Rising temperatures have created the ideal conditions for “extreme, high severity wildfires that spread rapidly,” according to the California Air Resources Board. In all, about 15,000 acres have been scorched by the flames. “The smoke is a toxic soup,” Brian Rice, president of the statewide California Professional Firefighters union said on Wednesday, imploring tourists to stay out of the vicinity. “It’s not just the brush that’s burning, but homes are burning. Homes contain plastics that are built from petrochemical compounds. If you do not have to be in that area and breathe that environment in, don’t. It’s dangerous.”.
![[Imaging from CalFire shows a map of the spread of the fires across Los Angeles and southern California]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/08/17/newFile.jpg)
“There’s not a fire department on the planet that could deal with this,” Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told The Independent. Normally, fires burn vertically, according to Corbett, who previously served as assistant chief of the Waldwick, New Jersey FD. In this instance, he said, powerful winds, exacerbated by climate change, are pushing the flames along horizontally, “like a giant fan,” consuming everything in their path.
![[‘There’s nothing the fire crews can physically do to stop this fire,’ said Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/08/17/SEI235324628.jpg)
“They’re picking up burning debris and embers and depositing them downwind, and that’s the recipe for what we’ve got now. There’s nothing the fire crews can physically do to stop this fire. All they can do is try to get ahead of it and hope there are enough natural fire breaks, in the form of rivers, open areas with little vegetation, that maybe can slow it down a little bit. It’s virtually uncontrollable, and they go out, typically, only when they run out of fuel.”.
![[Firefighters have been pushed to their limits by the blazes, according to authorities]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/07/23/California_Wildfires_40930.jpg)
