According to all the accounts, the January storms of fire which decimated thousands of houses and killed 31 people in the County of Los Angeles were the most devastating in the history of the region.
But new research argues that Eaton and Palisades’ fires may have been much more fatal than what is reflected in Coroner’s relationships.
A research letter published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. Considers that the county experienced 440 more deaths than generally planned between January 5 and February 1 – a period which started just a few days before the explosion of fires. This higher number of deaths, note the study, probably reflects such harmful health influences such as increasing exposure to poor air quality, or delays and interruptions of the health services caused by fires.
Although the immediate effects of forest fires and other disasters motivated by the climate are clearly apparent in the communities for sure, the persistent consequences can be difficult to quantify. Toxic exposure to smoke and environmental damage from forest fires can persist for months, even years, after the extinguishing of the flames.
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“Awarding deaths properly to a forest fire is almost an almost impossible task,” said Andrew Stokes, an associate professor at the University of Boston and Demographer of Mortality who co-wrote the research letter. “Research highlights the need for these types of modeling efforts to really get the real burden of these disasters.”
To generate their results, the study authors compared the deaths recorded in the County of Los Angeles from January 5 to February 1 to those recorded during the same period in 2018, 2019 and 2024. (They excluded the 1920s to 2023 when deaths were significantly higher due to COVVID.)
According to their models, 6,371 deaths were recorded during the period of almost a month during fires, against 5,931 deaths expected on the basis of data from past years.
Official death counts often rest on easily identifiable causes, including burns and smoke inhalation. But these figures sometimes fail to capture the complete assessment of a natural disaster.
According to the County Legalist, 19 people died in the Eaton fire and 12 people were killed in the fire of Palisades. Many of those who perished were finally found among the remains of their destroyed properties.
But the study argues that the real deaths attributable to the fires were more than 14 times the official count.
“The differences are astounding,” said Stokes.
Heat waves, hurricanes and other disasters have been the subject of similar research, but forest fires can be difficult to study when they break out in rural and low -populated regions. Since Eaton palisades and fires have occurred in “one of the most densely populated areas of the nation, it was possible to use national mortality statistics to establish a reliable basic trend to estimate excessive deaths,” said Stokes.
“What we have done here would be almost impossible to do for the fire of the camp or other forest fires that have occurred in more rural parties in the state or the country,” he said.
However, Stokes notes that study is not a complete table of effects. Firefighters and other first speakers – as well as residents inside and outside the fire zones – could face future health problems resulting from exposure to smoke and ashes.
During the flames of January, visits to the hospital linked to the fire for smoke exposed considerably in the County of Los Angeles, according to the Ministry of Public Health. But the smoke of forest fires can derive from hundreds of kilometers and the specific number of deaths and hospitalizations linked to the exhibition is often not known that months and years after natural disasters.
A study published last year by the UCLA Luskin innovation center revealed around 55,000 premature deaths in a period of 11 years after the inhalation of fine particles known as PM2.5, or soot, forest fires.
“What we have done here is what we call a rapid assessment of the mortality of Los Angeles forest fires,” said Stokes. “And as such, we focus only on the acute period during which forest fires burned in Los Angeles. But we hope there will be additional research to assess the long tail of these forest fires.”
