The L.A. fires should be studied. Here’s why
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A balanced and thorough investigation of the Los Angeles fires could help communities across the U.S. reframe their thinking about planning for emergencies.
The Los Angeles fires are a national disaster of epic proportions. City officials, California Governor Gavin Newsom and President-elect Donald Trump have traded accusations about what caused this crisis. But as an engineering professor who lives in Los Angeles and has studied extreme events and natural and human-caused disasters for more than 40 years, I believe an event with so many lives lost and damages estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars demands a more substantive response.