The 2025 Los Angeles fires exposed the escalating threat of urban fires and their potential to trigger major human disasters. This commentary by LA Fire HEALTH Study researchers Dr. Amir AghaKouchak and his colleagues at UC Irvine, along with Dr. Joseph Allen and his colleagues at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, outlines key policy strategies to strengthen fire resilience and reframe urban fires as both a climate risk and a national security concern.

Excerpt

The wind-driven fires of January 2025 that ravaged Los Angeles highlight the escalating threat of urban fires. Images of entire neighborhoods reduced to ash are a grim reminder that fire disasters are no longer confined to rural areas but have become a pervasive urban menace. Wildfires have increased in size and become more destructive in many regions worldwide, driven by human activities (for example, ignition and exposure), poor infrastructure, rising temperatures and prolonged droughts. Historically, research and disaster management have primarily focused on wildland fires, which has led to a relatively robust understanding of their behavior, mitigation and management. Urban fires, however, present a fundamentally different challenge. Unlike wildland fires that primarily consume forest, shrublands and grasslands, urban fires consume a diverse range of fuels (including wooden structures, textiles, plastics and other synthetic materials), which produces unpredictable fire dynamics. The complexity of urban fires is exacerbated by other factors such as multihazard interactions, poverty, aging infrastructure, poor governance and environmental degradation, which creates unique challenges in prevention, resilience and response. As a result, there remains a substantial knowledge gap in addressing the intricacies of urban fires as compared with their wildland counterparts.

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