You can listen to the audio of David reading this piece here:

Are the Los Angeles fires a result of the climate emergency, public policy or community unpreparedness? Possibly all three. From my research over decades, living in one of the most wildfire-prone regions in the world, it looks much more likely that it’s more the latter emergencies than the former. Let’s start with the last: community preparedness failures.

LA might be iconic in its disconnection from nature and in its inability-to-fend-for-itself individually, in households, local neighbourhoods and informal networks. This inability and disconnection have grown over many decades due to generational affluence and urbanisation.

The rich neighbourhoods of LA, perched on steep slopes, are at risk of earthquake, wildfire and other hazards, and this reflects a relationship to nature that is more about ‘The View’ and social status than due diligence about risk, or productive use of the land around dwellings. While it is understandable that some of the most disadvantaged in the world might dwell and work in such places close to economic opportunity (including fresh volcanic landscapes capable of growing food), it seems odd that the affluent in information-rich modern societies with the internet at their fingertips, don’t conduct their own research and better prepare themselves for these risks. Instead, most choose to rely on social norms, public infrastructure, professional oversight, insurance, and if all else fails, the government, to cover those risks for them.

Perhaps reasonably, for the affluent in the upmarket hill suburbs associated with Hollywood’s glitz and glamour, a habit has developed of assuming that in the event of real need, the cavalry will arrive to protect these residents and their properties. The evidence from Hurricane Katrina, Lahaina wildfires or Hurricane Helene, amongst other notable disasters in the USA, should have been clear enough that the process of top-down defence, aid and recovery for victims of natural disasters can be as inadequate, dysfunctional and traumatising as the disaster itself. At least this seems to be the case for more disadvantaged working-class folk, be they Afro-American, Hawaiian or Anglo-Appalachian.

Permaculture design against disaster, especially the threat of bushfire (wildfire) in Australian rural, peri-urban and suburban communities has provided us with many learnings. One of the most profound is that even the best scientific research on the nature of wildfire, its sources and accelerants, and the best firefighting services (both volunteer and professional) are no substitute for individual, household and community level awareness and action in planning for, responding to, and recovery from, wildfire that impacts landscape, settlements and lives.

Unattended houses burn

Another more empowering observation is that while wildfire raging through fire-prone forest, shrubland and grasslands can exceed the capacity of the best equipped firefighters to contain, the defence of houses is much easier. The vast majority of houses which burn in wildfire are unattended and burn from ember infiltration after the fire front has passed. Most houses can provide critically important protection from radiant heat, even if those sheltering from the fire then fail to save the building from burning after the danger outside has subsided. In our own research and case study design following the 1983 Ash Wednesday Fires, we came to the conclusion that wildfire resistant or resilient design could be seen as a self-confidence trick we play on ourselves to ‘Stay and Defend’ rather than ‘Leave Early’, and so save our homes, assets and animals from the worst impact of the disaster. Following those same fires, research by CSIRO showed the presence of at least one able-bodied person (not professional firefighter) was two to four times more significant than any other site factor or design feature in determining whether a house burnt within the wildfire zone.

This evidence has not been overturned by research into later fires, even if the 2009 Black Saturday Royal Commission resulted in a policy U-turn in Australia from ‘Stay and Defend or Leave Early’ to ‘Leave and Live’. Since then, many more people have chosen to evacuate due to these policies, combined with media focus on climate-accelerated wildfire. Other factors such as declining capacity through aging and disability, and the decline in household and neighbourhood confidence and skills that I reference above, are also at play. However, there are still many people who do stay and successfully defend their homes, and in suburban neighbourhoods often manage to save houses of vacated neighbours, with or without the legal right to do so.

Having grown up in a bushfire-safe residential area, my introduction to this process was hearing Bill Mollison’s experience in the great forest fires that devastated the peri-urban fringes of Hobart, Tasmania in 1967. Mollison saved his (not at all bushfire resistant) house where, a few years later, we developed the permaculture concept and first garden. He did so with a mop and a bucket before saving another four homes in the neighbourhood, while another twelve burnt to the ground, all unattended. These stories repeat themselves with every large fire, so we no longer need scientific research to validate the lived experience of thousands who have actively defended. Similar stories have been reported from LA in recent weeks, where the more draconian forced evacuation policies, combined with fire-vulnerable building methods, contribute to giving the general public the impression that active household defenders are either super hero figures or mad risk takers.

I think it is important to point out that while many of the houses burnt in the LA fires were isolated in thick fire-prone chaparral vegetation, the vast majority seem to be in suburban-density neighbourhoods with full urban infrastructure and manicured, irrigated gardens. It could be argued that these places and people are not victims of ‘wildfire’, but urban fires spreading from one unattended burning house to the next. This same pattern can be seen in the worst ‘bushfires’ in Australia. However, over recent years fires such as those in Paradise CA, Lahaina Hawaii and now LA, show this extreme pattern of urban incineration, often with surrounding trees scorched by the intensity of the housefires but not having been the source of the fire that burnt the houses. These are not forest, bush, chaparral or even grassland fires, but urban ones, not so different from the Great Fire of London that led to urban building methods and regulations less prone to fire.

Building materials and methods

A lot of simplistic reactions to the LA fires suggested that houses built of ‘unburnable materials’ would be safe. This seems logical but reflects a misunderstanding of how buildings burn as a result of wildfire-generated embers that enter poorly protected but enclosed building spaces especially under floors and roof cavities. While flammability of building materials is an issue, it is less important than how well sealed and protected from embers the building is. Even more important, but little discussed even in Australia, is the fact that modern houses are full of furnishings and possessions that burn, producing smoke considerably more toxic than natural wood’s. It is these contents along with the construction methods that make for such intense housefires. More extreme cases like the American roofing system of bitumen tiles and PVC foamboard siding with thin stucco render makes my hair stand on end in disbelief that this could be common in wildfire-prone regions.

It appears that even opulent construction in the affluent Pacific Palisades and other neighbourhoods did not mean better construction methods than the generally poor building standards in the USA. These appear to take less consideration of natural hazards such as wildfire, earthquake and hurricane than the equivalent standards in Australia or New Zealand.

‘Climate’ as a cover for incompetence?

Apart from lax building and development controls, the problems of public infrastructure, especially water supply, and firefighting services not being up to public and professional expectations, sounds like it could be worse in the State of California than in other states. While I take some of the extreme public and political criticism of California in this regard with a grain of salt, some of the stories of incompetence and downright dysfunction do sound like they were major contributing factors to the impact of the LA fires.

As for the weather that created the conditions for the fires, I noted LA resident liberal comedian and commentator Bill Maher ridiculing the Mayor of LA, Karen Bass, for exclaiming that such extreme conditions hadn’t been seen for 14 years, prompting Maher’s comment that ‘Maybe look in the history books to see how our ancestors handled it back in 2011’.

So even true believers in the climate emergency on the political left are starting to notice that the climate story is being used to cover dysfunction in disaster planning and response services that, in theory, should be much easier to correct than anthropogenic climate change. While this focus on the failures of governance is always widespread following disasters, the declining capacity of individuals, households and communities to take responsibility for their own welfare, is generally seen as victim blaming.

Drivers of wildfire

Five years ago in Bushfire Resilient Land and Climate Care, I spoke to the competing narratives of lack of land management versus climate change being the primary drivers of the Black Summer bushfires on the Australian east coast in 2020/2021. Today I have become more convinced that a complex of policy, management and human behavioural issues were the primary drivers of those fires, while my confidence is declining that the severity of fire scale and impact were a result of worsening climate conditions. In fact, during that summer there were only three ‘blow up’ days that generated the worst fires and losses. Furthermore, my confidence is also declining in the narrative that worsening climatic conditions were anthropogenic in nature, and more specifically due to GHG emissions. I have even begun to consider the potential that nefarious anthropogenic actions may have been used to enhance or even create ‘natural disasters,’ as the powerful, global climate change industry, including the Fire-Industrial Complex, grows.

Arson remains a common malevolent source of fire (amongst many other human sources of ignition). This exercise of power, by those often at the bottom of society, is both ancestral and modern, but at many times throughout history, it has been used by elites in power struggles with enemies, and to control populations. The possibility that deliberate ignition, by conventional or technologically novel means, being used by powerful players in a supercharging of ‘disaster capitalism,’ combined with terror tactics to manipulate communities and whole populations, should not be dismissed out of hand. In periods of eruptive change and lack of faith in authority, it is natural that such so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ proliferate. But that viral proliferation doesn’t mean that they are not true, or at least include an element of truth. The assumption that powerful elites would never engage in such malevolence, or that if they did they would be exposed and held accountable, reveals a general naivety of history, both ancient and more recent.

Questions, curiosity and openness

Along these lines, I have viewed many videos of post-fire conditions in Paradise, Lahaina, LA and other recent severe fires in the US, showing ‘abnormal’ fire conditions with suggestions that novel Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) especially microwave weapons caused ignition and destruction of houses, cars and other assets. Based on my extensive observation and decades of research, I remain sceptical but interested in these suggestions. While some claims (like unburnt trees but incinerated buildings) can be generally explained by a full understanding of fire dynamics, in some other cases it is more difficult to do so. The lockdown of fire affected areas makes it very difficult for independent investigators to make assessments, however those who manage to document the aftermath produce evidence and theories that leave me with more questions.

To ignore the possibility that nefarious theatre is being used to enhance belief in the climate emergency, presumably to get the public to accept draconian and rights-eroding government responses, is in my view unwise. However, ignoring such a scenario may be another form of wilful blindness afflicting environmentalists wedded to the urgency of the climate emergency at all costs. At the same time, I see the rising angst on the socially conservative right that ‘we-could-all-go-back-to-business-as-usual (Make America Great Again), if it wasn’t for the rise of techno-authoritarianism from a government beholden to green-left identitarianism, as also misguided. Further, like the angst on the left, it doesn’t naturally lead to an essential focus on modest, relocalised individual, household and community level responses in the context of rising levels of social and economic dysfunction and widespread corruption in the state-corporate nexus.

Permaculture diversity, modesty and resilience

While permaculture networks are not free of these divisive differences of interpretation – of both local and global events – permaculture starts with the individual, household, small business and community level actions that support local abundance and resilience in the face of change. From its origin on the post-bushfire slopes of Mt Wellington (Kunanyi), Hobart, half a century ago, permaculture has always included designs to plan, mitigate and recover from the adverse impacts of natural (and human-generated) disasters. While permaculture has no silver bullets, it provides a framework of ethics and design principles to draw together diverse strategies, techniques and behaviours, be they from indigenous and vernacular traditions or modern innovation, that can contribute to retrofitting our ecologies and habitats for more challenging times. This I characterise as the ‘energy descent future’.

As a long-affluent urbanised nation, Australia is no exemplar in either maintaining or rebuilding those capacities in wildfire vulnerable communities. Beyond being the origin of permaculture, I believe many regions around the world experiencing enhanced wildfire hazard and impacts can learn a lot from our country where the hazards have been longstanding and pervasive. At Melliodora Publishing we are committed to keeping the work of the late Joan Webster in print as the most useful distillation of how everyone can build greater confidence in surviving and thriving in regions afflicted by this most terrifying of nature’s processes. Webster’s work is distilled from hard evidence over many decades, and is empowering, independent of whether one believes wildfire is a sign of climate change, collapsing community capacity and know-how, dysfunction and incompetence of professionalism, nefarious elites stealing high value real estate, or God punishing us for our own evil ways as some in the US believe. In a world of accelerating uncertainties, I believe we need to focus on fostering abundance and resilience wherever we can, establishing trust and relationships with those around us, especially in our neighbourhoods, while keeping an eye out for forces both local and over the horizon that threaten our modest actions and yields.

David Holmgren
Permaculture co-originator
Melliodora
January 2025