The LA fires and preparing for the worst

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LISA MARTINE JENKINS | 2025 is off to a bleak start. The wildfires that are still burning in and around Los Angeles are already shaping up to be the costliest in U.S. history. Thousands have lost their homes, and roughly 150,000 remain under evacuation orders.

The scale of the fires is unprecedented. Southern California is having one of its driest-ever winters, and the powerful Santa Ana winds are far stronger than normal, with some gusts reaching hurricane-force at near-100 miles per hour.?

In these conditions, most utilities proactively shut off parts of their systems to avoid sparks from power lines. But reporting from the Wall Street Journal found that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power didn’t take those safety protocols, and in fact hasn’t developed a plan for emergency shutoffs at all. (The specific causes of the fires that have killed at least 10 people remain under investigation; it’s still unclear whether power lines played a role.)?

Each year, California utilities and fire services are amassing more wildfire monitoring and prevention resources — but this week is demonstrating the limits of those attempts to adapt.

As Latitude has covered, “fire tech” is more popular than ever with investors. Both startups and veterans in the space are increasingly using advanced technologies like artificial intelligence to prevent, detect, and contain wildfires.

The 27-year-old data company Technosylva, for example, has partnered with utilities and fire services to better equip them for fire season. Cal Fire uses Technosylva’s algorithms to identify patterns in fire behavior; CEO Bryan Spear said the market for this kind of data has only started to take off in the last year or two, as utilities recognize the “risk at the asset level” that wildfires pose.?

(Later this month, Spear will be participating in a free webinar on wildfire tech solutions, hosted by Latitude Media and The Ad Hoc Group.)?

This comes as a part of the industry’s embrace of adaptation. Investors are increasingly seizing the “unavoidable opportunity” of a market for adaptation solutions that is expected to grow to $2 trillion per year by 2026. While crucial, deploying more clean energy alone won’t prevent crises like the one unfolding in LA; the climate has already changed, and nowhere is guaranteed to be safe.

Of all the software solutions that have caught the climate tech industry’s attention this year, it was the non-profit Watch Duty app that has proved most useful. Its real-time monitoring of the fire’s movements has led it to overtake ChatGPT to become the Apple app store’s most-downloaded free app this week. It’s a prime example of the software that will become invaluable as we feel the true impacts of the climate crisis.

On a more personal note: I love Los Angeles. I used to live there, in the hills near Dodger Stadium, and many friends and family still do. Every one of them is in some degree of shock this week. These urban-dwellers are used to smoke on the horizon, summer days with air quality alerts, and reading about destructive fires unfolding elsewhere in the state. But as one told me this week, they were living under the assumption that “there’s no way the city burns!” Many of those friends have now evacuated the city, armed with a suitcase or two.

In the last six months — especially in the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, and now with the LA wildfires — it has become clear that many people who control key resources have yet to reckon with climate change’s worst case scenario.

That includes the energy sector. Yesterday, President Joe Biden said that some LA County fire hydrants were running dry because when utilities cut power this week, it also “cut off the ability to generate pumping the water.” The lack of water in the moment of highest need was not just a resource failure, but also a failure to really imagine what would be required in a potential worst case scenario.

Scientists and activists have warned for years how bad natural disasters could become. But the reality is manifesting in ways that outpace both our imagination and government budgets — to devastating effect.

We simply don’t have the infrastructure to match this new reality, and there are limits to what the private sector can do. It’s public officials who have the power and responsibility to prepare for these calamities, whether that means requiring emergency shut-offs or back-up battery power for pumping stations, expanding rather than cutting fire department budgets, or else partnering with the startups that are already developing the tools we need (with significant money behind them).?

As Sonia Kastner, CEO and founder of firetech company Pano AI, said in September, “we don’t have to solve climate change to address the wildfire crisis. Investment in wildfire prevention technologies must become a public/private partnership — and a priority.”

This is a preview of the email version. For the rest of our weekly news roundup, more stories + podcasts, and what we're reading in other news, subscribe for free to receive The Latitude Weekly in your inbox every Friday.