A fire, as sudden as it was violent, destroyed around twenty luxury homes on the California coast, where firefighters continued Thursday morning to fight to contain the flames.
Called ‘Coastal Fire’, the brush fire broke out on Wednesday afternoon in the town of Laguna Niguel, in the hills overlooking the Pacific, about 80 km south of Los Angeles.
Fanned by the wind blowing from the Pacific, it swept through around 80 hectares of vegetation and required the evacuation of nearly a thousand homes in a posh residential area where each house is worth several million dollars.
According to Orange County elected official Lisa Bartlett, the wind helped spread the disaster, but the size of the villas also played a role. ‘If you look at the size of the accommodation, there is so much combustible material that it burns quickly. And then the wind blows and the flames jump from house to house,” Bartlett, whose constituency includes Laguna Niguel, told the Los Angeles Times.
Chronic drought
For Orange County Fire Chief Brian Fennessy, the disaster illustrates once again that the region, like much of the western United States, is now exposed to the risk of disasters all year round. fire, due in particular to a chronic drought.
‘It’s sad to say but we’re getting used to it. The winds we have recorded are normal (…) The fire is spreading very quickly in this very, very dry vegetation,” he said.
The causes of the fire outbreak were not known at this stage but the local electricity operator, Southern California Edison, reported to California authorities that it recorded ‘activity’ in its circuits around the same time.
Wildfires are common in the western United States but have become increasingly intense due to global warming caused by human activities, including fossil fuels, which is worsening an already chronic drought.
In California, average temperatures during the summer are thus 1.6°C higher than their level at the end of the 19th century.
/ATS