Razed in the burbs
The devastation in LA shows the threat from wildfires spreading into urban settings
By Wendy Pugh
The Los Angeles infernos that roared deep into urban areas are resetting bushfire risk perceptions and have fuelled discussion over whether a similar disaster in Australia is inevitable.
Dry Santa Ana winds swept over Californian mountains and down towards the coast at cyclonic speeds, driving fires across drought-affected land on the “wildland-urban interface” and beyond, setting streetscapes ablaze and sending residents fleeing.
“These winds were so strong they were blasting embers, but then what happens is that once you get houses burning, the fire changes, it’s a new fuel type, and that’s when you open up the opportunity for house-to-house ignition,” University of Tasmania pyrogeography and fire science researcher David Bowman tells Insurance News.
“The houses are burning and are putting out enough radiant energy to connect, particularly if you’ve got densely stocked houses, or overgrown gardens, or both. Then you get the ability for the contagion to happen.”
At least 29 people have died in the fires that started on January 7 and more than 16,000 structures have been destroyed, based on California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection figures. The Eaton blaze devastated Altadena, and the Palisades fire spread through affluent Pacific Palisades and Malibu areas (pictured above and bottom) as winds exceeding 100km/h drove the flames.
Moody’s RMS Event Response estimated insured losses at $US20-$US30 billion in a preliminary figure, while Fitch Ratings says economic losses could range from $US150-$US275 billion.
“This firestorm is the most destructive and multifaceted wildfire event in US history, with unprecedented levels of urban conflagration,” Moody’s director of North America wildfire models Firas Saleh says. “However, this was not a ‘black swan’ event given the escalating wildfire risk in recent years.”
Cities have burnt over the centuries, most famously in the 1666 Great Fire of London, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the San Francisco disaster of 1906.
Fire historian Stephen Pyne says such events led to building changes, but a new era has emerged and risks are widening and shifting faster than society’s responses.
“It’s like watching polio return,” he told radio network NPR in the US. “I think the big question is, how do you rebuild? And the instinct is always to build back as quickly as possible, probably as much like it was as possible, so people don’t feel as dislocated. But if you do that, then you’re just recreating the same problem.”
Other fires have moved from wild areas to urban landscapes, with previous US examples in Colorado, California and on the Hawaiian island of Maui, where the community of Lahaina was destroyed in 2023. The term “wildfire” becomes a misnomer as it transforms into an urban inferno.
“It is essentially the energy released by the combustible house that is carrying the fire to the next one. So, you know, everything in a city we build – we can, in principle, control all of that,” Dr Pyne says, noting that in some ways fire can be modelled as a contagion.
“How would you deal, say, with covid or the flu? Well, you wear masks to prevent aerial transmission. That’s like hardening houses against embers. And then you clear your vegetation around the house – a short amount. Well, that’s social distancing. And then you have to get the whole group to do it, otherwise your neighbour’s house is going to irradiate yours even if you’ve done all the work.”
Australia has not experienced the level of house-to-house contagion seen in Los Angeles, but urban losses have occurred, capital cities around the country extend into bush-covered hills, dry winds blow from hot interiors and risks related to climate change and property exposure are increasing.
In the 2003 Canberra disaster, homes burnt in suburbs such as Duffy and Chapman. Tasmania fires in 1967 came within two kilometres of the Hobart CBD, fires that ringed Sydney in January 1994 reached into suburbs as smoke covered the city, and there have been other near misses.
Natural Hazards Research Australia chief executive Andrew Gissing describes the LA fires as a “grey rhino” – a term for a large and possibly high-impact event hiding in plain sight – and warns a similar catastrophe could occur here.
“We’ve got more and more people living in areas of high bushfire risk and we’ve got worsening fire conditions due to climate change,” he tells Insurance News.
“With the history that Australia has of fires already impacting into its major cities, it’s certainly something that could happen.”
Mr Gissing says new homes built to the latest bushfire standards still may not withstand extreme catastrophic conditions. Buyers may renovate or make changes that undermine resilience, and urban house-to-house fire spread requires more research.
Natural Hazards Research Australia has a project with the University of Tasmania, where Professor Bowman is director of the multidisciplinary Fire Centre.
Gallagher Re says southern California urban fire has long been assessed as a high-risk/low-probability scenario.
“However, the ferocity of multiple simultaneous urban conflagration events as seen in this outbreak is expected to bring a reassessment of risk … in previously identified high-risk fire areas in cities around the world,” the reinsurance broker says.
There have been 24 billion-dollar insured loss wildfire events worldwide since 1990, based on nominal values assessed in today’s dollars, according to Gallagher Re. The only three not in the US were the Australian Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 and the Black Summer catastrophe in 2019, and Canada’s Fort McMurray fires.
The Los Angeles disaster, coming during the northern winter, has also highlighted impacts from longer fire seasons and the implications for firefighting resource sharing among countries in opposite hemispheres that have historically had different low-risk periods.
Commercial property insurer FM’s Australian operations chief engineer, Michael Hunneyball, says the very concept of a fire season is becoming obsolete.
“The catastrophic events in LA show us that wildfire or bushfire seasons are no longer limited to certain months of the year, or to only rural or country areas,” he says. “Their ability to tear through anywhere at any time highlights the need for increased climate resilience and preparedness, year-round.”
In southern California, extended dry autumns are coinciding with more offshore wind, while “whiplash” weather has swung between wet springs fuelling vegetation growth and dry conditions that turn it into a combustible fuel. Last year, LA International Airport received just 0.76mm of rain in the first two months of the November-April southern California “wet season”.
Insurance Council of Australia general manager of climate, social policy and international engagement Alix Pearce says the severity of the fires in the US winter are a reminder that extreme weather events are worsening, with implications for the affordability and availability of insurance.
She says it is too early to predict if there will be cost implications for the Australian market, but the fires came in the context of a global reinsurance industry already stressed by increasing extreme weather and inflation.
The Australian industry is focused on strengthening the resilience of communities and businesses, including investing in supporting infrastructure, enhancing building stocks and reforming land use planning.
“In the long term, consistent resilience investment is crucial, along with addressing the underlying driver of worsening extreme weather – climate change,” Ms Pearce says.
About 5.6 million Australian homes are at risk of bushfire and one in 12 properties, or 1.2 million, have some level of flood risk, with at least 230,000 of those at risk of flooding every 20 years, according to ICA.
Californian insurers had pulled back from that market before the LA fires, due to the risks and regulatory constraints affecting pricing. Underinsurance and lack of cover is expected to be a significant issue as the city rebuilds and premiums are expected to rise. Demand has also increased for the state-backed California FAIR Plan, which acts as an insurer of last resort.
Reinsurers have termed bushfires and floods secondary perils, compared with single, large-impact primary perils such as earthquakes and tropical cyclones that have been well modelled. But rising impacts are recalibrating perceptions.
“The thing about fire is the risk profile is changing and we don’t know where it’s going to stabilise,” Professor Bowman says. “That’s to me the bigger concern.
It’s not that it’s the number one natural peril, it’s really like it’s a bolting horse.”
Professor Bowman says more funding is needed for research into issues such as similarities between Australia and California, and risk factors including climate, vegetation and building characteristics that influence house-to-house fire spread.
“That’s really a big research challenge and we’re dipping our toes into it,” he says. “One of the things that is frustrating is we don’t have very good data and it’s been extraordinarily difficult for us to get house loss data from many of the Australian states that are affected by dangerous fires.”
Professor Bowman says rigorous science in the area remains “a complete frontier” and there is an opportunity for collaborations involving state agencies, universities and insurers, which have a stake in the issue and are delivering signals for the cost of climate change.
“We’re obviously seeing really significant historic departures of fire activity and scales of destruction, which are really stress-testing the assumptions we have about fuel management, about fire suppression capacity and about the risk of house loss,” he says.
For all the discussion about California and Australia’s similarities, there are many differences. The Australian capitals with Mediterranean climates that most align with Los Angeles are Adelaide and Perth, rather than cities in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania, while building design, housing materials, and density and landscapes affect comparisons.
Measures that hold the key to protection could include the use of vegetation, housing and landscape design, irrigation and water features, strategic use of golf courses or parklands, and green firebreaks.
“People have been theorising about these things for a long time, but now the rubber is meeting the road,” Professor Bowman says. “We can’t assume we’re not going to have suburban house loss, but also we don’t need to be despondent, because it might be that with research and development we can mitigate the risk.”
