Could blackouts prevent wildfires?
Scientist says switching off the power grid in extreme winds could prevent blazes
LOS ANGELES — After last month’s deadly Northern California wildfires, atmospheric scientist Cliff Mass scanned old weather forecasts, searching for clues.
In two high-resolution weather models for Oct. 8, he found ample warning of the crucial ingredient for the firestorm that swept across parts of eight counties, claiming 43 lives and incinerating more than 8,000 buildings.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, look at the winds,’” recalled Mass, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor who writes a popular weather blog. “What if people were paying attention to this? What could they have done?”
The causes of the October conflagrations are under investigation. But for a number of the fires, the prime suspects are sparking power lines and electrical equipment downed by winds that gusted to more than 70 mph.
“It was a wind event, a sudden onset and pretty sudden die-down,” Mass said. “So if you shut the power down for nine hours ... it could have been a whole different world.”
For years the state’s primary way of dealing with its endemic wildfire threat has been to mandate vegetation clearance around homes in high fire-hazard zones and require the use of fire-resistant building materials in new construction.
But as California puts more people and houses on one of the planet’s most flammable landscapes and the grim list of deadly wildfires grows longer, some experts say it’s time to take stronger steps.
Among them: Ban development in wind corridors where wildlands repeatedly burn; bury utility lines in the backcountry; preemptively shut down power lines and close public lands during extreme wind events to prevent ignitions — the vast majority of which are caused by people or equipment.
“In Southern California, every single year the conditions are there for a severe wildfire,” said Alexandra Syphard, senior research scientist with the nonprofit Conservation Biology Institute. “You have Santa Ana wind conditions every year. You have summer drought every year, high temperatures.
“What it takes is an ignition to happen at the same time,” she added. “And since ignitions are caused by humans, that is something under our control.”
Whether they’re called the Santa Anas, diablos or sundowners, withering winds from the east invariably drive California’s most horrific wildfires. They blast down mountainsides and fan sparks into unstoppable infernos.
Thanks to advances in weather modeling, these hot breaths of nature are more predictable than ever.
“There are certain corridors where the winds tend to travel,” said Alex Hall, a UCLA professor of atmospheric sciences who has helped map Santa Ana wind corridors in Southern California. “We also have the ability to predict event by event where the winds are going to be the strongest.”
But the growing sophistication of wind mapping and forecasting isn’t reflected in the state’s wildfire policies.
“I often hear people say that if we construct our buildings correctly and put enough defensible space around it, then we don’t need to worry about where you put the houses,” Syphard said.
“But they don’t necessarily fireproof your house. You can see that by some of the houses that burned in recent years,” added Syphard, whose research has linked wildfire losses to the location and spatial arrangement of houses.
In recent years, the state has made some moves to factor wildfire into land-use planning. Under a 2012 law, cities and counties are supposed to consider wildfire risk and consult with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection when they update their general plans and approve subdivisions.
Yet there appears little inclination to place especially fire-prone areas off limits to development.
“We have to consider property rights,” said Mitch Glaser, an assistant administrator in the L.A. County Department of Regional Planning.
The county has required fire-related changes in the layout and size of subdivisions and zoned the backcountry to avoid isolated, large-scale housing projects, Glaser said. But he didn’t know of any development application that was denied because of wildfire risk.
The building continues even in areas where it is virtually guaranteed that a wind-whipped fire will roar through sooner or later.
Take the five-mansion compound that U2 guitarist the Edge plans to erect on a rugged coastal hillside in Malibu, an oftscorched corridor for Santa Ana winds.
“The placement of homes on a ridgeline documented to have burned at least six times between 1942 and 2010 makes it almost certain the ridgeline will burn again in the near future,” the National Park Service warned in comments to the California Coastal Commission, which approved the project in 2015 after years of controversy over its impact on coastal views and environmentally sensitive habitat.
A few highly flammable parts of the world are taking tougher stands. National planning regulations in France now require communities in the country’s fireprone south to bar development in certain high fire-hazard zones.