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There is a lot of buzz about the fires in California, with lives lost and billions in property damage, lots of blame to be spread (and rightfully so).

The major contributor of these fires are a weather phenomenon called the “Santa Ana’s.” The Santa Ana winds, also sometimes called the devil winds, are strong, extremely dry katabatic winds that originate inland and affect coastal Southern California and northern Baja California. They originate from cool, dry high-pressure air masses in the Great Basin.

Santa Ana winds are known for the hot, dry weather that they bring in autumn (often the hottest of the year), but they can also arise at other times of the year. They often bring the lowest relative humidities of the year to coastal Southern California, and “beautifully clear skies.” These low humidity’s, combined with the warm, compression-heated air mass, plus high wind speeds, create critical fire weather conditions, and fan destructive wildfires.

Typically, about 10 to 25 Santa Ana wind events occur annually. A Santa Ana wind can blow from one to seven days, with an average wind event lasting three days. The longest recorded Santa Ana event was a 14-day wind in November 1957. Damage from high winds is most common along the Santa Ana River basin in Orange County, the Santa Clara River basin in Ventura and Los Angeles County, through Newhall Pass into the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles County, and through the Cajon Pass into San Bernardino County near San Bernardino, Fontana, and Chino.

The Santa Ana winds and the accompanying raging wildfires have been a part of the ecosystem of the Los Angeles Basin for over 5,000 years, dating back to the earliest habitation of the region by the Tongva and Tataviam peoples. The Santa Ana winds have been recognized and reported in English-language records as a weather phenomenon in Southern California since at least the mid-nineteenth century. During the Mexican–American War, Commodore Robert Stockton reported that a “strange, dust-laden windstorm” arrived in the night while his troops were marching south through California in January 1847. Various episodes of hot, dry winds have been described over this history as dust storms, hurricane-force winds, and violent north-easters, damaging houses and destroying fruit orchards. Newspaper archives have many photographs of regional damage dating back to the beginnings of news reporting in Los Angeles. When the Los Angeles Basin was primarily an agricultural region, the winds were feared particularly by farmers for their potential to destroy crops.

Because they are simultaneously “gusty” and “desiccating,” the Santa Ana winds are highly associated with regional wildfire danger.

The winds have been implicated in some of the area’s (and even the state’s) largest and deadliest wildfires, including the Thomas Fire, and Cedar Fire, as well as the Laguna Fire, Old Fire, Esperanza Fire, and the Witch Creek Fire. Other major wildfires fueled by Santa Ana winds include:

• • 1889 Santiago Canyon Fire
  • 1961 Bel-Air fire
  • 1982 Anaheim fire
  • 1993 The Santa Ana winds spurred a major wildfire outbreak that included the Laguna Fire and the Kinneloa Fire.
  • 2007 The winds fueled a major wildfire outbreak in Southern California, from San Diego to Santa Barbara counties.
  • 2008 Santa Ana winds were a factor in the Tea, Sayre, and Freeway Complex fires.
  • 2014 Santa Ana winds initiated the May 2014 San Diego County wildfires, approximately four months after the Colby Fire in northern Los Angeles County.
  • 2017 A cluster of twenty-five Southern California wildfires were exacerbated by long-lasting and strong Santa Ana winds.
  • 2020 A group of wildfires in southern California were exacerbated by a mild Santa Ana event, including the Valley Fire, El Dorado Fire, and Bobcat Fire.
  • 2024 the Franklin Fire in Malibu was significantly exacerbated by strong Santa Ana winds, leading to rapid spread and extensive damage of over 3,900 acres (1,600 ha).
  • 2025 A strong Santa Ana wind event fueled a wildfire outbreak in Southern California, primarily affecting the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

The second major contributor to the fires happening in, and around Los Angeles are the management of the forest that surround the Los Angeles county area, as well as within the county in neighborhoods.

The Western United States is enduring yet another devastating fire year, with more than 4.1 million acres already scorched in California alone, at least 5 people dead and hundreds of others forced to flee their homes.

Wildland fires are increasingly following a now-familiar pattern: bigger, hotter and more destructive. A recent Los Angeles Times headline declaring the fires to be “The worst fire season. Again” illustrated some of the frustration residents feel over the state’s fire strategy.

For decades, federal, state and local agencies have prioritized fire suppression over prevention, pouring billions of dollars into hiring and training firefighters, buying and maintaining firefighting equipment and educating the public on fire safety.

(Lets also not forget that the forest service budget was reduced to a minimum to free up money for illegal immigration.

California became the first state to expand Medicaid to include all illegal immigrants residing in the state, flooding the state’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, with as many as 700,000 illegal immigrants despite a record $68 billion state budget deficit.

California is already facing a significant provider access crisis, with vulnerable Medi-Cal beneficiaries facing lengthy wait times for medically necessary care. According to the California Senate Republican Fiscal Office, the influx of illegal immigrants onto the safety net program, many of whom are able-bodied adults without dependents, will exacerbate this crisis and recklessly endanger access to health care for vulnerable Americans residing in California.

California’s radical move comes as the illegal immigration crisis fueled by President Biden’s open border policies continues to worsen, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reporting 308,728 encounters nationwide in November 2023, the worst November ever recorded by CBP. California’s open-ended offer to offer government funded health care to illegal immigrants provides another incentive for illegal entry into the United States, further exacerbating the crisis at the southern border.

The expansion is expected to cost the state roughly $1.2 billion for the first six months, before increasing to around $3.1 billion per year, according to estimates released last year. It will include undocumented immigrants between the ages of 26 and 49).

“Fires have always been part of our ecosystem,” said Mike Rogers, a former Angeles National Forest supervisor and board member of the National Association of Forest Service Retirees. “Forest management is a lot like gardening. You have to keep the forest open and thin.”

Federal forest management dates back to the 1870s, when Congress created an office within the U.S. Department of Agriculture tasked with assessing the quality and conditions of forests. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt oversaw the birth of the U.S. Forest Service, which manages 193 million acres of public land across the country.

In California, forest management also falls under the purview of the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire.

Since 2011, Cal Fire has spent more than $600 million on fire prevention efforts and removed or felled nearly 2 million dead trees. In 2018, California set the goal of treating — which can include slashing, burning, sawing or thinning trees — 500,000 acres of wildland per year, yet Cal Fire remains far from meeting that target.

“It’s an ongoing process,” said Cal Fire spokeswoman Christine McMorrow. “There is always going to be more work.”

Cal Fire is steadily receiving injections of money to do what it can to reduce wildfire risk, including better land management and training a new generation of foresters. In 2018, former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that will allocate $1 billion over five years to Cal Fire to be used on fire prevention measures. But experts warn that more money is needed.

“Is it enough? Well, it’s enough for what we’re doing right now, but is that enough to get all the work that needs to be done in one year or five years or 10 years? It’s going to a take lot,” McMorrow said.

Long before the country’s founding, Spanish explorers documented wildland fires in California. In 1542, conquistador Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailed along the coast and noticed smoke billowing up from what is now known as the Los Angeles Basin. He called it “la baya de los fumos,” or “the bay of smoke.”

Studies by archaeologists and historians support a theory that Cabrillo might have been witnessing an early form of land management, including the burning of shrubs and chaparral to clear dry brush and promote better conditions for hunting big game.

So if you want someone to blame, we once again are able to look at the failed policies of politicians.