What People Get Wrong This Week: How the Los Angeles Fires Started
On January 7, a deadly combination of drought and unusually strong winds sparked a series of wildfires in Los Angeles. The fires then ignited a cultural wildfire of internet ignorance, conspiracy theories and misinformation that spiraled out of control online. More than a week has passed, and neither the fires nor the fake news have been contained.
Much of the mythology surrounding the Los Angeles fires revolves around who or what started the deadly fires. This is an understandable question, but there is currently no more specific answer than “weather.”
People don’t have the patience to wait for investigations to be completed and lawsuits to be resolved—they can’t even wait for the flames to die down—so they fill in the gaps by placing blame on the groups or things they hate most. .
“People I don’t like start fires”
The list of culprits is long and peculiar. Here are just a few of the people and things that are wrongly or prematurely blamed for starting the Los Angeles fires.
Jews : The fan-favorite “The Jews did it” conspiracy theory first surfaced after the fire. This was posted on Facebook on January 8:
“Just Dew” is a reference to “directed energy weapons”, also known as Jewish space lasers. But alas, this Facebook post contains a photo of another fire from 2018 , so it doesn’t prove anything. Just because some trees didn’t burn doesn’t prove they were lasers either. The additional theory that houses with blue roofs and/or blue trash cans are immune to Jewish space laser attacks is also incorrect, but be sure to recycle them just in case.
To be fair, using “directed energy” to start a fire is entirely possible—you can do it yourself with a magnifying glass—but there is no evidence that it was a cause of the Los Angeles fires. In any case, a box of matches would have been a more effective tool.
Woke People/Democrats: There are many conspiracy theories that blame the fires on a general wokeness of the California government. It seems obvious to me that these are cheap attempts to politicize the tragedy, but I am not the target audience for such statements. In any case, California did not turn away 40 Oregon fire trucks for failing to meet emissions standards. It is also not true that Los Angeles sent its firefighting equipment to Ukraine. Donald Trump said California Gov. Gavin Newsom didn’t sign the “water restoration declaration,” but that’s not true . James Woods, Elon Musk and many others claim that the LAFD’s diversity program is to blame for the inadequate response to the fire, which may be a matter of opinion, but there is no evidence to support this .
I’m not ruling out the possibility that government mismanagement or poor public policy influenced the response to the fires – no one’s perfect, right? — but it’s too early to say what, if anything, went wrong, or who, if anyone, screwed up. . Rest assured, it will take years of lawsuits to get things right.
MAGA Republicans : A post on Threads ( archived here ) on January 8 claims that the LAPD is “looking for three ‘persons of interest'” all associated with the MAGA website and who have been seen at the source of all three major fires in Los Angeles. “It’s not true. It’s like it’s completely made up.”
Illegal Immigrants : This is at least plausible. A few days after the fire, Los Angeles police arrested a homeless Mexican man who was in possession of a blowtorch. However, it has not been established whether a blowtorch was used to set the fire. Could locals be understandably nervous about mistaking a drug-smoking blowtorch for a fire-starting blowtorch? May be. Either way, ICE is investigating , and if this undocumented dude really did start the fires, rest assured we will never, ever stop hearing about it.
Kids smoking weed : 24-year-old tourist Benny Oren posted a series of harrowing videos of himself and his friends running from a fire in the Palisades shortly after it started, leading to widespread speculation in the comments section that these kids were smoking weed there. and this is what led to the fire. Many helpful X users have also noted that “Oren” is a Hebrew name . There is no evidence that Oren or his friends were anything other than tourists in the wrong place at the wrong time. Of course, the situation may change, but for now this is all we know.
Unspecified People (Probably Jewish) : During an interview with Fox News, actor Mel Gibson stated that “there are people ready, willing and able to start fires, and are they mandated to do so.” Since he’s Mel Gibson, I’m guessing he’s talking about Jews, but who knows.
Global Warming : Global climate change is definitely real, but whether this particular fire (or any fire) was “caused” by climate change is a complex question. On the one hand, there were forest fires in California even before people appeared on Earth , but on the other hand, forest fires are now more destructive and frequent than even 30 years ago. Climate change likely exacerbated the weather conditions that made this fire so destructive, but does that mean global warming “caused” the fire? I guess it depends on what you mean by “caused”.
Keen city planners: According to this poster on X , “Los Angeles is poised to become a fully operational AI-powered smart city by 2028,” and the fire was set to drive away the humans so the AI could take over.
Similar “concerns” were expressed by Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who said: “There are already conversations — and we’ve played a few sound bites — about rethinking how recovery happens, and it’s clear that there is a great need for high-density housing in California. and across the country, there’s a big push from the climate people, and in this case you can already hear that rumbling. Like, goodbye private homes, hello. dense buildings.”
Ingraham doesn’t specify who the “climate scientists” are, nor does she specify the “murmurs” she heard. She seems to be deliberately vague on the details so that viewers can fill in the blanks themselves. No one can say for sure that she is wrong, but it is believed that some shadowy group deliberately set the fires to achieve their nefarious goal of affordable affordable housing.
Diddy : According to this conspiracy theory, someone set Los Angeles on fire to hide evidence of Pi-related crimes. Diddy. Proponents of the “Diddy did it” theory include Catherine Austin Fitts, who served as assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development under George H.W. While this is possible, a huge fire seems to be a completely ineffective tool for destroying evidence.
So what really caused the Los Angeles fires?
Broadly speaking, the Los Angeles fires were the result of unprecedentedly high winds and dry conditions. Santa Ana winds occur once every six months, and high winds in California usually lead to fires. Small fires that could be put out quickly on a normal day turn into huge forest fires when the wind is strong.
To be fair, most of these small fires are caused by people. Human activity is the direct cause of 85% of forest fires , whether downed power lines or arson. Regarding current fires: There is some evidence that the Palisades fire was the result of the re-ignition of remnants of an old fire, and the Eaton fire may have been caused by electric company equipment , but until the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives completes its investigation and publishes its findings. We have no conclusive evidence as to who or what caused the fires.