Los Angeles wildfires may be linked to 440 deaths, new research estimates

CNN

3 days ago

The wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles earlier this year — burning entire neighborhoods to the ground, straining firefighting resources and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes — may have led to hundreds more deaths than were recorded, a new study suggests.
While officials reported that the Palisades and Eaton fires directly killed at least 30 people when they incinerated parts of Los Angeles County, the blazes may be linked to 410 additional deaths from January 5 to February 1, according to research published Wednesday in the The Journal of the American Medical Association. That would make for a total of 440 wildfire-related deaths, according to the study.
'These additional deaths likely reflect a combination of factors, including increased exposure to poor air quality and health care delays and interruptions,' the study says.
The wildfires' impact on his loved ones motivated Andrew Stokes, a mortality demographer and one of the authors of the study, to probe for excess deaths.
'Having had many family and friends who were directly affected made me feel compelled to look into this further, using my expertise as a demographer and a person who studies mortality statistics,' the Boston University associate professor told CNN.
The new findings highlight the need to quantify just how deadly wildfires and other climate-related emergencies can be beyond direct fatalities. The emergencies can have long-term health effects that extend well beyond the disaster itself, experts say.
Years ago, Stokes evaluated the excess deaths during the pandemic after many deaths went uncounted, he said. After developing models to understand the true toll of the virus, Stokes used that expertise to look at the true mortality burden of natural disasters such as the Los Angeles wildfires.
Along with deaths directly related to the wildfire, the researchers counted deaths partially and indirectly attributed to the wildfires. That includes lung or heart conditions exacerbated by smoke or stress, disruptions to health systems and mental health impacts, according to the study.
To conduct the study, the researchers compared recorded deaths in Los Angeles County from January to February with figures from previous years, excluding 2020 to 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. That helped researchers estimate how many deaths would have been expected in that time period had no wildfires occurred, Stokes said.
They then calculated excess deaths as the difference between observed and expected deaths, according to the study.
'In Los Angeles County, weekly deaths consistently exceeded expected deaths during the period from January 5 to February 1, 2025,' the study says.
A total of 6,371 deaths were observed in the county, compared with 5,931 expected deaths, according to the study. This means that nearly 7% of the recorded deaths in Los Angeles County were excess deaths linked to the wildfires.
Stokes said he was 'really surprised and alarmed' at the findings. 'The magnitude of the underreporting in the official data is just very severe,' he said.
But he hopes that quantifying the excess deaths can spur authorities to provide more assistance to those still grappling with the devastation.
The researchers note that the data is preliminary and the toll could grow.
'That 440 value that we estimate is clearly the lower bound, because we only look at the first weeks after the wildfire started,' Stokes said. 'These medium and long- term effects … could manifest over time as people develop wildfire related diseases.'
Future studies should investigate the longer-term health impacts of the wildfires and the specific causes of excess wildfire deaths, the researchers said.