What makes burn scars so dangerous when heavy rain arrives in California?

AccuWeather

When areas in California are stricken by wildfire, a twofold disaster usually ensues, with flash flooding following in the months and years afterward. Professor Char Miller explains why.

Transcript

00:00Nine months after the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, heavy rain is now starting to soak

00:06Southern California with evacuations underway near the Palisades and Eaton burn-scarred areas.

00:12Joining us now is Charm Miller, professor at Pomona College and author of Burn Scars. So

00:18first of all, can you just go over for people what makes these burn-scarred areas so vulnerable

00:24to flash floods and mudslides? Well, this is a historic thing that has happened in Southern

00:30California for millennia. There's a fire and then the rain comes and some of it is the soils are

00:36unstable. The vegetation has been incinerated and particularly these slopes are steep. So when

00:44water hits steep slopes, it just starts moving down fast. And as we have seen across the 20th century,

00:50if not earlier, these floods, these debris flows, as they call them, can be huge and quite dangerous.

00:58So how long will these burn-scarred areas remain a danger for these people living in these areas?

01:05Oh, I think it's going to be several years. In 2009, we had the large station fire. It took about 10

01:13years for the debris flows to sort of diminish in quality and in volume. These are not

01:20as big as that fire and they're in less hilly, steep areas. But even so, there will be debris flows

01:29that come down Eaton Canyon and others like it. Yeah, it's something we'll be watching closely. And

01:34I want to talk a little bit more about recovery now in the Palisades and elsewhere. What does that

01:39recovery and rebuilding look like nine months later? Well, you know, the recovery is going to be a little

01:46different now that we're getting rain, in part because it just is going to shut down all sorts of

01:51construction. But the recovery process is tough. It's not hard if you're a plant. Actually, plants are

01:57growing quite nicely up there. But the human re-settlement is going to be difficult, in part because

02:03the contractors can't get in there. There are not permits that are really available. And so, you know,

02:11what we thought nine months ago was that it was going to take several years, if not a half a

02:16decade to get there, to rebuild Altadena, to rebuild the Palisades is looking pretty accurate.

02:22So after the wildfires, are changes being made in, let's say, infrastructure planning to help reduce

02:27the fire risk and improve overall land management? You know, we are still in recovery mode. And I mean

02:34that both psychologically, emotionally, as well as physically. I would say that part of the recovery

02:41initiative has got to be that we have to get used to living with fire. And my worry is that in a rapid

02:48rebuilding situation, people will ultimately forget that this place once was incinerated. It's happened

02:54before. I have no reason to expect it to not happen again.

02:58Char Miller, Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College. Thanks so much for your insight.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended