https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/los-angeles-wildfires-australia-climate-change-b2678085.html
created by theindependentonline on 13/01/2025 at 18:15 UTC
40 upvotes, 1 top-level comments (showing 1)
Comment by theindependentonline at 13/01/2025 at 18:16 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
The sheds have burned down,” she said, borrowing a friend’s phone. “The truck too. The chickens are dead. Half the cows are dead. The farm is gone, and I don’t know if the house is going to survive[1]…”
1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/how-to-help-la-wildfires-victims-b2677469.html
These were the first words we’d heard from my aunt in six hours, as a 40-degree New Year’s Day had erupted into a fire [2]that would eventually burn an area twice the size of England[3] to the ground.
She had been trapped inside from 10am until 4pm, as a fireball from a fast-moving firebreak bombed the farm sheds around her, melting the tractor and her car, and decimating a wooden bridge that was the only road access to the property. If it hadn’t been for a neighbour from the next farm, breaking through fences and back paddocks to save her, she may have never made it out.
In that tear-filled phone call, we began to get our first sense of what might be left of my grandfather’s farm – one that had never been touched by fire in the last 150 years.
This is the memory that came back to me this week, watching as fires tore through Los Angeles[4], having killed 24 people[5] at the time of writing, fueled by wind gusts of up to 100mph, turning towns into tinderboxes. Like this week’s tragedy, we had no idea just how fast fire could spread four years ago either.
4: https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/los-angeles
Read more here: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/los-angeles-wildfires-australia-climate-change-b2678085.html[6][7]
6: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/los-angeles-wildfires-australia-climate-change-b2678085.html
7: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/los-angeles-wildfires-australia-climate-change-b2678085.html