Alarming Conditions and Federal Chaos Could Spell a Disastrous California Fire Season

Gizmodo

6 hours ago

In January, destructive wildfires devastated Los Angeles, killing at least 30 people and displacing hundreds of thousands more. As the city rebuilds, it may face a particularly brutal summer fire season, experts warn.
Thanks to a potentially deadly combination of alarming environmental conditions and sweeping cuts to emergency response agencies, the outlook on California's 2025 fire season is grim. With critical resources—particularly fire response personnel—drastically depleted, it's unclear how the state will be able to manage what is shaping up to be an active season.
'I am not confident in our ability to respond to wildfire [or] concurrent disasters this summer,' Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, told Gizmodo. Unusually early mountain snowmelt, a very dry winter, and both current and projected above-average temperatures are the main factors likely to increase the frequency and intensity of California's fires this year, he said.
'Some aspects of fire season are predictable and some aspects are not. What ultimately happens will be a function of both of those things,' Swain said. 'The most likely outcome is a very active fire season both in the lower elevations and also in the higher elevations this year.'
Brian Fennessy, chief of the Orange County Fire Authority (OCFA), agrees. 'Every predictive service model indicates that Southern California will have an active peak fire year,' he told Gizmodo in an email. 'Absent significant tropical influence that brings with it high humidity and potential precipitation, we expect the potential for large fires.'
In a typical year in June, California is still pretty wet, Swain said. At higher elevations, snowpack continues to melt until July, keeping mountain soils moist. Meanwhile, lower elevations remain saturated from the state's wet season, which generally lasts from winter to spring. But this is not a typical year.
'Although the seasonal mountain snowpack was decently close to the long-term average…it melted much faster than average,' Swain said. When snowpack melts earlier, high-elevation soils dry out earlier, jumpstarting wildfire season in California's mountain regions. 'We're about a month to a month-and-a-half ahead of schedule in terms of the drying in the mountains,' he explained. Because of this, the higher mountain forest fire risk is probably going to be 'a lot higher' than usual by July, August, and September.
In California's low-lying regions, which include most of the state's area and population, experts are already seeing an uptick in fire activity. The reasons vary for different parts of the state, Swain said, but in Southern California, it's due to a very dry winter. 'We know this because we had the worst, most destructive fires on record in L.A. in January, which is usually the peak of the rainy season,' he explained.
In low-lying, inland areas of Northern California, it's been unseasonably hot for the past month. In addition to raising current fire risk, the above-average temperatures suggest the state is in for an incredibly hot summer, according to Swain. 'To the extent that we have seasonal predictions, the one for this summer and early fall is screaming, 'yikes—this looks like a very hot summer,' potentially across most of the West,' he said. In fact, it could be among the warmest on record.
Increased temperatures will make the landscape even drier—and thus more flammable—than it already is. But hot, dry conditions cannot spark a wildfire alone. Fires need fuel, and this year, there's plenty of it to go around. Over the past several years, California's low-elevation regions have received a lot of rain, allowing grasses to flourish, Swain said. As this vegetation continues to dry out, it could fuel fast-moving brush fires that can quickly engulf large areas.
All of this points to an active season not just in California, but across much of the West. The National Interagency Fire Center's significant wildland fire potential outlook, which predicts wildfire risk across the U.S. from June through September, shows large swaths of the West with 'above-normal' fire risk throughout the summer.
Still, scientists can't forecast the timing, intensity, or exact location of future fires. The biggest question mark is ignition, according to Swain. The primary ignition sources for wildfire are lightning strikes and human activity, both of which are near-impossible to predict. 'At a seasonal scale, we don't know how many lightning events there'll be, we don't know how careful or uncareful people will be during these weather events, and that's kind of the wild card,' he said.
Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has significantly reduced staff and proposed major budget cuts at multiple agencies that assist disaster response and recovery, including FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency). According to the Associated Press, Trump plans to begin 'phasing out' FEMA after hurricane season, which officially ends on November 30.
Disaster response is already locally led and state-managed, but FEMA is responsible for coordinating resources from federal agencies, providing direct assistance programs for households, and funding public infrastructure repairs, the AP reports. Dismantling this agency would shift the full burden of disaster recovery to the states, which Swain calls 'a big concern.'
'Everybody I know in the emergency management world is tearing out their hair right now,' he said. 'Our ability to do concurrent disaster management is severely degraded, and by all accounts, is going to get much worse in the next three or four months.'
The U.S. Forest Service has also taken a hit, losing 10% of its workforce as of mid-April, according to Politico. While the Department of Agriculture has said that none of the Forest Service's 'operational' wildland firefighters were fired, but the cuts did impact 'thousands' of red card-holding federal employees, according to Swain. These employees are not official firefighters, but they are trained and certified to respond to wildfires in times of need. The cuts have also affected incident management teams who lead wildfire response and ensure the safety of firefighters on the ground, he said.
'We lost both the infantry, if you will, and the generals in the wildland fire world,' Swain said. 'Despite a number of claims to the contrary.'
What's more, Trump recently ordered government officials to consolidate wildland firefighting forces—which are currently split among five agencies and two Cabinet departments—into a single force. He gave the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Agriculture 90 days to comply, which means the shakeup would occur during California's wildfire season.
Swain thinks restructuring might be a good idea in the long run, but dismantling the organizational structure of wildland firefighting during the peak of what is expected to be a particularly severe fire season—with no specific plan to reconstitute it during said season—is not.
While Chief Fennessy described current federal disaster policy as a 'big unknown,' he appears more optimistic about the consolidation. 'It is believed that consolidating the five federal wildland fire agencies will achieve operational efficiencies and cost savings not realized in the past,' he said.
The firefighters of the new U.S. Wildland Fire Service will be actively working together with the land management agencies to accomplish fire prevention, fuel mitigation, and prescribed fire goals, Fennessy said. 'The consolidation represents an opportunity to significantly improve wildfire response nationally, statewide, and locally.'
Despite federal uncertainties and a troubling forecast, Fennessy said the OCFA is well-prepared for California's fire season this year. 'All of our firefighters just completed their annual refresher training and have been briefed on what to expect through the rest of the calendar year and perhaps beyond,' he said.
Swain still has concerns. 'Everybody involved is going to do their best, and there are going to be heroic efforts,' he said, adding that many firefighters will be putting in a lot of unpaid overtime and taking on even more stress and physical risk than usual this year. 'Those are not the people we should be taking resources away from.'