Los Angeles can lean on other cities to prevent fires

Jonathan S. Blake and Joe Mathews, Tribune News Service

As Los Angeles burned, firefighters from near and far rushed to our city. Crews from all over California; from Texas, Oregon, Arizona, tribal reservations and Mexico and Canada (despite the US tariff threats) joined the fight against the blazes. Even embattled Ukraine offered help. This is mutual aid in action — a “spirit of cooperation,” as the Los Angeles Fire Department declared in a November statement about the policy, to “ensure that no one jurisdiction faces a major emergency alone.” It’s great that localities offer each other mutual aid during emergencies. But we shouldn’t have to wait for a crisis to come together. Cities such as Los Angeles can and should help each other figure out how to mitigate the fires of the future, using new technology, policy, and prevention and suppression strategies.

Wildfires are an increasingly grave risk to cities around the world. Two major trends drive the threat: Climate change is making fires worse, and cities are growing, pushing more and more residents into what’s called the wildland-urban interface, where people live next to combustible vegetation. The destruction we’ve witnessed in Pacific Palisades and Altadena will happen again; the only questions are when and where. The departing commissioner of Australia’s largest firefighting service says Sydney could see fires very similar to those in LA.

Every vulnerable city needs to prepare, and it’s a daunting task. Getting ready for urban wildfire is not just about training, staffing and equipping fire departments. It also requires long-term, slow-moving changes in building codes and materials, urban planning, land use, housing density and more. But luckily, no city has to go it alone. All the world’s wildfire-prone cities, including Los Angeles, Lisbon, Cape Town, Athens, Jakarta and Melbourne, can share information, expertise and practices to learn from one another. For example, Singapore’s strict fire prevention laws, enforced by an active civil defense force, offer lessons in how to stop fires before they start. The Portland, Oregon, utility uses AI modelling to determine where and when fires might break out and position fire equipment and personnel accordingly; Pittsburgh similarly employs predictive tech modeling.

After Canberra, Australia’s capital, experienced deadly fires in 2003, the city implemented detailed fire prevention and response planning for individual pieces of land. It’s also developing a model of “shared responsibility between the community and fire services” to reduce risk and prepare for fires, according to the chief of the Australian Capital Territory’s Rural Fire Service. The Canberra model is replicable — and getting attention in LA. Promoting policy cooperation and coordination is a job for city networks, which, happily, are a trend in world politics. A 2021 study identified more than 100 transnational city networks, with a collective membership of 10,500 cities. Organised networks connect cities on many topics, such as economic inequality, participatory democracy and peace-building, and responding to climate change is one of the most prominent.

Climate-focused city networks can help municipal governments reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the local impact of planetary climate change. Learning to live with wildfires is an example of the latter, and many networks support municipal-level climate adaptation. For instance, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group consists of 97 major world cities; according to the group’s 2023 report, its members are home to approximately 600 million people and produce just under one-quarter of the global gross domestic product. It supports a number of risk-specific networks in which cities facing similar climate challenges exchange information and jointly develop solutions. C40 groups include the Connecting Delta Cities Network, Urban Flooding Network and Cool Cities Network, a hub for tackling urban heat, of which Los Angeles is a member.

What there isn’t yet is a dedicated urban wildfire network to focus on best approaches and lessons learned among cities facing a high risk of wildfires. To be sure, there are transnational networks of relevant officials, such as the international associations of emergency managers, wildland fire management experts and fire chiefs, adding to the international mutual aid agreements that facilitate the deployment of first responders. Such groups are necessary — but not sufficient.

Addressing fire risk requires solutions that involve all of local government and aim to reduce our reliance on first responders. Urban planners, public works engineers, neighbourhood groups, park managers and elected officials from wildfire-prone cities around the world should be in regular conversation. Together, they can support research and planning to produce novel fire strategies.

Los Angeles is particularly well-positioned to help lead translocal efforts. It is the only city in the US with an official city diplomat, the deputy mayor for international affairs. Los Angeles has also been a leader in city networks; former Mayor Eric Garcetti was previously chair of C40.