“This is not really an if, but a when.”

With record-breaking wildfires burning in Los Angeles this January, the fear of a similar potential disaster looms over the Bay Area now more than ever.

According to Palo Alto High School science teacher Nicole Loomis, the parallels of Bay Area environmental conditions to Southern California should alarm the local community.

“Unfortunately that [wildfire risk] is kind of just the reality,” Loomis said. “This is the chaparral, fire is normal, and we’ve decided to build a bunch of human settlements that are not fire resistant, and then have energy infrastructure that compounds the risk with [power] lines that are above ground.”

Northern California has a history of fires like the 1991 Oakland Firestorm, which was compounded by the same issues that propelled the Los Angeles fire. Loomis said that since the unprecedented Oakland fire came rolling down the hills into a highly populated area, there is a high chance of a similar emergency hitting Palo Alto and Los Altos Hills, especially given the energy infrastructure in the Bay Area.

In recent years, the City of Palo Alto has been working to address the root environmental issue of fire-prone vegetation by cleaning dangerous trees that would catch on fire easily.

“For example, eucalypus trees are basically a tinderbox,” Palo Alto City Council member and former mayor Greer Stone said. “So we’ve got a lot of clearing of eucalyptus trees in vulnerable areas up in the Foothills and along Page Mill Road.”

Additionally, the city has worked extensively on implementing technology and other measures to prevent the outbreak of wildfires.

“We installed a dozen of these new sensors that really are incorporating cutting edge technology and AI software into the Foothills,” Stone said. “They will be able to sense and alert us if a fire breaks out in our most vulnerable places within Palo Alto, which will give us a significant advantage to be able to respond as quickly as possible.”

In the unfortunate event that a fire does spread in Palo Alto, our fire department needs the necessary resources to fight it. According to Stone, Fire Station No. 4 on Middlefield does not have a fire engine, but Stone is actively collaborating with local agencies to get them these resources and hire more firefighters.

Stone said that Palo Alto has a temporary fire department stationed in the fire-prone region of the Foothills. Beyond local first responders, we also have resources across the county to help us in the event of an emergency.

“We have really great partnerships, both regionally and across the state, to be able to come to Palo Alto aid if we need it,” Stone said. “We have a mutual agreement with other fire departments within the region, similar to what we have with law enforcement, that if there is a significant event that requires more resources than what the City of Palo Alto has, we’d be able to have a county fire response.”

Despite these efforts, fires are becoming more and more unpredictable. According to the Western Fire Chiefs Association, Northern California’s peak fire season is usually from June to November, with Southern California’s peak fire season beginning earlier in May. However, as climate change increases, the concept of a fire season has begun to change.

“We’ve now entered an era where we are in a fire season, 24/7, 365 days out of the year,” Stone said.

Loomis agrees, expanding on how climate change has been affecting the frequency of fires across the country.

“Fire season is definitely expanding,” Loomis said. “That’s been happening all over the U.S., we’ve even had fires on the East Coast this year.  … It’s so wet over there, so it’s very unusual to actually have fires. So, it’s definitely shifting. As you increase the temperature, as you change precipitation patterns, you’re going to have the impacts of that, where you might have increased drought in some places, and that’s going to make your fire risk worse.”

In addition to a year-round fire season, climate change has caused La Niña weather changes to occur more frequently, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. La Niña is the ‘warm phase’ of a natural climate pattern, which among other things causes winters to be hotter and drier, fueling more frequent wildfires.

“They haven’t really worked out exactly why climate change is causing it [La Niña], but it’s cycling faster,” Loomis said. “ It has to do with wind directions, ocean currents, it’s a very complex system, and we’re messing with that system. We’re changing the temperature of the atmosphere, and that’s going to propagate all the way through that system and have impacts.”

The severity of the Los Angeles wildfires are driven by the naturally dry desert chaparral climate of Southern California, strong Santa Ana winds, and the impacts of La Niña weather, according to Loomis. Additionally, there has been an abnormally small amount of rainfall this winter.

“[When] you add on the Santa Ana winds, which blow really hot, dry air from the desert out to the ocean — instead of the other way, which is normal — you get this really dry vegetation which makes excellent wildfire fuel,” Loomis said. “Any kind of a spark is going to cause a problem.”

Loomis recommends that residents fireproof their houses in the meantime.

“If you’ve got a wood roof, maybe it’s time to swap that out for something that doesn’t burn so easily,” Loomis said. “If you’ve got natural gas, make sure you know how to turn it off in the event of a disaster like an earthquake or a fire.”

However, despite the heightened risks, Stone is hopeful that Palo Alto will do its best to prevent the possibility of a wildfire.

“Moving forward, we [the city] will really think of this as both a public safety issue, but also part of our climate strategy,” Stone said. “I’m optimistic that both Palo Alto and the region are taking this seriously, and we are going to do everything we can to be able to keep the community safe.”