A great explanation of what a firestorm is
Someone pointed me toward this Instagram post by Joe Rhode, a former Disney Imagineer who explains in detail what exactly a firestorm is, and how difficult they are to defeat. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DEnFaSWvhX3/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
JOE RHODE FROM INSTAGRAM: SANTA ANA WINDS AND MOUNTAIN WINDS = FIRESTORM
If you are not from around here, you might be unfamiliar with the particular wind conditions that have made these fires so destructive. There are two.
The first is more common: the so-called Santa Ana winds. These winds originate far to the east in the desert and become increasingly warmer and drier as they rush towards Southern California. We have had a very dry year, but these winds suck all the remaining moisture out of everything they touch, and most of what grows out here is dry and full of creosote and oils as an adaptation to dry weather. We don’t really have forests in the way that other parts of the country do. Most of what grows here is a low thick, highly flammable scrub that regrows quickly after each fire, providing fuel for the next one.
Santa Anas are strong and can have gusts over 60 miles an hour. They tend to run from the east to the west, partially because the unusual mountain formations of Southern California run east west.
The second phenomenon is more rare. It is called a mountain wave. Winds hit the mountain range perpendicular to the mass and become dramatically compressed. These can reach well over 100 miles an hour and behave more like tornado winds, creating extremely localized, but very strong damage. I once saw a 6 foot wide swath totally stripped of all leaves on hedges and trees right down the block. Weird.
This second category of wind also accompanied these fires. This is unfightable. Embers can travel over a mile in less than a minute, over your head and start a fire behind you. Flames can lie down flat and shoot between two houses and torch house on the other side of the street. A friend of mine in Malibu once watched the embers from a fire near him rise into the air, glowing in the night, blow out over the ocean, still glowing, head up the coast about a mile, still glowing, and land a mile up the coast again, setting another fire.
This disaster is not the product of incompetence. We have the best firefighters in the world. But a municipal water system is not designed to combat a firestorm. It is designed to put out the occasional house fire and keep your toilet running. There is nothing anyone can do.