Impacts of the California Wildfires

Firefighters from around the country—and the world—have converged on California to battle the devastating wildfires that began earlier this month. Over 50,000 acres have been burned, and several of the fires continue to burn. Associate Professor and Chair of American Studies Kevin Rozario, who is the author of Culture of Calamity: Disaster and the Making of America, recently took a moment to discuss the impact of the fires and how, amidst the devastation, they may provide a “moment for real reflection about class inequality.”

There’s been a lot of talk online about the lack of attention to climate change and its role in the fires thus far. Do you think it’s most useful to view these fires as a natural disaster or more of a human-made one?

I think the answer is both. There have been massive fires in that part of the country for millennia—that hasn’t changed. But there’s no denying that the fires we’re experiencing now are off the charts, and that’s got everything to do with patterns of human development in these spaces. The human component is a massive accelerant to the fires.

We need to be asking why so many people are clustered in such an ecologically volatile and, for humans, unsustainable place. We also need to interrogate the systemic economic, political, and cultural factors encouraging people to build houses and structures—incredibly flammable ones full of petro-chemical materials, too—in these areas. It seems impossible to deny that climate change is increasing the scale and ferocity of the fires. The carbon that our industrialized society is pumping into the atmosphere is warming the atmosphere and the ground and increasing aridity, and therefore intensifying the heat of fires and reducing the water that is required to combat them.

What are your thoughts on the media’s coverage of the fires? Has their work been solid, or has it left something to be desired?

That’s a big question. When a major disaster occurs, it’s so shocking, so traumatic, so significant, that everyone wants to understand what caused it, what it means, what the lessons are, and so forth. In terms of the way that disasters have been represented historically in the United States, there’s always media coverage, but it also means that there’s massive amounts of disinformation around them. Today, there are fake AI-generated images being circulated, there are all sorts of claims being made about what’s going on, many that are demonstrably false. One of the things that’s really interesting to me is that Governor Newsom established an official California fire fact-checking website to combat misinformation. The authorities are still dealing with the fires, but they’re also having to put attention into managing media misinformation around them.

At the same time, there’s been plenty of really impressive reporting around the fires; journalists are getting into the spaces and trying to understand and document what’s going on. And many are trying to look beyond reporting what is happening on the ground to asking big questions about the environmental and social dimensions of the disaster.

How different do you think the public’s reactions would have been had the fires not affected both celebrities and private citizens?

Disasters are already spectacular media magnets, and [the fires] have played out differently than other disasters we’ve seen recently such as hurricanes and floods in the Southeast. You throw celebrities into the mix and these stories are suddenly being told not just in regular news spaces, but also in entertainment media spaces. Some victims are people that many Americans already feel they know, or at least know about, and this seems to be making the fire more personal for many across the country who are experiencing the disaster through media coverage. Interestingly, however, there are some signs that there has been less sympathy for the losses borne by celebrities than in previous L.A. fires.

We’ve all seen reports about celebrities and the wealthy using private firefighters to protect themselves and their property without regard to the larger community, and this seems to be fueling some resentment. Given that we’re just coming out of an election where class-based and outrage-fueled populism has been on the front pages, my expectation is that the L.A. fires will become a moment for real reflection about class inequality. And keep in mind that all of this is happening within the context of a huge homelessness crisis already in L.A. and California.

Because disasters often afflict rich and poor alike, they have often historically been unifying events. And certainly we have seen many moments of community solidarity and mutual aid during the fires. But at the same time, the L.A. fires seem to be amplifying social conflicts. Even as the fires are raging, they are feeding stories about class and racial inequality and adding an extra level of intensity to those conversations.

You wrote the lead essay in The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster. In that vein, how do you see California recovering from the wildfires? What lessons could be learned from disasters like this?

It’s a complicated question. On the one hand, L.A., like other American cities that have been devastated by major disasters, will be rebuilt because individuals will work to restore their homes and businesses, and a combination of insurance, disaster relief, state and municipal funds, and savings will provide funding. But any reconstruction will likely be heavily influenced by differentials of money and power.

From the 20th century onwards, disasters have really become opportunities for people who have a lot of economic power to take advantage of crisis conditions to push through political changes and development changes that serve their financial interests. Naomi Klein calls this “disaster capitalism.” At the same time, L.A.’s recovery is also going to become highly politicized, much more so than past disasters where there was general agreement that all Americans should come together to help any other region in need. We’re already seeing Republican members of Congress saying things like, “We should not provide disaster relief to California. They brought it upon themselves,” in order to advance partisan political agendas. And when we are making predictions about recovery, we should also keep in mind that we don’t know how many more fires will happen over the next year.

As far as lessons go, I think it’s complicated. There’s a common sense expectation that when disasters happen, we should figure out what caused them, and try to rebuild in ways that reduce future risks. But that’s not really how cities have been rebuilt in the past. There are too many interests involved, and in the end the cities that emerge often owe more to lawsuits, zoning codes, private property interests, corporate leverage, political struggles, and opportunism than any high-minded attempt to build better and safer—even though there will no doubt be plenty of conversations about fire-proofing building codes, just as there have been about earthquake-proofing in this seismically volatile region.

How do you think we decide what’s considered to be “untouchable” or “too soon” when it comes to what media and popular culture does with moments like this? Essentially, how soon do you think it’ll be before a movie or TV series is made about the wildfires?

I think it’ll happen very quickly. Even in the 19th century, whenever there was a disaster, some sort of entertainment would be hot on its heels. After the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906, troupes would go around the country reenacting the disaster and there were movies made. Recognizing a public appetite for representations of destruction, newspapers and culture makers alike jumped on the bandwagon, sometimes dramatizing the story in ways they thought were responsible or educational, but often just to try and make a buck.

After 9/11, which was a different type of disaster, there was a moment of broad consensus that the horrifying event couldn’t really be represented in anything other than a news format because exploiting it for commercial entertainment seemed insensitive and unethical. But now we are already seeing comedians on talk shows sharing anecdotes about the fire, and no doubt movies will soon be in production to capitalize on public interest.

Of course, media itself has changed so much in the past generation, especially with the rise of social media. We are already seeing memes, posts, and videos from ordinary people who are trying to make sense of events or just trying to get attention. Some posts are highly political, and include willful misinformation to push ideological agendas, some play on the sensational and spectacular appeal of disaster in order to get clicks, and some are really heartfelt and thoughtful, drawing attention to ordinary stories that are overlooked in the news media. What is clear is that the L.A. fires have become a staging ground for culture wars and storytelling that has a great deal to teach us about our times.