landscape … they’re being pushed out further and further into watersheds of very dangerous fuels,” Keeley said. Additionally, the development of new areas extends the electric grid and multiplies the risk of ignition. 

The danger of overstating the impacts of climate change is that it lets us off the hook. “If you say the fire is due to climate change, they just figure, well, that’s fate, and they can’t do anything,” Keeley explained. But fires here are not fate—they are overwhelmingly the result of human choices, which are tractable issues that can be resolved.

This doesn’t mean climate change isn’t real, or that it doesn’t influence fire risk. On the north side of the country, for example, climate explains about 40 percent of year-to-year fire variation, according to Keeley. But even in those forests, the majority stem from human management decisions, such as the suppression of natural burns that allows fuel to accumulate. Whereas in Southern California’s chaparral, fires are a constant, with or without climate change. 

So what can be done? Starting with policy, significant strides have been made to reduce the risk of power line failures. In 2012, San Diego Gas & Electric was sued by the city for causing two wildfires after an equipment malfunction. The company now monitors winds in real time and cuts power once wind speeds exceed a certain threshold. According to Keeley, they haven’t seen another major line-caused fire since adopting these measures. This strategy has proved its effectiveness in reducing the number of human ignitions, and it’s a matter of expanding it statewide. 

On the individual level, “home hardening,” combining vegetation management and the utilization of fire-resistant materials, can significantly reduce fire damage. This relatively inexpensive investment can save many dollars in the long run, though it’s worth noting that household protection is only effective against regular-scale fires and wouldn’t have been effective against the extreme LA fires. 

Taken together, these solutions remind us that California’s fire future will be shaped less by distant climate forces but by decisions we make today. If we want to protect our homes, we need to stop thinking about climate change on its own and start thinking, “It’s climate change and …” because in the end, fire here isn’t fate or luck, it’s the sum of our choices.

High School senior Lawrence Zhang at Cate School in Carpinteria wrote this commentary as part of a personal journalism project researching wildfires in Southern California by interviewing fire experts and survivors. Send a letter for publication to letters@santamariasun.com.

This article appears in Oct 23 – Oct 30, 2025.

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