Wildfires have been raging in Los Angeles for days. When will they end?
By Eric Levenson, CNN
(CNN) — It’s been less than a week since the year’s first wildfire embers raced through the air over Los Angeles, carried by hurricane-level Santa Ana wind gusts to spark some of the deadliest wildfires California has ever seen.
The Palisades Fire started Tuesday, and by the end of Wednesday it had burned more than 17,000 acres.
And in the days since, Angelenos have rallied to help those who lost everything, even as they remained on high alert, a wind gust away from potential catastrophe.
Now, with the Palisades blaze and the nearby Eaton fire still mostly uncontained, renewed Santa Ana winds threaten to enlarge those blazes or even start new ones. So when will these fires end? And what do firefighters need to get the upper hand?
“We need Mother Nature to give us a break,” Deputy Chief Brice Bennett of Cal Fire told CNN on Sunday. “We have the firefighters. We have the water. We need the time.”
LIVE UPDATES: At least 24 killed as returning winds threaten to undo progress
When these fires might end is only part of the uncertainty ahead. The longer-term question of how to recover from fiery devastation in a world of increasingly extreme weather disasters has no satisfying solution. Exhausted, emotionally tapped and expecting additional red flag warnings to start the week, the city is steeling itself for the unfathomable.
In the immediate future, trying to estimate when the wildfires will be contained is largely guesswork, and it depends on fluid factors such as the terrain and firefighter effectiveness. Yet the foremost factors are clear: wind and rain, or the lack thereof.
“The weather plays a driving factor in all this because they’ve been in critical fire behavior for so long,” said Joe Ten Eyck, the wildfire/urban-interface fire programs coordinator for the International Association of Fire Fighters. “They’re making good headway out here but they’re going back into fire weather warnings again because Santa Ana winds are supposed to come back – there’s no precipitation in sight for at least the next 10 days, according to all the weather models.”
The next few days will prove critical to the firefighting effort, with dry weather and strong winds expected to continue before temperatures cool toward the end of the week, according to the National Weather Service. There’s even a chance of light rain next week, according to the weather service.
Even when the fires do end, the recovery will be lengthy, and the threat of ever more fire never far away in drought-stricken California. Less than two weeks into 2025, more than 100 fires have burned nearly 40,000 acres, a massive increase compared to the five-year average at this point of 46 fires burning 13 acres.
“These numbers underscore the urgency of being prepared,” CalFire said. “Now more than ever, it’s critical to harden your home against wildfires and create defensible space around your property. Simple steps like clearing dry vegetation, maintaining a buffer zone, and using fire-resistant building materials can make a difference.”
More broadly, this fire has raised overarching questions about how the region can possibly recover and whether it can prepare for similar eruptions in the coming years in a heating world. A CNN review of government reports and interviews with more than a dozen experts suggests this level of devastation could have been minimized but may just be the new normal in an era of climate-related calamities.
The weeks ahead
For the blazes around Los Angeles County, including the Palisades and Eaton fires, the weather forecast will be key to their immediate futures.
A Red Flag Warning, which means there are likely “critical fire weather conditions,” is in place for Los Angeles and Ventura counties through 6 p.m. Wednesday. The more extreme conditions are due to “moderate to locally strong Santa Ana winds,” according to the weather service.
Though winds eased for part of the day Sunday, they picked up again and are forecast to be moderate to strong through at least Wednesday, Rich Thompson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said Sunday afternoon.
“The very dry vegetation combined with the prolonged extreme fire weather conditions will support rapid spread and erratic behavior of any new or existing fires,” the warning said.
Red Flag Warnings are also in place for other parts of Southern California, including inland Orange County and the Inland Empire, the areas just south and east of Los Angeles.
Firefighters and experts told CNN on Saturday the Santa Ana winds could blow westward toward the coast — which could cause the Palisades Fire, which had been shifting east, to blow back on itself — helping tame the fire by forcing it onto land that’s already been burned with little fuel left.
Firefighting efforts could be further aided by the end of the week when temperatures cool, humidity rises and the winds ease, and by next week with a potential light rain.
“The concern is, before we get to that point, we’ve got those winds that are expected to go back up again,” CNN Meteorologist Allison Chinchar said.
The rainy season in California is generally December through March. But this year the rain has yet to really begin, with only 0.01 of an inch of rain recorded in LA since December 1.
California’s wildfire history offers hints as to how long wildfires generally last. Some of the deadliest fires in the state’s history were contained within days, while others in rural areas burned for several months.
The fires with the state’s highest death tolls have had a relatively limited time span. The 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest in state history with 85 killed, stopped burning after 18 days. The second-deadliest fire, the 1933 Griffith Park blaze, killed 29 people in just two days, and the Tunnel-Oakland Hills Fire in 1991, which left 25 people dead, stretched just five days.
Other wildfires burned for months. The 2020 North Complex Fire started August 17 and burned nearly 319,000 acres until it was fully contained December 3 — a total of 109 days. Similarly, the August Complex Fire started just a day earlier, on August 16, and burned more than 1 million acres until November 12 — a total of 89 days.
Further, a wildfire can be fully “contained” within certain boundaries but continue to burn. The Mendocino Complex Fire began July 27, 2018, and was 100% contained on September 18. Yet hot spots within that boundary smoldered for several more months until it was fully extinguished on January 4, 2019.
The years ahead
Once the wildfires are contained, their impact will remain for years to come.
Afterward will come a search for survivors, efforts to identify victims and the start of the cleanup.
Approximately 105,000 residents are under evacuation orders and roughly 87,000 residents are under evacuation warnings, LA County Sheriff Robert Luna said at a news conference Sunday. Residents won’t be allowed to return to the area until Thursday, after the Red Flag Warning is over, he said.
“Driving around some of these areas, they literally look like war zones. There are downed power poles, electric wires. There are still some smoldering fires. It is not safe,” he said Sunday. “We want to get you back into your homes, but we can’t allow that until it is safe for you to do so.”
The fires that destroyed the town of Lahaina in Maui, Hawaii, in August 2023 offer one perspective on the possible coming timeline. Earlier this month, the debris removal efforts for residential properties was completed, while debris removal from commercial and public lots is expected to be finished next month.
Overall, the official Maui Recovers website offers a “short-term” plan for the next one to two years, a “mid-term” plan of three to five years and a “long-term” plan of six or more years.
The “Herculean effort” of removing debris will begin once inspectors assess and document the damage to thousands of homes, California Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN’s Kyung Lah on Sunday.
Removing all the debris and toxic material left behind as homes and buildings burned will likely take between six and nine months, according to the governor. The process is complicated by toxic waste, as well as the need to remove debris which will be compatible with the rebuilding effort, he said.
“I’m for efficiency, transparency, moving forward in a cost-efficient manner,” he said. “And then being accountable to the next step again, which is not just scraping, cleaning things up, but getting the rebuild going.”
As for the global scale, extreme weather phenomena such as wildfires have become more common, more destructive and more deadly due to human-caused climate change.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency rated Los Angeles County as “the most susceptible county in the United States to natural disasters,” according to a recent county progress report on an initiative launched in 2023 to create “climate ready communities and infrastructure” given these increased risks.
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CNN’s Jessie Yeung, Zoe Sottile and CNN Meteorologist Gene Norman contributed to this report.
