wildfires

The shutdown of the U.S. government has brought work determined by the Trump administration to be “nonessential” to a halt across the country as thousands of federal employees have been furloughed and ordered not to do their jobs.

The shutdown — the first in six years — began late Tuesday and could last days if not weeks. Many employees may not return to work at all, as the White House’s Office of Management and Budget recently advised federal agencies to prepare for mass layoffs in the event of a shutdown.

While much of the fallout remains to be seen, federal agencies that deal with wildfires, weather and disaster response — including the U.S. Forest Service, the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Environmental Protection Agency — expect to see some impacts.

Here’s what we know:

The U.S. Forest Service will shut down activities on more than 193 million acres of land across 46 states, including at least 154 national forests, according to the agency’s most recent contingency plan, published in September. Hundreds of recreational sites and facilities will be closed, while work on operations such as timber sales and restoration projects will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

The Forest Service — the largest federal firefighting entity in the country — will continue its work geared toward responding to and preparing for wildfires, according to the plan. However, the agency will reduce some work related to fire prevention, including prescribed burns and the treatment of vegetation to reduce fire risk.

What’s more, the shutdown will delay state grants for forest management and wildland fire preparedness; delay reimbursement for ongoing forest management work on non-federal lands; and may affect states’ ability to train firefighters and acquire necessary equipment, among other impacts, the plan says.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection works closely with the Forest Service to manage fire preparation and response. Cal Fire officials said it does not anticipate any impacts to its ability to respond to blazes, and that the agency is fully staffed.

However, effects may be seen when it comes to federal grant programs that support fire prevention work in the state. For example, private property owners in California who rely on federal funds to conduct vegetation reduction work or create defensible space on their land may have to “front the money themselves” while they await reimbursement said Jesse Torres, deputy chief of communications with Cal Fire.

“The other thing is there are a lot of unknowns,” Torres said. “We don’t know what this is going to look like — is it going to be two days, two weeks, two months?”

Other agencies that play key roles in California’s disaster response and preparation — including the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency — are largely deemed essential and will face fewer interruptions, according to their contingency plans.

“We are still operating in our core mission function and providing most of our normal services,” said Ryan Kittell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard. That includes weather forecasts and extreme weather watches and warnings.

“The things that we do for public safety will continue as normal,” Kittell said.

About 84% of FEMA employees, meanwhile, are exempt from shutdown-related furloughs, according to its plan, which provides few additional details about which operations will cease or proceed.

Officials with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said FEMA staff have advised them that they will continue to make payments for existing disaster declarations made by President Trump, but there’s no guarantee that new or additional disaster declarations or funding will be made available.

FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund — the main source of funding for response and recovery efforts following major disasters — is also running low and is not likely to be replenished during the shutdown. It requires congressional approval for additional funds.

What’s more, FEMA, the National Weather Service and the Forest Service have already been affected by significant budget cuts and layoffs this year as part of the Trump administration’s larger reorganization of the federal government, which it says will help save taxpayers money.

These agencies, including NWS’ parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have lost thousands of employees to layoffs and buyouts and have experienced reduced operations, grant cancellations and the closure of offices and research arms.

The same is true for the EPA, which has undergone staff cuts and layoffs in addition to a considerable shift in its organizational priorities. The nation’s top environmental agency has spent the last several months loosening regulations that govern air and water quality, electric vehicle initiatives, pollution monitoring and greenhouse gas reporting, among other changes.

Experts said the shutdown could further weaken the EPA’s capabilities, as nearly all of its employees — about 90% — will be furloughed. While the EPA’s imminent disaster response work will continue, such as work on oil spills and chemical releases, longer-term efforts including research projects and facility inspections will halt, according to the agency.

Meanwhile, H.D. Palmer, a spokesman with the California Department of Finance, said impacts to the California EPA’s environmental programs should be minimal if the shutdown is brief, but that problems could arise if it drags on long enough to create backlogs and funding lapses.

The average length of government shutdowns over the last 50 years was seven days, Palmer said. However, he noted that the most recent federal shutdown from December 2018 to January 2019 — during Trump’s first term — lasted 35 days.

SANTA ROSA, Calif. — On a hill in Sonoma County, François Piccin yearns to return home.

In fall 2017, Piccin and his wife lost their ranch house when the Tubbs fire roared through Northern California’s famed wine region. Contractors found themselves in high demand and overbooked, and the one the couple hired abandoned the project halfway through. In the time it took to find a new builder, the price tag rose by a third to $2.4 million, forcing the Piccins to sell a rental property they owned to pay the bill.

The home remains unfinished and their lives unsettled.

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“Financially, what we’ve done doesn’t make sense,” said Piccin, 66, standing this summer amid cardboard delivery boxes and stray cabinet drawers in his future kitchen. “But emotionally, psychologically, it is a mandate. We need to have this done to be able to close a chapter and turn the page.”

Over the last eight years, wildfires have burned down more houses than at any other time in California history. From the Piccins’ property in wine country to foothills below the Sierra Nevada to canyons overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the wreckage stubbornly resists recovery.

François Piccin has been attempting to rebuild his home since the 2017 Tubbs fire but had significant problems with his contractor. He now has a new contractor and is almost finished.

To better understand what Los Angeles might expect after January’s fires, The Times examined the five other most destructive wildfires from this period to document how communities have responded in the wake of disaster.

In total, nearly 22,500 homes were lost in the five blazes, which occurred from 2017 to 2020. Just 8,400 — 38% — had been rebuilt as of April per the Times analysis.

It’s not for lack of trying. In more than 50 interviews, wildfire-affected homeowners and renters, builders, academics, aid workers and government officials described the myriad ways rebuilding has failed. Insurance came up short. Construction costs soared. Red tape stifled. Life intervened. The desire of many fire survivors to return to their homes ran aground amid the challenges.

Now, with 13,000 homes lost this year in Los Angeles County, these experiences offer a scope into the future. Immediately after the blazes, the neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades and Altadena vowed to come back as they were before. Elected officials promised to do everything in their power to make that happen. But the same was said when the earlier fires reduced other areas to rubble.

Scars from the 2020 North Complex fire remain in Berry Creek.

Not all communities devastated by wildfire have struggled the same, the Times analysis shows. Some have rebounded. Almost 80% of the 4,700 homes burned down in the Tubbs fire have returned. Other places remain deserted. The 2020 North Complex fire destroyed 1,500 homes in Berry Creek and nearby rural areas in the pine forests of Butte County. Seventy-two have been rebuilt.

The differences in the pace of construction reveal patterns. Wealthier, flat, suburban areas have tended to rebuild faster than poorer, hilly, rural areas.

But affluence and urbanity haven’t always played decisive roles. In the middle-class neighborhood of Coffey Park in Santa Rosa, 93% of property owners have rebuilt after the Tubbs fire, The Times found. That rate is almost 20 percentage points higher than the wealthier nearby community of Fountaingrove. More homes have returned after the 2018 Carr fire in Redding and surrounding old mining towns in Shasta County than after the similarly destructive Woolsey fire, which affected Malibu and coastal L.A. County the same year.

Homeowners’ decision to rebuild is highly individualized. Tangible issues, including their insurance coverage and savings, mix with intangibles like family dynamics, the trauma of losing a home and the deluge of choices needed to build a new one. Whatever control fire survivors have over these variables, they have none over many others, such as construction costs, mortgage rates and the restoration of public infrastructure. Even how a fire began matters. When private utilities are at fault, the resulting payouts can make it easier to construct a replacement. But that’s not the case with fires attributed to natural causes.

Indeed, permit applications rose each time survivors of the 2018 Camp fire received installments from a settlement with Pacific Gas & Electric, whose power lines caused the blaze that burned down nearly 14,000 homes in Butte County. North Complex survivors received no such payout. Lightning started that fire.

Many residents initially intent on rebuilding and returning to their properties gave up and decided to move on.

Fountaingrove neighborhood in Santa Rosa eight years after Tubbs fire. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Richard and Pamela Klein spent nearly $200,000 on plans to build a replacement house atop a winding road in Fountaingrove. The terrain made for arduous access to their property and their contractor told them building costs would soar unless they convinced their neighbors to let them truck materials through their then-empty lots. The Kleins offered to pay for the privilege, but the neighbors didn’t agree. Two and a half years after the Tubbs fire, the couple sold their one-acre parcel and moved to the Lake Tahoe area.

“If we knew that we were going to face these hurdles up front, we wouldn’t have even thought of rebuilding,” said Richard Klein, 65.

Though devastated L.A. neighborhoods look more like those that burned in the Tubbs fire than in the mountainous country of the North Complex, experts say that no matter the circumstances property owners and politicians vastly underestimate the time, difficulty and expense of rebuilding.

Home construction on Hartzell Street in the Alphabet Streets neighborhood of Pacific Palisades in August.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s a marathon sprint,” said Andrew Rumbach, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Urban Institute, where he studies disaster response. “It’s going to take a really long time and it’s going to be really intense for a very long time.”

When rebuilds go fast

A month after the Carr fire devoured his home in Redding, Mark Chitwood believed his rebuild was moving too slowly.

He couldn’t get ahold of his insurance adjuster, so he searched for phone numbers of company executives. He found one and unloaded his grievances on her.

Ed Bledsoe, 76, surveying his Redding home and belongings destroyed by the Carr fire in August 2018.

(Los Angeles Times)

“To say the least, I was a little pissed off,” said Chitwood, 64. “I’m not one to sit around and wait for things to happen.”

Within days, a new adjuster arrived. The check followed and Chitwood got going. A local Realtor, Chitwood and a contractor friend had built 120 new houses together, including, only four years before the fire, his home and others in the upscale Land Park subdivision. The house’s foundation survived, so Chitwood kept the same footprint, redesigned the interior and hired his friend to do the work.

In March 2019, just eight months after the blaze, Chitwood entered a finished three-bedroom house, one of the fastest rebuilds in any of the five fires analyzed by The Times.

When he walked into his new living room and sank into his new recliner it felt like home again.

Chitwood’s story ticks many of the boxes recovery experts say are needed to return rapidly. Living in a subdivision with houses close together allowed debris cleanup to move efficiently. His insurance paid out in full with only the brief delay. His prior experience building houses gave him a huge advantage navigating the process.

“For me, it was easy to do,” Chitwood said. “A lot of people were overwhelmed.”

The reasons individual homeowners and entire neighborhoods can rebuild fast after fires come down to personal circumstance and community dynamics. People with high incomes or substantial savings have clear advantages, but that’s not all that matters.

Few empty lots remain in the neighborhood of Coffey Park, where local advocacy groups expedited the rebuilding process after the 2017 Tubbs fire.

Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park and Fountaingrove neighborhoods saw most of their development in the 1980s and ‘90s, the former made up of planned subdivisions with look-alike starter homes and the latter a hilly refuge for luxury custom living.

In October 2017, the Tubbs fire blazed through Fountaingrove before jumping the 101 Freeway to Coffey Park. It wiped out both areas, taking a similar number of homes in each and 2,700 between them.

Fountaingrove’s relative affluence didn’t mean residents returned more quickly. Like the Kleins, many struggled with the logistics of building custom homes on large, irregularly shaped lots amid sloping terrain.

An October 2017 aerial view of homes destroyed by the Tubbs fire in the Mark West community in Sonoma County.

(Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

By contrast, Coffey Park is flat and divided into compact, similarly sized parcels. The layout provided an incentive for homebuilders to develop a handful of models that could fit on most properties. Builders had multiple homes under construction at the same time, allowing them to work quickly and at scale with little lag time between jobs across the cul-de-sacs. The process provided more predictable costs and timelines for builders and residents, and opened opportunities unimaginable in the hills across the freeway.

Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park has seen more progress rebuilding than wealthier Fountaingrove

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City of Santa Rosa, California Department of Fire Protection and Forestry, U.S. Census, U.S. Geological Survey

Sean Greene LOS ANGELES TIMES

Before the fire, Jeff Okrepkie and his wife were Coffey Park renters. They wanted to remain in the neighborhood and planned to use the money they received from their renters insurance as a down payment on a new house. Various prospects fell through until Okrepkie noticed that a builder had purchased a lot on their old street to store materials for other homes under construction.

The builder and Okrepkie worked out a deal: He’d select a design from the builder’s catalog of homes and buy the property once all the construction, including theirs, was complete. They signed a contract and Okrepkie eagerly watched its progress in the construction pipeline.

“I was house number 82,” Okrepkie said. “I found out where 81 was and I would go see what they were doing and say, ‘Oh, they’re doing windows? Cool, I’m getting windows next week.’’’

Okrepkie’s family, which by then included two young children, moved in 2½ years after the fire.

Coffey Park residents gathering in October 2018 for a “Wine Wednesday” on Scarlett Place during rebuilding after the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa.

(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Unlike in Fountaingrove’s spread-out hills, rebuilding in Coffey Park become a communal event. Soon after the fire, Okrepkie and neighbors formed a group called Coffey Strong. The organization advocated for area survivors, served as a sounding board to vet contractors and, at times, functioned as group therapy. For years, neighbors would hold weekly get-togethers, at first on burned-out lots and later at housewarming parties. They called the gatherings “Wine Wednesdays,” a name that captured their imbibing and venting.

The organization operated as a virtuous circle for rebuilding, encouraging residents to keep going, said Okrepkie, 46.

“Indirect social pressure existed,” said Okrepkie, who has since been elected to the Santa Rosa City Council. “Like, ‘I don’t want to be the last one in.’ The thing you tend to really miss is your community.”

Coffey Park’s location provided an additional advantage over Fountaingrove when it came to insurance. Before the fire, insurance in Coffey Park was more affordable because the neighborhood was considered at lower risk of burning. Combined with lower property values and cheaper rebuilds, many Coffey Park residents had purchased enough coverage to finance their return, as noted by Grist reporter Jake Bittle. The topography of Fountaingrove was a significant fire hazard. No matter its relative wealth, the significant expense of insuring high-value homes in a high-risk neighborhood meant that homeowners there had lesser coverage. Payouts were too small to pay for their costlier, custom rebuilds.

Racing the insurance clock

Insurance companies had to provide coverage for temporary living expenses for two years, which meant that if Tubbs survivors were going to return, many needed to do so relatively quickly. Coffey Strong later lobbied for a change in state law that required companies to cover such expenses for three years in future fires.

Without that private subsidy, survivors would have to pay the mortgage on their destroyed property and the rent for their temporary housing — on top of any gaps in construction costs not covered by insurance for the new home.

City officials were acutely aware of the insurance deadline, said Gabe Osburn, Santa Rosa’s director of planning and economic development. Osburn said the city gave homeowners breaks on many rules, including reducing fees and landscaping requirements, to help people meet the target.

“It was two years or bust,” Osburn said. “We were working under that timeline. If we don’t get this done in two years, then they’re going to sell the property.”

Osburn said it was important to city officials not only that homes were rebuilt, but also that original owners could come back. Structures don’t make up a neighborhood’s character, he said, the people who live there do.

“You really want to maintain the fabric of your community,” he said.

The two-year mark fell squarely in the largest surge of construction in Santa Rosa and elsewhere after the Tubbs fire. Nearly 60% of all the houses that have been rebuilt were finished between 1 1/2 and 3 1/2 years following the blaze, The Times found. Over the nine-month peak of rebuilding, more than three families a day were moving back into their homes.

Few empty lots remain in the neighborhood of Coffey Park, where local advocacy groups expedited the rebuilding process after the 2017 Tubbs fire.

The dearth of construction after the North Complex fire makes it an outlier. But although the pace and extent of building after the Carr, Camp and Woolsey fires have been slower and smaller than after Tubbs, a general pattern has held. In all of them, it took seven to nine months for the first house to be completed. Development rose from there and reached its monthly peak between the second and third year. By year four, progress dropped significantly.

This consistency in the trajectory of rebuilding indicates that permitting stagnation is attributable to the passage of time rather than declining once a certain percentage of homes are rebuilt.

For instance, a majority of the 1,100 houses lost in the Carr fire remain vacant lots seven years later. Of properties with rebuilt homes, about half were occupied between 14 months and 2 1/2 years after the blaze. Now, new completions have trickled to fewer than three a month, less than 20% of that peak period.

Why rebuilds stall

Weeks after the Camp fire destroyed swaths of Butte County in November 2018, Pat Butler returned to her five-acre property in the rolling hills of Concow.

At first, she stayed in a 19-foot metal travel trailer that hadn’t burned. Living off the grid like many in the area, Butler, then 65, was lucky one of her water tanks survived so she could bathe. Her bathroom became a toilet she fastened on top of her septic tank outside and exposed for her neighbors to see — had any of them come back.

Pat Butler has lived on her rural property for nearly three decades. All but one small structure burned in the Camp fire. She moved back within a month and years later with assistance of nonprofits began rebuilding.

Alyssa Hofman, left, of the Tiny Pine Foundation designed and helped build Pat Butler’s new home.

Butler was uninsured. She received assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but it wasn’t enough to start on a new home. She remained in the trailer for two years.

Eventually, an aid group got Butler a camper where she set up rudimentary solar panels and built a porch. With the help of more private aid, the rebuilding process began.

They poured the foundation for her 400-square-foot home on May 12, 2023, a date Butler commemorated in the cement. Every few months, volunteers would come two weeks at a time from Connecticut, Hawaii, Michigan and Washington to assist with the framing, siding and painting. In between, Butler and a local charity worker worked on the house themselves.

She moved in Christmas Eve.

“This past winter was the first in six years that my feet were warm,” said Butler, now 71.

Pat Butler moved into her rebuilt home last Christmas Eve. “This past winter was the first in six years that my feet were warm,” she said.

Butler could stay because of her dedication to her land and the private assistance she received. But for the vast majority of fire survivors in poor, rural areas, the obstacles to rebuilding have been too great.

Many faced the same challenges with topography that those in Fountaingrove did, but without the financial resources to make up for it. Multiple studies have shown that those living in rural areas are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured. And a lack of essential infrastructure only has added to the hurdles.

Nowhere are the disparities between suburban and rural more clear than in the aftermath of the Carr fire. Redding residents had higher incomes and better insurance than survivors from the unincorporated areas of Shasta County, said Rebecca Ewert, a Northwestern University sociologist who wrote her PhD thesis on Carr fire recovery.

Rebuilding homeowners in Redding also had access to a central sewer system, had their electricity restored by the local utility and street repairs handled by the city. Many residents of unincorporated communities had none of these, Ewert said. Instead, they had to pay upward of tens of thousands of dollars to fix damaged septic systems, reinstall their own power poles and repave the asphalt melted from private roads.

“There were so many additional steps and costs that people in the rural areas had to navigate before even starting to rebuild,” Ewert said.

The Times data show the results of the inequities. Nearly three-quarters of the 260 homes the Carr fire destroyed in Redding have been rebuilt. In unincorporated Shasta County, where 817 houses burned down, fewer than 40% have returned.

Rebuilding after the Camp fire has been even slower, and not only because of the challenges affecting rural areas.

The wildfire remains by far the most destructive in state history, with more homes burned down than the two January blazes in Los Angeles combined. Besides Concow and other sparsely populated unincorporated communities in Butte County, the fire wiped out the 26,000-person town of Paradise. Unprecedented public works and economic problems were left in its wake.

It took two years just to begin cutting down 50,000 dead and dying trees from properties in the burn scar. Paradise’s roads made it through the fire but didn’t survive the cleanup. The parade of dump trucks carting out tons of wreckage buckled the streets; repaving operations continue today. Paradise’s hospital, the town’s largest employer, shuttered permanently, dealing a blow to the jobs and the tax base unlike any faced by survivors of the Tubbs fire in wine country and Woolsey fire in Los Angeles.

The hurdles have fueled a mass exodus. Nearly five years post-fire, property owners were twice as likely to have sold their land as rebuilt their homes, an analysis by the Butte County Assessor’s Office found.

The former Pine Grove Mobile Home Park in Paradise following the 2018 Camp fire. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Overall, about a quarter of the homes lost to the Camp fire have been rebuilt. The pace lags behind both the Carr and Woolsey fires, which have rebuilding rates of 47% and 41%, respectively.

How government tilts the playing field

In the wake of these major wildfires, the federal government has provided substantial funding for recovery. It has allocated more than $1.5 billion toward long-term relief efforts following the five fires and other disasters in California from the same years. The dollars are on top of assistance FEMA provided to individuals immediately after the fires.

Yet the money almost always came with strings attached, leaving survivors and recovery workers maneuvering to match the funding with actual needs. The same is true for other federal and state programs that disaster-affected areas could tap for rebuilding.

After the Camp fire, Butte County pursued a state grant to pay for a small community wastewater system in a commercial area that burned. Officials reasoned it would be best to install when no one was living there and that its completion could spur the return of homes and businesses. But the state turned down the request because only populated areas were eligible.

A November 2018 photo shows the remains of the Ridgewood Mobile Home Park in Paradise following the Camp fire.

(Los Angeles Times)

“Nobody after a disaster hands you a pot of money and says, ‘Go do the best and highest,’ ” said Katie Simmons, deputy chief administrative officer for Butte County, who is overseeing recovery efforts. “It’s like, ‘Go do the impossible and then we might reimburse you.’ ”

The other primary way that government affects rebuilding is through permitting. Officials at all levels promised to streamline the process. Then-Gov. Jerry Brown touted his actions “to cut red tape” while touring fire-ravaged Malibu after the 2018 Woolsey fire. Gov. Gavin Newsom committed to doing the same within days of January’s fires in L.A.

Yet many survivors remain stuck, especially where rules are the strictest. Along the California coastline, overlapping layers of regulations make it hard to build at any time. When fire strikes, homeowners can find the circumstances unforgiving.

Seated on what’s left of the foundation of their home, Gene Zilinskas, 85, from left, his wife, Dagmar, 93, and daughter Beatrix Zilinskas reflect on the loss of their house in the Woolsey fire in Malibu in August. The Zilinskas family has been trying to rebuild the property since the 2018 fire.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

In a canyon overlooking Paradise Cove, melted steel beams protrude from a concrete foundation that survived Woolsey. It served as the base for the Zilinskas family’s once, and they hope future, home. But nearly seven years after the blaze, they haven’t secured their permits.

Their old home, completed in the early 1990s, was three floors. But they’re shrinking the new house into two. Gene Zilinskas, a retired sonar engineer, is 85 and his wife Dagmar, a former art teacher, is 93. They want fewer stairs than before. They’ve planned for two bedrooms, a kitchen and main living area on the top floor with a bedroom for their daughter below, a layout that also adapts to the hillside and their remaining foundation. But the plan conflicted with city of Malibu rules that say second stories can’t be larger than the first.

Gene Zilinskas is seen through a window frame of his house that was destroyed in the 2018 Woolsey fire in Malibu.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

That dispute was among many that the family has needed to resolve with permitting officials. They’ve now run into topographical problems with widening their driveway to meet new fire access requirements. The Zilinskases now are on their third architect. The first, fed up with failing to get the home approved, quit. The second died.

“There’s this sense of powerlessness, of not being the captain of your own ship,” said their daughter Beatrix Zilinskas. “Everybody is chronically depressed, this feeling of having absolutely no say so with what’s going on in your life.”

Because of their ages and the time it has taken to receive a permit, the elder Zilinskases believe it’s unlikely they’ll ever walk into their new home.

Malibu officials said the city had trouble verifying records from the Zilinskases’ previous house and aligning the new plans with updated building codes, especially with the multiple architects.

“I feel so bad for the family,” said Yolanda Bundy, Malibu’s community development director. “They’re almost there.”

Bundy said Malibu has changed its rebuilding rules after Woolsey. The city hopes it will make the process smoother for the hundreds more Malibu residents who lost their homes in January’s Palisades fire. The city is assigning its most experienced planners to handle rebuilding rather than relying on contract workers as they did before. Recently, the city updated its codes to make issues like the second-story rule that ensnared the Zilinskases easier to overcome, she said.

“We are really listening and trying to be more flexible,” Bundy said.

With little sign of California’s unprecedented era of wildfire ending, many other communities may have to learn similar lessons. Decades of homebuilding in forests and foothills have left millions of residents exposed as climate change fuels longer, hotter and drier fire seasons.

Seventy percent of the 20 most destructive wildfires in state history have burned since 2017, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. All but two have occurred after the turn of the century and none before 1991. The Tubbs fire from fall 2017 was the worst until Camp a year later. The Eaton and Palisades fires then jumped to second and third on the list.

“We’ve created this risk,” said Rumbach of the Urban Institute. It’s only now we’ve realized, he said, that “the check comes due.”

Seventy percent of the 20 most destructive wildfires in state history have occurred since fall 2017, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

To understand the pace and extent of rebuilding in the most significant of these fires, The Times relied on data from state and local governments.

The Times obtained data in February from the Cal Fire Damage Inspection Database, known as DINS, which documents buildings burned in wildfires. We filtered for residential structures — single-residence, multiple-residence and mixed-use commercial/residential — that were destroyed.

We limited our reporting to fires that destroyed 1,000 or more residential structures during this period — aside from January’s Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles County. There were five: Tubbs (2017), Carr (2018), Camp (2018), Woolsey (2018) and North Complex (2020).

The Times analysis showed 22,438 residential structures burned in the five fires. About 75% were single-family homes, 23% were mobile homes and fewer than 2% were apartment, condominium or other multifamily buildings. Because of data limitations, a multifamily building was counted as one residential structure no matter how many units it had. In its reporting, The Times used “residential structure” and “home” interchangeably.

The fires destroyed homes across 16 local jurisdictions. To determine when and how many homes were rebuilt, The Times in March and April collected certificate of occupancy data from building departments in each community. Additionally, The Times accessed data from the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which regulates mobile home parks.

Using GIS software, The Times plotted coordinates in the Cal Fire data to match each destroyed structure to the city or county responsible for issuing a permit to rebuild it. From there, The Times merged assessor parcel numbers of destroyed homes from the Cal Fire data with those of rebuilt homes from local and state building data obtained from each jurisdiction. Finally, The Times summarized certificates of occupancy issued by day to plot the reconstruction timeline for each fire. For uniformity, the results are limited to homes approved prior to April 1.

The Times deviated from its methodology for a specific situation. The Tubbs fire destroyed a 162-lot mobile home park in Santa Rosa. Two apartment buildings for low-income senior citizens together comprising 132 units have been built on the site. Given that the Times analysis designated 162 mobile homes as destroyed, the analysis was adjusted to count the 132 replacement apartment units.

Overall, the analysis concluded that 8,420 homes have been rebuilt, 38% of those destroyed in the five fires.

The Times results could differ from reports published by some jurisdictions for two reasons: Local jurisdictions may have conducted more rigorous inventories of destroyed buildings than detailed in the Cal Fire DINS data and their rebuilding numbers can be continuously updated.

Filming was about to start on David E. Kelley’s Apple TV+ series “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” in early January when the wildfires hit the Los Angeles area, devastating Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

Crew members lost their homes or were dealing with severe smoke damage. Others on the show took people who were displaced into their houses.

To add to the uncertainty, the series was still waiting to hear whether it would receive a state film and television tax credit.

It was time for a decision, Kelley and his fellow producers thought. Should they play it safe and relocate to a cheaper filming locale, such as New Mexico or Vancouver, to ensure they had the budget to film the pivotal mid-season finale in Las Vegas?

They took a gamble and decided to stay in California. The bet paid off. “Margo” got a tax credit of about $1.2 million per episode, and the show was able to shoot both in the Los Angeles area and travel to Las Vegas for four days of filming.

“The rest of the story is a California story,” said Matthew Tinker, president of David E. Kelley Productions. “It’s really magical to leave L.A., go to Vegas and then come back, and it gives the show a huge production value that otherwise, we wouldn’t have had.”

Matthew Tinker, president of David E. Kelley Productions, stands on the rooftop of producer David E. Kelley’s new production office in Santa Monica.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

As film and TV projects have increasingly moved out of state in search of better tax incentives and cheaper costs — moves that have culled the number of Hollywood jobs — Kelley’s production company is doubling down on California. The former attorney turned writer-producer is one of the biggest names in TV behind such legal dramas as “Ally McBeal” and “The Practice.”

All of his current projects will shoot in L.A., including the third season of HBO series “Big Little Lies,” the legal drama “The Lincoln Lawyer,” a new HBO Max series based on a Michael Connelly book called “Nightshade” that takes place on Santa Catalina Island, and the thriller “Presumed Innocent.”

Post-production work for his shows also is done in L.A. Kelley’s company, known as David E. Kelley Productions, also recently moved into a new headquarters in Santa Monica, where it plans to make a home for the foreseeable future.

“It just feels wrong to me that L.A. is not continuing to be the epicenter for film and television series,” Kelley said via Zoom in August. “This town has been very good to me for many, many years, so I have an inclination not to abandon it, to cling to the community that has been so rewarding for me.”

The sentiment is shared by his second-in-command.

From the concrete rooftop garden atop the Santa Monica building that houses Kelley’s production office, Tinker looked out at the hills, remembering the wall of smoke that lingered for days.

The January wildfires also encouraged the decision to keep Kelley’s production company in L.A., despite some pitches to move out of state. At the time, there had been industry chatter that the state’s incentive program would be bolstered, giving some optimism for the future of production in the state. But after the fires, there was no question. The company saw the need to rebuild and reinvest in L.A. and Hollywood. The eventual boost to the state’s film and TV tax credit program approved this summer solidified their decision.

“The fires challenged our resilience and sense of community, but the people of L.A. rallied,” Tinker said. “There simply wasn’t a thought beyond this moment to plant roots anywhere else.”

The 2,900-square-foot office, which is a new build that replaced an older building in Santa Monica, is sleek and modern, with concrete walls and flooring, dark wood details, two arcade game machines and a shelving unit holding dozens of awards right at the heart of the space. Inside Tinker’s office is an homage to Hollywood history.

A wall showcases trophies at producer David E. Kelley’s new production office in Santa Monica.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

An old sign from Kelley’s previous offices at the Fox lot hangs on the wall, next to the title page for the first episode of “Margo,” addressed to David and signed by actor Elle Fanning. A photo of Ronald Reagan with Matthew Tinker’s late grandfather Grant Tinker, former chief executive of NBC, sits near a bobblehead from Kelley’s “Boston Legal” days and a black-and-white group shot of Matthew’s father, John Tinker, winning a writing Emmy for the drama “St. Elsewhere” in 1986.

When looking back at his own career, Matthew Tinker has done “pretty much every job under the sun,” which was only possible in a city that consistently had multiple productions running.

That concern for the future of industry employment was a major part of Hollywood and state legislators’ push to increase the annual funding for California’s film and TV tax credit program to $750 million and expand eligibility criteria to allow more projects to apply.

Memorabilia in the office of Matthew Tinker, president of David E. Kelley Productions.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Those changes, which were approved by Gov. Gavin Newsom this summer, have now largely gone into effect and are starting to produce results.

In the first round of TV show tax credits since the program was revamped, the California Film Commission saw a nearly 400% increase in applications and awarded tax credits to a total of 22 shows.

“There was a lot of pent-up demand,” said Colleen Bell, executive director of the California Film Commission. “There’s a lot of momentum here, and these improvements to the program have helped to drive that momentum.”

The new activity is much needed. Production activity in L.A. so far this year is down 9% compared with last year, according to the nonprofit FilmLA, which tracks shoot days in Greater L.A. 2024 was the second-worst year on record for production in the area after 2020, when the industry shut down due to the pandemic.

But there is hope on the horizon — of the 22 new TV projects that received a California tax credit this past round, 18 are slated to film largely in Greater L.A., including Kelley’s “Presumed Innocent.”

“The more that people have hope in the future of California as a production destination, I think you will continue to see entrepreneurs and others make their careers here,” said Philip Sokoloski, spokesman for FilmLA.

Because Los Angeles is more costly than other locations, filmmakers must make certain adjustments, such as shooting a TV series in 85 days instead of 100, or reducing daily filming hours.

But that’s very doable with experienced crews in L.A., said Caroline James, co-executive producer of “Presumed Innocent” and “Margo,” which employed about 500 people.

“There’s such an infrastructure in L.A.,” she said. “There’s no learning curve.”

Kelley’s production company, which has six employees including the veteran writer and producer, may not always be able to shoot everything in L.A., but executives intend to keep L.A. first and foremost in their decision-making and hopes that mentality will catch on around town.

“The goal is to always look at California first,” Tinker said.

Thousands of firefighters, backed by soldiers and water-bombing aircraft, have battled more than 20 major wildfires raging across western Spain, where officials say a record area of land has already been burned.

Spain and neighbouring Portugal have been particularly affected by forest fires spurred by heatwaves and drought, blamed on climate change, that have hit southern Europe.

Two firefighters were killed on Sunday – one in each country, both in road accidents – taking the death toll to two in Portugal and four in Spain.

Spain’s civil protection chief, Virginia Barcones, told public television TVE that 23 blazes were classified as “operational level two”, meaning they pose a direct threat to nearby communities.

The fires, now entering their second week, are concentrated in the western regions of Castile and Leon, Galicia, and Extremadura, where thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes.

More than 343,000 hectares (848,000 acres) of land – the equivalent of nearly half a million football pitches – have been destroyed this year in Spain, setting a new national record, according to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

The previous record of 306,000 hectares (756,142 acres) was set in the same period three years ago.

Help from abroad

Spain is being helped with firefighting aircraft from France, Italy, Slovakia, and the Netherlands, while Portugal is receiving air support from Sweden and Morocco.

However, the size and severity of the fires and the intensity of the smoke were making “airborne action” difficult, Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles told TVE.

Across the border in Portugal, about 2,000 firefighters were deployed across the north and centre of the country on Monday, with about half of them concentrated in the town of Arganil.

About 216,000 hectares (533,747 acres) of land have been destroyed across Portugal since the start of the year.

Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro said the country had endured 24 days of weather conditions of “unprecedented severity”, with high temperatures and strong winds.

“We are at war, and we must triumph in this fight,” he added.

Officials in both countries expressed hope that the weather would turn to help tackle the fires.

Spain’s meteorological agency said the heatwave, which has seen temperatures hit 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of the country, was coming to an end.

Emergency services are under strain due to the ‘worst’ fires in Portugal in years, Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego says.

Thousands of firefighters backed by the military are battling dozens of wildfires across Spain and Portugal as the death toll has increased to six since the outbreaks began.

Two firefighters were killed on Sunday – one in each country, both in road accidents – taking the death toll to two in Portugal and four in Spain.

The Iberian Peninsula has been particularly affected by wildfires that have ravaged Southern Europe this summer. They have been fuelled by heatwaves and drought blamed on climate change.

On Monday, five major fires remained active in Portugal with more than 3,800 firefighters tackling them, civil protection authorities said.

“We still have firefighters who are monitoring the area here, the occasional smoke which is coming out from the land here, but of course, these are the charred remains of the flames that just completely consumed these hills,” Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego said, reporting from Tarouca, Portugal.

The fires in the Portuguese town are now under control, but emergency services are worried about the possibility of them reigniting, Gallego said.

Emergency services are already under “enormous strain” in what appears to be some of the “worst” fires in the area in years, she added.

President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said a firefighter died on Sunday in a traffic accident that seriously injured two colleagues.

A former mayor in the eastern town of Guarda also died on Friday while trying to fight a fire.

About 2,160sq km (835sq miles) of land has burned across Portugal since the start of the year.

Neighbouring Spain battles blazes too

In Spain, more than 3,430sq km (1,325sq miles) of land has burned this year, setting a new national record, according to the European Forest Fire Information System.

The head of Spain’s Civil Protection and Emergencies agency, Virginia Barcones, told broadcaster TVE on Monday that there were 23 “active fires” that pose a serious and direct threat to people.

The fires, now in their second week, were concentrated in the northwestern regions of Galicia, Castile and Leon, and Extremadura.

In Ourense province of Galicia, firefighters battled to put out fires as locals in just shorts and T-shirts used water from hoses and buckets to try to stop the spread.

Officials in Castile and Leon said a firefighter died on Sunday night when the water truck he was driving flipped over on a steep forest road and down a slope.

Two other volunteer firefighters have died in Castile and Leon while a Romanian employee of a riding school north of Madrid lost his life trying to protect horses from a fire.

Spain has deployed a further 500 soldiers from the military emergency unit to support firefighting operations as it battles 20 major wildfires across the country during a heatwave that began last week.

“There are still some challenging days ahead, and unfortunately, the weather is not on our side,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said at a news conference on Sunday in Ourense, one of the most affected areas, in northwestern Spain.

He announced an increase in military reinforcements, bringing the total number of soldiers deployed across Spain to 1,900.

Firefighters are tackling 12 major wildfires in the northwestern region of Galicia alone, all of them near the city of Ourense, the head of the Galician regional government Alfonso Rueda also said during the news conference.

“Homes are still under threat, so we have lockdowns in place and are carrying out evacuations,” Rueda said.

The announcements came as authorities awaited the arrival of promised aircraft reinforcements from other European countries.

National rail operator Renfe said it suspended Madrid-Galicia high-speed train services scheduled for Sunday due to the fires.

Galician authorities advised people to wear face masks and limit their time spent outdoors to avoid inhaling smoke and ash.

Southern Europe is experiencing one of its worst wildfire seasons in two decades with Spain among the hardest-hit countries.

In the past week alone, fires there have killed three people and burned more than 1,150sq km (445sq miles) while neighbouring Portugal also battles widespread blazes.

Temperatures are expected to reach up to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas on Sunday, Spain’s national weather agency, AEMET, said.

Virginia Barcones, director general of emergency services, told Spanish public TV that temperatures were expected to drop from Tuesday, but for now, the weather conditions were “very adverse”.

EU help on its way

“The fireplanes come in from all sides, but they don’t come here,” Basilio Rodriguez, a resident, told the Reuters news agency on Saturday.

Spain was expecting the arrival of two Dutch water-dumping planes that were to join aircraft from France and Italy already helping Spanish authorities under a European cooperation agreement.

Firefighters from other countries are also expected to arrive in the region in the coming days, Barcones told public broadcaster RTVE.

Ministry of Interior data show 27 people have been arrested and 92 were under investigation for suspected arson since June.

In neighbouring Portugal, wildfires have burned about 1,550sq km (600sq miles) of vegetation so far this year, according to provisional data from the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests – three times the average for this period from 2006 to 2024. About half of that area burned just in the past three days.

Thousands of firefighters were battling eight large blazes in central and northern Portugal, the largest of them near Piodao, a scenic, mountainous area popular with tourists.

Another blaze in Trancoso, farther north, has now been raging for eight days. A smaller fire just east of there killed a local resident on Friday – the first death this season.

Portugal is set for cooler weather in the coming days. A national state of alert due to wildfires was imposed on August 2 and was due to end on Sunday, a day before two Swedish firefighting planes were to arrive.

As in Spain, Portugal’s resources have been stretched. On Sunday, more than 4,000 firefighters and 1,300 vehicles were deployed as well as 17 aircraft, the Civil Protection Agency said.

Wildfires also burning in Turkiye

Greece, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Albania have also requested help from the European Union’s firefighting force in recent days to deal with forest fires. The force has already been activated as many times this year as during all of last year’s summer fire season.

In Turkiye, where recent wildfires have killed 19 people, parts of the historic region that includes memorials to World War I’s Gallipoli campaign were evacuated on Sunday as blazes threatened homes in the country’s northwest.

Six villages were evacuated as a precautionary measure, the governor of Canakkale province, Omer Toraman, said.

About 1,300 firefighting personnel backed by 30 aircraft were battling the blazes, according to the General Directorate of Forestry.

Turkiye has been struck by hundreds of fires since late June, fuelled by record-breaking temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds.

Europe has been warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Scientists said climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness in parts of Europe, making the region more vulnerable to wildfires.

Firefighters are struggling to control wildfires blazing across Europe because of a severe heatwave, with temperatures rising as high as 43 degrees Celsius (109.4 degrees Fahrenheit). One person was killed near Madrid after being trapped by a fire and a soldier in Montenegro died when his water tanker overturned.

Fires threaten a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Spain as temperatures hit new records.

A new heatwave has gripped parts of Europe, sending temperatures up to 43 degrees Celsius (109.4 degrees Fahrenheit), with wildfires wreaking havoc and forcing evacuations as the impact of global warming is keenly felt on the continent.

Firefighters in northwestern Spain struggled on Monday to contain a wildfire that damaged an ancient Roman mining site and forced hundreds of residents to flee.

Regional Environment Minister Juan Carlos Suarez-Quinones said the firefighting effort near the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Las Medulas faced “many difficulties” due to high temperatures and winds of up to 40 kilometres per hour (25 miles per hour).

Extreme heat and strong winds caused “fire whirls”. “This occurs when temperatures reach around 40 degrees Celsius [104F] in a very confined valley and then suddenly [the fire] enters a more open and oxygenated area,” Suarez-Quinones said.

Four people, including two firefighters, have suffered minor injuries, he added. “We will not allow people to return until safety in their communities is absolutely guaranteed,” Suarez-Quinones told reporters, estimating that about 700 people remained displaced.

Authorities said damage to the Roman gold-mining area famed for its striking red landscape in northwestern Spain will be assessed once the fire is fully under control.

In the northern part of neighbouring Portugal, nearly 700 firefighters were battling a blaze that started on Saturday in Trancoso, about 350km (200 miles) northeast of Lisbon.

The French national weather authority, Meteo-France, placed 12 departments on red alert, the country’s highest heat warning, anticipating exceptional heat stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean plains.

“Don’t be fooled. This isn’t normal, ‘it’s summer.’ It’s not normal. It’s a nightmare,” agricultural climatologist Serge Zaka told BFMTV. The red alert in France has been issued only eight times since it was created in 2004 after a deadly summer the year before.

Three major fires also blazed along the borders with Greece and Turkiye, including one near Strumyani that reignited after three weeks.

In Bulgaria, temperatures were expected to exceed 40C (104F) on Monday with maximum fire danger alerts in place.

Nearly 200 fires have been reported. Most have been brought under control, localised and extinguished, but the situation remains “very challenging”, said Alexander Dzhartov, head of Bulgaria’s national fire safety unit.

Hungary on Sunday recorded a new national high of 39.9C (104F) in the southeast, breaking a record set in 1948. Budapest also recorded a city record at 38.7C (101.6F).

Wildfires destroyed several homes in Albania as firefighters battled blazes in sweltering conditions on Monday. According to Albania’s Ministry of Defence, firefighters and soldiers subdued most of the close to 40 fires that flared up within 24 hours but more than a dozen were still active.

In Croatia, about 150 firefighters spent the night defending homes from a blaze near the port city of Split.

Aug. 10 (UPI) — Four C-130 military aircraft equipped with firefighting equipment have been deployed to battle a series of wildfires in the western United States as triple digit temperatures and low humidity readings combine to create conditions for blazes to spark and spread rapidly, government officials reported Sunday.

Two of the large tanker planes have been deployed from the Colorado Springs Airtanker base and the other pair from Mesa Gateway Airport in Mesa, Ariz.

There are currently 37 large wildfires burning across the United States, which have prompted officials to deploy 374 crews, 975 engines, 125 helicopters and 13 incident management teams to battle the blazes, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

Nearly 43,000 fires have blackened more than 3.6 million acres across the country in 2025. That is nearly twice as many fires as last year, but the blazes this wildfire season have burned nearly half as many acres.

Forecasters predict wind gusts of up to 25 mph and single digit humidity readings in the Four Corners area will persist into the first part of the week, heightening the danger, creating conditions for fires to spread.

“Lighter winds, but still dry conditions are expected across the rest of the Great Basin and into the central Rockies,” the NIFC said Sunday.

“Hot, above normal temperatures and low (relative humidity) will spread across most of California and southern Oregon away from the coast.”

There are seven fires burning in California and Colorado, 6 in Arizona, 5 in Idaho and three fires each in Washington, Utah and Nevada.

Firefighters routinely battle challenging terrain in addition to the weather, making it especially difficult to contain fires in the most remote areas.

We are midway through summer in the Northern Hemisphere, and we are witnessing another severe wildfire season. In May, wildfires were burning throughout Russia’s Far East. Last month, wildfires broke out throughout Turkiye, Greece, Cyprus and Bulgaria. Fires continue in Portugal, France and Spain. In Canada, the blazes have not stopped since April.

Satellite data show that fires burn on average about 4 million square kilometres (1.5 million square miles) of the planet’s surface each year, including forests. And the number of wildfires is expected to increase by 50 percent by the end of the century.

There are two main reasons for the rise in wildfires.

First, the changing climate is driving protracted and frequent heatwaves and droughts that dry out forests, providing an immediate source of tinder and fuel. In a self-perpetuating cycle, wildfires themselves then billow carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing further to the climate crisis. Fires emitted an estimated 6,199 megatonnes of carbon dioxide globally in 2024.

Second, the way we live and use land today means we are increasingly encroaching on forests and elevating the risk of wildfires. Many of these fires are started by humans for different reasons – such as carelessness and clearing land for agriculture and settlements. And urban infrastructure is edging closer to nature, increasing the danger that fire poses to human lives.

There is no doubt that the costs of wildfires for people and the planet are immense. Wildfires destroy property, crops, businesses and livelihoods and can be especially devastating for developing countries.

But not all fires are bad.

Fires have been part of the Earth’s ecosystem for hundreds of millions of years, occurring naturally on every continent except Antarctica. They can help generate and stimulate the replenishment of ecosystems. They can clear away the layers of litter on the forest floor and add nutrients to the soil, allowing new shoots to grow that provide food for birds and animals. For some plant species, seeds even depend on fires to germinate.

Conducting controlled fires – often during cooler months – is a vital way for people to prevent destructive wildfires before they begin.

For many Indigenous peoples, prescribed burning has been an integral part of land management for millennia, helping to curb dangerous wildfires, encouraging ecological diversity and procuring food by promoting new growth and attracting grazing game animals.

A recent study into the return of Indigenous fire burning in Australia’s Kimberley region showed that the annual massive wildfires in the region had reduced to once-in-a-decade events since the practice was reintroduced by the traditional owners of the land.

The use of fire for sustainable resource management is also one of the recommendations that the organisation I work for, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, is recommending as part of its integrated fire management approach.

Other preventive measures against wildfires are also needed, and community engagement is a key strategy. The practical experience and knowledge held in communities must shape integrated fire management strategies and policies from the ground up. This is essential. Actively engaging communities in decision-making, leveraging local knowledge and practices, and building capacity for fire prevention, preparedness and control can reduce wildfire risks and build long-term resilience.

Another layer of defence is fire early-warning systems. By incorporating drought indices, local traditional knowledge of weather and climatic influences, such systems predict fire-danger conditions and help with planning well before the wildfire season.

Some fires are simply inevitable, however, and having better monitoring mechanisms to detect fires and an appropriate fire extinguishing capacity at the ready is necessary if we are to contain wildfires before they become dangerous. In this way, suppression action can happen before fires grow beyond the possibility of containment. Certain countries already do an excellent job of fire monitoring, but the practice is yet to become standard in others.

Maintaining biodiversity and diverse landscapes – rather than monotonous, fire-prone, human-created landscapes – can also reduce the risk of fire spreading and causing damage and loss.

People must learn to live harmoniously with nature, not simply bend it to their will. That means inappropriate development in fire-prone ecosystems must be discouraged, given that the building of new infrastructure adjacent to wild spaces may play a central role in causing wildfires.

These strategies may sound onerous, but they take up far fewer resources, not to mention fewer lives, than battling uncontrollable wildfires.

With the right measures, humans can coexist with fire.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

France has been suffering its largest wildfire in at least 50 years, according to disaster officials.

Firefighters in southern France have warned that a huge fire they have been battling, which spread across an area bigger than Paris, could reignite as the region continues to face a scorching heatwave.

Authorities on Sunday said hot, dry winds and a heatwave would make the work of firefighters even more hazardous.

The fire has ravaged a vast area of France’s southern Aude area, larger than the size of the nation’s capital, killing one person and injuring several.

“It’s a challenging day, given that we are likely to be on red alert for heatwave from 4:00pm (14:00 GMT), which will not make things any easier,” said Christian Pouget, Aude’s prefect.

The fire is no longer spreading but is still burning within a 16,000-hectare area, the chief of the region’s firefighter unit, Christophe Magny, said on Saturday, adding it would not be under control until Sunday evening.

The blaze will “not be extinguished for several weeks”, he said.

Some 1,300 firefighters were mobilised to prevent the blaze from reigniting.

Temperatures this weekend are expected to hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas, while Monday is forecast to be the “hottest day nationwide”, according to national weather service Meteo France.

In Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse, a 65-year-old woman was found dead on Wednesday in her home, which had been engulfed in flames.

Authorities said one resident suffered serious burns and four were lightly injured, while 19 firefighters were hurt.

The blaze – the largest in at least 50 years – tore through 16,000 hectares (40,000 acres) of vegetation, disaster officials said.

Emmanuelle Bernier said she was “extremely angry” when she returned to a devastating scene on her farm, with 17 animals lost in the fire.

“I will definitely change jobs. This will change my whole life,” she told the AFP news agency, with her property now housing just a few geese and two sick goats.

Prime Minister Francois Bayrou visited the area last week, calling the wildfire a “catastrophe on an unprecedented scale”.

“What is happening today is linked to global warming and linked to drought,” Bayrou said.

Fires burning elsewhere in Europe

Elsewhere in Europe, fires also rage, with experts stating that European countries are becoming more prone to such disasters due to intensifying summer heatwaves linked to global warming.

Italian firefighters on Sunday tackled a wildfire on Mount Vesuvius, with all hiking routes up the volcano near Naples closed to tourists.

The national fire service said it had 12 teams on the ground and six Canadair planes fighting the blaze, which has torn through the national park in southern Italy since Friday.

In Greece, emergency services brought numerous fires under control over the last two days, but new outbreaks are likely, due to a lasting drought and strong winds, civil protection officials said on Sunday.

The region southeast of Athens was particularly hard-hit, with almost 1,600 hectares (4,000 acres) of agricultural land, forest and scrubland destroyed, according to the meteorological service.

Numerous villages had to be evacuated as a precautionary measure, and about 400 people had to be rescued. On Friday, a man died when his remote house was engulfed by flames.

From a festival celebrating the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples in El Salvador to solemn commemorations marking the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing in Japan and the ongoing Israel-induced starvation and malnutrition crisis in Gaza, here is a look at the week in photos.

Southern Europe is battling deadly wildfires and extreme heat this week, with record temperatures and dry conditions forcing evacuations across France, Spain and Portugal.

An enormous wildfire in southern France’s Aude region has killed one person, injured nine others, marking the country’s largest wildfire this season.

The blaze, which erupted on Tuesday, has already scorched at least 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres) – an area larger than the city of Paris – in less than 24 hours. Fires have consumed forests, ravaged villages and damaged or destroyed at least 25 homes, with emergency officials warning that the blaze remains out of control.

“All of the nation’s resources are mobilised,” President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on X, urging people to act with “the utmost caution”.

More than 1,800 firefighters have been sent to battle the flames, backed by 600 vehicles and water-dropping aircraft.

“We have at our disposal in the Aude department the maximum number of personnel and resources that we can have in the south of France in its entirety,” said Remi Recio, deputy prefect of Narbonne.

An elderly woman who refused to evacuate was killed, while another person is missing. Two civilians were injured, including one in critical condition with burns, and seven firefighters suffered smoke inhalation.

Camping grounds and at least one village were partially evacuated, and roads were closed. “I left everything behind me,” said David Cerdan, 51, who fled the village of Saint-Laurent-de-la-Cabrerisse. “I’m putting it into perspective. I only have material damage.”

Officials say the fire has already consumed as much land as all French wildfires in 2024 combined – more than double that of 2023. “The fire is advancing in an area where all the conditions are ripe for it to progress,” said fire official Roesch. “This fire will keep us busy for several days. It’s a long-term operation.”

An investigation into the cause is under way. France’s environment ministry said drought conditions and dry vegetation contributed to the spread, with water restrictions already in place in the Aude region.

“The risk of fire is greatest in the Mediterranean,” said climate and agriculture analyst Serge Zaka. “In France, it is the hottest and driest area. But with climate change, these fire risks are expected to become more significant during the summer.”

Last month, a blaze near Marseille injured about 300 people. Scientists warn that climate change is driving more intense heat and dryness across Europe, the world’s fastest-warming continent.

Spain and Portugal face heat-driven blazes

In Spain, a prolonged heatwave since Sunday – with temperatures reaching 43C (109F) – has helped fan multiple wildfires across the country.

The resort town of Tarifa in Andalusia saw more than 1,500 people and 5,000 vehicles evacuated after a fire broke out near La Pena, a wooded area close to the beach. The fire, believed to have started in a camper van, was rapidly spread by strong winds.

“What concerns us most right now is the wind, whether it shifts between the west and east,” said Antonio Sanz, Andalusia’s interior minister.

Fire crews worked through the night to keep flames away from hotels and tourist accommodation, but the blaze remains active, and residents have not been allowed to return.

Elsewhere, a fire near Ponteceso in the Galicia region forced the evacuation of Corme Aldea village. In Cadiz, a blaze that erupted Tuesday led to mass evacuations, according to state broadcaster RTVE.

The Spanish meteorological agency AEMET has issued orange alerts across several regions through Friday. Civil protection authorities warn of “high” or “extreme” fire risk in much of the country.

Spain’s Ministry of Health reported 1,060 excess deaths linked to extreme heat in July, a 57 percent increase over the same month last year, based on data from the national mortality monitoring system. While the data does not confirm direct causation, it is widely used to estimate heat-related deaths.

In neighbouring Portugal, wildfires have already burned more than 42,000 hectares (104,000 acres) in 2025 – the largest area since 2022 and eight times more than this time last year. More than half of that land was scorched in just the past two weeks.

Firefighters managed to bring a large blaze under control near Vila Real in the north on Wednesday, but others remain active. A fire in the city of Amarante continued to burn, while another in A Coruna reached emergency level 2 due to its proximity to populated areas.

Lisbon declared a state of alert until August 7, with more than 100 municipalities on maximum fire risk amid soaring temperatures.

Scientists say Southern Europe is on the front line of climate breakdown. Rising global temperatures are creating the conditions for longer and more destructive fire seasons.

Greece is among the countries in southern Europe battling wildfires this summer as firefighters continue to tackle blazes on both the mainland and on several of its islands

Greece is currently grappling with wildfires, as blazes rage across both the mainland and several of its islands. Over the weekend, areas near Athens were evacuated due to more than 50 wildfires breaking out, with residents in the suburb of Kryoneri being advised to leave their homes.

Firefighters are also tackling fires on the islands of Crete, Kythira and Euboea, while numerous smaller fires have erupted locally. These fires have been fuelled by scorching temperatures and dry conditions across southern Europe, with neighbouring countries Turkey and Montenegro also dealing with wildfires this summer.

READ MORE: Foreign Office’s summer 2025 rules for Spain, France, Italy, Greece and Portugal

A heatwave in Greece, which saw temperatures soar to 44C in Athens last week, has increased the country’s fire risk. These wildfires coincide with the peak travel period, causing concern for many British holidaymakers heading to Greece for the school holidays.

If you’re wondering whether it’s safe to visit Greece, here’s what you need to know. It’s worth noting that large parts of Greece remain unaffected by the wildfires.

What the UK Foreign Office says

The UK Foreign Office, the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, hasn’t issued any further guidance on specific wildfires since its last update on July 4, which remains current on July 28.

It advises there is a high risk of wildfires during the summer season from April to October. It recommends reading the wildfires section on its Safety and security page which states that travellers “Ensure that your mobile phone is registered to receive emergency alerts to be warned of wildfires near your location.”

The advice page for Greece state the following

“There is a high risk of wildfires during the summer season from April to October. Ensure that your mobile phone is registered to receive emergency alerts to be warned of wildfires near your location.

“Wildfires are highly dangerous and unpredictable. The situation can change quickly. To avoid starting wildfires:

• leave no litter, especially not glass which is known to start fires.
• make sure cigarettes are properly extinguished.
• do not light barbecues.

“Causing a wildfire or a forest fire is a criminal offence in Greece – even if unintentional. If you see a fire, call the emergency services on 112. Be cautious if you are in or near an area affected by wildfires:

• follow @112Greece for official updates.
• follow the guidance of the emergency services.
• call the Greek emergency services on 112 if you are in immediate danger.
• contact your airline or travel operator who can assist you with return travel to the UK.
• Always check the Foreign Office page for the latest advice before you travel.

Refunds for cancelled flights and travel insurance

Whether you’re covered for wildfires by your insurance hinges on the specifics of your policy and the breadth of your coverage; wildfires typically fall under “unforeseen circumstances”. This implies that you might be covered for medical evacuations, cancellations, or delays brought about by severe weather conditions, as per Travel and Tour World.

When it comes to flights and hotel reservations, most airlines or travel insurance providers won’t offer a refund or compensation if you decide to cancel your journey due to worries about wildfires – unless there’s an official travel advisory in place.

It’s crucial to touch base with your holiday provider for the most recent information before you set off.

Huge fires around Bursa, Turkiye’s fourth-largest city, broke out over the weekend, leading to more than 3,500 people fleeing their homes. On Monday morning, fog-like smoke from fires and smouldering foliage hung over the city.

Unseasonably high temperatures, dry conditions, and strong winds have been fuelling the wildfires, with Turkiye and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean experiencing record-breaking heatwaves.

The death toll from wildfires outside the city of Bursa in northwest Turkiye rose to four late on Sunday after two volunteer firefighters died.

The pair died in hospital after they were pulled from a water tanker that rolled while heading to a forest fire, news agency IHA reported. Another worker died earlier at the scene of the accident, and a firefighter died on Sunday after suffering a heart attack.

Their deaths raised Turkiye’s wildfire death toll to 17 since late June, including 10 rescue volunteers and forestry workers killed on Wednesday in a fire in the northwestern city of Eskisehir.

The fires around Bursa were among hundreds to have hit the country over the past month. While firefighting teams have contained the damage to a limited number of homes, vast tracts of forest have been turned to ash.

Turkiye battled at least 44 separate fires on Sunday, said Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli. He identified two fires in Bursa province, as well as blazes in Karabuk in the northwest, and Kahramanmaras in the south, as the most serious.

The government declared disaster areas in two western provinces, Izmir and Bilecik. Prosecutions have been launched against 97 people in 33 of Turkiye’s 81 provinces in relation to the fires, Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said.

July 27 (UPI) — Extreme heat, high winds and fires have plagued parts of Greece and Turkey amid the high tourist season as temperatures in Greece have risen to 111.2 degrees and in Turkey to 122.9 degrees.

In the Karabuk province of Turkey, firefighters have battled fires for four days. In Eskisehir, Turkey, 10 people died on Wednesday, BBC reported.

Ibrahim Yumakli, Turkey’s forestry minister, said on Sunday that areas affected by fires were “going through risky times” and that it would be several days before they were fully contained.

Some local authorities have restricted water consumption, including for the resort of Cesme on Turkey’s west coast.

Greece is battling five major wildfires with extreme temperatures likely to continue. There are 11 regions of the country at “very high risk of fire.” Greece has formally asked for assistance from the EU Civil Protection Mechanism for six firefighting aircraft.

Two major fires are on the islands of Kythira and Evia. Kythira, which is popular with tourists, is just off the tip of the Peloponnese peninsula, and Evia is a large island northeast of Athens. Firefighters were still battling to control major blazes on Kythira and Messinia, on the Peloponnese peninsula, Vassilis Vathrakoyiannis, Greece’s fire service spokesperson, said.

A fire in Kryoneri, a suburb northeast of Athens, has been contained.

On Kythira, a blaze broke out Saturday morning in the village of Pitsinades. According to initial estimates, about 20% of the island has been affected by the fire. New evacuation alerts were issued Sunday, when the government ordered residents of several villages to leave.

The fire service would not have been able to cope if “there had been another two or three fires like the one near Athens,” Vathrakoyiannis told the New York Times.

“The state mechanism has been called to engage in a titanic battle, simultaneously responding to dozens of wildfires across the country,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement. “To those who saw their properties destroyed by the fury of fire, know that the state will stand by your side.”

Climate crisis and civil protection minister Giannis Kefalogiannis previously said they “have injured firefighters, human lives were put at risk, properties have been burned, and forest areas have been destroyed.”

Public broadcaster ERT reported on Kythira that “Tte first images are resonant of a biblical disaster as huge areas have been reduced to cinders and ash,” The Guardian reported.

The island’s deputy mayor, Giorgos Komninos, was cited as saying: “Everything, from houses, beehives [to] olive trees has been burnt.”

Fires in Greece are becoming more frequent in the hot summers. Earlier this month, a fire forced 1,500 people to evacuate from homes and hotels on Crete, a popular tourist island.

Scientists have designated the Mediterranean, including much of Greece, a “wildfire hotspot” as blazes become more frequent and destructive during hot, parched summers. Governments of the affected countries say the climate crisis is the cause.

Bursa governor’s office says 1,765 people have been evacuated as more than 1,900 firefighters battle the flames.

Wildfires that have engulfed Turkiye for weeks have surrounded the country’s fourth-largest city, causing more than 1,700 people to flee their homes and leaving one firefighter dead.

Fires in the forested mountains surrounding Bursa in northwest Turkiye spread rapidly overnight on Sunday, causing a red glow over the city.

Dozens of severe wildfires have hit the country since late June, with the government declaring two western provinces, Izmir and Bilecik, disaster areas on Friday.

Bursa governor’s office said in a statement on Sunday that 1,765 people had been safely evacuated from villages to the northeast as more than 1,900 firefighters battled the flames. Authorities said 500 rescue workers were also on the ground.

The highway linking Bursa to the capital, Ankara, was closed as surrounding forests burned.

A firefighter died from a heart attack while on the job, the city’s mayor, Mustafa Bozbey, said in a statement, adding that the flames had scorched 3,000 hectares (7,413 acres) around the city.

Orhan Saribal, an opposition parliamentarian for the province, described the scene as “an apocalypse”.

Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said fire crews across the country battled 84 separate blazes on Saturday. The country’s northwest was under the greatest threat, including Karabuk, where wildfires have burned since Tuesday, he said.

Unusually high temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds have been fuelling the wildfires.

The General Directorate of Meteorology said Turkiye recorded its highest ever temperature of 50.5 degrees Celsius (122.9 degrees Fahrenheit) in the southeastern Sirnak province on Friday. The highest temperatures for July were seen in 132 other locations, it said.

The previous national record was set on August 15, 2023 in Saricakaya, Eskisehir, at 49.5C (121.1F), the Anadolu news agency reported.

At least 14 people have died in recent weeks, including 10 rescue volunteers and forestry workers killed on Wednesday in a fire in Eskisehir in western Turkiye.

Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said late on Saturday that prosecutors had investigated fires in 33 provinces since June 26, and that legal action had been taken against 97 suspects.