On Pomona College Week: Wildfires in California have a long history.
Char Miller, W. M. Keck professor of environmental analysis and history, examines this.
Faculty Bio:
Char Miller is the W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College, where he teaches classes on public lands, water, fire, urbanization.
Transcript:
The fires that devastated parts of Los Angeles last January were not a new phenomenon. I’m an environmental historian, and the forces at work in LA were hundreds of years in the making.
First, there’s climate change. It acts as a disaster accelerant–like kerosene poured onto flames. One metric of the warming planet is that nineteen of the 20 largest fires in California history have burned since 2003.
Fire is not new in California. The Spanish who arrived in California witnessed fire everywhere. They called San Diego Bay the “Bay of Smoke.”
These fires, though, were controlled burns that indigenous people had used for centuries as part of their land management practices. The U.S. Forest Service calculates that, depending on the ecosystem, 4 to 10% of the state was burned every year. These fires helped forests regenerate, and good land management yielded the resources they needed for food, clothing and shelter. The land held more groundwater as well.
The Spanish, though, prohibited indigenous fire management, laying the foundation for widespread fire suppression. The U.S. Forest Service followed suit, and by 1930, mandated that every fire must be extinguished by 10 next morning. One consequence of this mandate has been increased forest density that is another accelerant for recent mega-fires.
And what these fires in Los Angeles torched was the result of a third factor—city councils and county commissioners have greenlit housing projects in fire-prone areas such ridgelines, foothills, and canyons where millions now live. We shouldn’t be surprised when these structures burn, as they did in January 2025.
By forgetting indigenous fire practices, replacing controlled burns with total fire suppression, and building in places nature never intended us to build, we have created our own fire disasters. It’s up to us to change the trajectory.
Read More:
[OSU Press] – Burn Scars
