A combustible combination of factors laid the groundwork for disaster. Will LA learn the lessons from the fires as it moves forward?
Dr Edith de Guzman watched the flames of the Palisades fire rolling through the Santa Monica mountains out of the windows of her University of California, Los Angeles, classroom last week.
First, on Tuesday, flames surged toward the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, the affluent community overlooking the ocean from the canyons in west LA. Then overnight, they tore through parts of Altadena, a diverse town in the city’s east that had served as a refuge for Black Angelenos.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
01/18/2025 - 02:00
More sightings may be a positive sign for growing population but also indicative of effect of climate change
The slap of an enormous tail upon grey waters as a humpback whale leaps from the sea is becoming an increasingly possible – although still rare – natural thrill around Britain.
The 30-tonne, 15 metre-long migratory giants are being spotted in growing numbers and locations this winter from Kent to the Isles of Scilly.
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01/17/2025 - 13:00
Blaze erupts in Monterey county at one of world’s largest battery storage plants, causing highway and school closures
A fire at one of the world’s largest battery-storage plants in northern California flared up again on Friday afternoon, sending up plumes of toxic smoke after authorities had said the blaze was mostly over.
The fire in Moss Landing in Monterey county started on Thursday, forcing the evacuation of up to 1,500 people and the closure of a major highway. Fire crews were not engaging with the fire but rather waiting for it to burn out on its own, a local fire official said.
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01/17/2025 - 13:00
Angelenos returning to homes in burned areas could be exposed to toxic materials and mudslides
The wildfires raging across the Los Angeles landscape have destroyed many thousands of homes and buildings and damaged hundreds more.
And each property, experts warn, could pose a risk to Angelenos even long after the flames are extinguished.
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01/17/2025 - 10:32
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01/17/2025 - 08:00
Some wildlife species have accumulated many times more than safe amount of PFAS in their tissue and organs
Revealed: drinking water sources in England polluted with forever chemicals
Revealed: scale of ‘forever chemical’ pollution across UK and Europe
Dolphins, otters, porpoises, fish and birds across the UK have been found to have toxic “forever chemicals” in their tissue and organs, analysis of official data has revealed.
Manmade chemicals called PFAS, known as forever chemicals because they do not degrade, are used in a wide range of consumer products and industrial processes and some have been linked to serious diseases in humans and animals, including cancers. PFAS have been found widely to pollute water and soils and are thought to be in the blood of every human on the planet.
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01/17/2025 - 07:34
Adam McKay says the Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio-starring satire resonates with a widespread feeling of being deceived by government and media
Adam McKay, writer-director of climate-crisis satire Don’t Look Up, says that the film’s popularity with viewers shows the popular will to tackle climate change, despite the critical brickbats the film attracted and political inertia around the issue.
McKay was speaking to the NME during the wildfire emergency that is currently affecting Los Angeles, which has included many high-profile victims from the Hollywood community. Saying that while Netflix, the film’s distributors, would not release definitive audience figures, he estimated that “somewhere between 400 million and half a billion” people saw it, and that “viewers all really connected with the idea of being gaslit”.
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01/17/2025 - 06:00
Big oil executive plans to celebrate Trump’s inauguration as California burns – though experts say climatic conditions are only getting more extreme
Donald Trump’s response to the catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles has provided a stark prologue to how his US presidency will probably handle the growing threat of such disasters – through acrimony, brutal dealmaking and dismissal of a climate crisis that is spurring a mounting toll of fires, floods and other calamities.
As of Thursday, four fires, whipped up by wind speeds more typically found in hurricanes, have torched 63 sq miles (163 sq km) of Los Angeles, a burned area roughly three times the size of Manhattan, destroying more than 12,000 homes and businesses and killing at least 25 people. The Palisades and Eaton fires, the largest of the conflagrations that have turned entire neighborhoods to ash, are still to be fully contained.
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01/17/2025 - 03:25
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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01/17/2025 - 01:00
Cheonggyecheon stream in the South Korean capital has become an attraction – and helps with flood management, fighting air pollution and cooling the city
On a crisp December morning, office workers and tourists stroll along a tree-lined stream in central Seoul, pausing on stepping stones that cross its flowing waters. It’s difficult to imagine that just over 20 years ago, this was a vast elevated highway carrying 168,000 cars daily through the heart of South Korea’s capital.
Cheonggyecheon, a stream that runs for about 3.5 miles (nearly 6km) through Seoul, was one of the earliest experiments in an increasing trend in cities globally: turning spaces where there was once car or rail infrastructure into spaces for pedestrians and cyclists. It’s a powerful example of the way that these spaces can become loved and popular, along with projects such as the High Line in New York, where an old railway track has been turned into a raised park, or the city moat in Utrecht, where a multi-lane road (nicknamed the “motorway from nothing to nowhere”) was converted back into a canal, in part of a huge continuing push to allow pedestrians and cyclists to dominate the city’s centre.
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