The big LA fires of 2025 started on January 7th. The fires started by lightning hitting dry trees and small spark fires. In total, there were seven fires. The fire ended up getting spread so quickly because of the Santa Ana winds and also because of the fire suppression. All seven fires were finally put out and contained on February 3rd. From the fires, a little less than four hundred forty people ended up passing away. The LA fires damaged approximately 57,000 acres of land and 10,000 homes. When people would lose their homes or had to evacuate, they would end up going to family or friends’ houses, hotel/motels, move to safe zones, move to a different state, or homeless shelters. Due to recent records, Pacific Palisades with twenty-four thousand damaged acres and Altadena with fourteen thousand twenty-one damaged acres, they ended up with the worst conditions. But on the other hand, San Francisco and the Inland Valley had no damage to them at all.
They believe that it will take many years, possibly even decades, to repair all the damage and fix up everything. It also took roughly nine months to pick up all the debris. During the fight against the fire, there were seventy-five hundred firefighters who helped in total. The LA fires were very different from other wildfires because this fire happened in winter, from January to February. The fire season runs from May to October. During the fire, communities started to fall apart. They became scared and uncertain about what the future was going to be like, in significant distress, wondering when they could go back to work, when their kids could go back to school, how they were going to provide for their families, etc. Over 1 dozen schools were damaged and not running during the fire. This caused many students to not be able to go to school, so teachers had to start renting out community centers and evening halls. Also, roughly 6,300 to 8,700 people became unemployed due to these fires. Many people were left homeless due to this. To prevent huge wildfires like this, we should be careful when having fires, always have water on hand, and have an adult who knows what they are doing when it comes to a fire nearby. Fires can erupt in a matter of seconds and become out of control in just one blink. For the people living in California, the majority of their taxes are going towards all the repairs. There are also many large non-profit organizations going on, trying to raise money for the fires, and trying to help out. One of them is the Red Cross and the California Community Foundation, which are providing aid, shelters, etc.
Overall, this huge wildfire had an insane effect on California and the communities of California. Ultimately, all the repairs will end up costing somewhere between $40 billion and $50 billion.
