When our city rose last week, everyone I knew in Los Angeles was in an emergency. Now, with the start of a new week, it is difficult to know how you feel.
For those of us who live in the neighborhoods that have not destroyed the fire, it seems that the sharp threat has passed, at least at the present time. The sky is blue and a light breeze blows and I write this. There are ash on the floor, but less than it in the air. Most of the Lausd schools fortunately. Friends and neighbors who left the city wandering at home.
However, the national weather service warned of “Especially dangerousWith wind storms up to 45 to 70 miles per hour from 4 am from Tuesday to 12 pm on Wednesday to obtain areas of spaces from Los Angeles and Fintora provinces. It is also expected to have a strong strong wind throughout the week.
“We are not yet clear and we must not be cautious,” said Christine Kraouli, the head of the fire extinguishing in Los Angeles in A. Monday press conference.
Thus, at least in my house, the evacuation bags are still crowded and wait for the door and my phone remains at hand at all times. But how much time we should live like this, allowing a note of observation to boycott our sleep, ready to fly? When will we stop feeling the threat of the outstanding fire over our heads? Or was the threat always there and we are now just seeing it?
“The verification of the reality is that there will always be events that nature puts on, we have, regardless of the magnificence of our technology, we cannot fight,” said Costas Cinnolacis, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California. “We do not have to live in fear, but this must give us to stop our weakness.”
A season of high risk
Fire experts say it was the deadly mix of Santa Anna winds that reach 99 miles per hour and a city that did not witness great rains in eight months that revived the theater for the most destructive fires in the history of Los Angeles: Palisades and Eaton Fire. Collectively, they burned more than 37,000 acres At least 24 people were killed.
“How does the fire starts and grows and extends a great relationship with wind and rain,” said Amanda Stacivic, Assistant Assistant Fire Policy at Oregon University. “We had this duality of high risk of dryness, which makes things very supportive of calamities and a supporter of fire as well as fast -moving winds that will carry it quickly, making it difficult to suppress and challenge the safety of firefighters.”
The wind may have faded at the present time, but the dry conditions are still unchanged, which makes it easy for new fires to separate from a long list of sources. If the records in a feverish car are in contact with the dry vegetation, this can start the fire. If a person accidentally pulled a chain behind his truck, which leads to uncomfortable sparks in the air, then this can also weaken our hills.
“As long as these dehydration conditions, the presence of the gobst bag is not a bad idea,” said Stasivic. “If you have a wind event, the opportunity is present to get a fire that becomes larger and faster – and it is difficult to contain large fires.”
Its advice? Watch the weather forecast, give special attention to wind consulting. She said: “It is a little to keep yourself on your toes.”
This ends with rain
Despite the terrifying images and intense warnings, keep in mind that the expected strong wind storms for the next week are still much lower than the “Oz processor”-like the winds that blew up in the city the night when our deadly fires began.
“To be clear, it seems very unlikely to see strong northern winds anywhere near the size we did at the beginning [last] Daniel Soyen, climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angel, said YouTube broadcasting Friday.
However, he does not believe that Los Angeles is outside the forest but when it comes to dangers.
“The winds of Santa Ana are relatively strong with a cumulative effect on severe drying,” he said. “I call them wind -like winds in the atmosphere. The higher it is blown away, the dried and more clear.”
According to Swin, the city of Los Angeles will not be really able to breathe a group a sigh of relief until we see the rain.
“What we really need is one or two rains to finish the fire season really and finally in Los Angeles,” he said. “Until then, at any time there are dry stormy conditions, we will see an additional danger.”
Unfortunately, there is only a little chance to shower scattered in expectations for the next two weeks.
“There is an opportunity to continue to see the dangers of fire in February or even March,” said Swin.
Facing a new truth
Even with the lack of rain in prediction, Synolakis, who studied people’s response to natural disasters such as tsunami, hurricanes and fires around the world, believes that most of us will be comfortable with our excessive state soon.
“Last week, the feeling of my community in Venice was frighteningly similar to the first few days after September 11 when people did not know whether there were more attacks in other places in the United States,” he told me. “Hearing the helicopters, and seeing these giant columns from the fire increased the uncertainty. People did not know whether the fire would spread along the way here.”
However, as long as the fire columns continue to clarify the evacuation orders, they are still a reduction to warnings or less, he expects people who are not affected directly to the fire to return to a natural form.
“If there is no new glow, I think at the end of the week, people in the surrounding societies will take a deep sigh of relief,” he said.
Whether this relief is justified, however, it is worth looking. The feeling of sharp threat may have passed, but climate scientists have warned us for decades that the warming world would be accompanied by the most intense weather and more intense fire.
Synolakis said: “These fires are completely unexpected, but this is what continued to tell people about climate change,” said Synolakis. “You will have more unexpected events, and you will not be able to deal with it.”