The great fires that rage Los Angeles For days now, they have had a large part of the world looking at the Californian city, which is stained with ashes. We have seen houses, mansions, schools, housing estates, shopping centers and libraries destroyed by the fire.
The burned area amounts to more than 15,000 hectares and more than 200,000 people have had to be evacuated. Until now we must mourn the death of ten peoplemore than 10,000 infrastructures have been affected by the fire, and It is estimated that losses could exceed $150 billion..
“This looks like the apocalypse, it’s horrible,” explains a Spanish witness living in Los Angeles. “On Tuesday morning the sun was red and the sky was gray”says Leire, another Spanish witness who had to be evacuated from the area.
The meteorologist Mario Picazo has passed through the microphones of ‘At last’ to give some of the keys to why this fire is being so devastating. “California is a state that has experienced extreme drought for decades and that has caused the vegetation situation to deteriorate. There is a lot of dry, uncontrolled vegetation. “As soon as winds of 120 or 130 km/h, relative humidity of 5% and drought conditions as extreme as those we have seen arrive, we find an uncontrollable situation.”.
After having lived in the area for several years, Picazo explains that “Los Angeles is an artificial oasis within a desert. The air that comes from the interior (from areas of Nevada or Utah, high desert areas, mountain areas) when it comes down to the coast does so from a high altitude and when it goes down it is compressed and heated. Therefore it arrives very strong in speed and very dry in relative humidity (…) “When the wind goes at that speed and there is a spark that starts all this, it has everything to win to destroy hectares.”.
The meteorologist also focuses on the infrastructure built in the area. “The houses are made of wood and are like an extra match so that the vegetation continues burning at high speed. There are trees that are more intact than the houses (…) Just as has happened with Dana in Valencia, humans are unable to adapt to the speed of change. “We must carry out much more aggressive forest management, have the most appropriate technology to fight fires and we must prevent humans from entering places where we would not normally live.”.
