The new California wildfires started on January 17th of this year. There have been a total of 255 fires in 2025, with 28 people having passed away and more than 14,000 structures or buildings have been threatened. Low humidity and high winds sparked the start of these insane wildfires.
There was a fire spreading across California at around 300-600 acres per hour, and there will be $2.5 billion in aid to support response and recovery. Quite a few people have been reported missing since the wildfire started, a total of 31 missing, and they are still being actively investigated. The estimated damage is going to cost anywhere between $250 billion and $275 billion, which means the LA fires would be the costliest natural disaster in US history. On January 16th 2025, crews were able to stop the spread and contain the blazes. The worst wildfire in California was back in 2018, and was by far the deadliest fire. It was called Camp Fire and it burned more than 150,000 acres. Throughout the years in 2018 there has been 8,527 fires, in 2019 there has been 7,860 fires, in 2020 there has been 9,639 fires, and in 2021 there has been 8,835 fires. California is the most ranked by number of fires and the number of acres that have been burned in 2023 and in 2024 there has been a total of 8,024 wildfires and 1,050,012 acres, and California has had 7,364 fires that year. Wildfires happen so often in California because of climate change, and usually caused by the burning of fossil fuels. You can prevent wildfires in California by removing dead trees, creation of fuel breaks, creation of safer ingress, and vegetation clearing. There is an average of more than 550,000 emergencies each year for wildfires in California.
