Besides burning the most urban area, the Eaton and Palisades fires are the largest ever for California in January. Alexandra Syphard, a senior research scientist at the Conservation Biology Institute, said their timing and path through the city “may have no precedent in history.”

The Eaton and Palisades fires that erupted last week have collectively burned almost 4 square miles of highly dense parts of Los Angeles, more than double the urban acreage consumed by the region's Woolsey fire in 2018,

In Kim Stanley Robinson’s widely acclaimed, Obama-praised climate novel, The Ministry for the Future, the climate crisis is already well underway when catastrophic rains drown Los Angeles in water. Recreational kayaks and motorboats become crucial rescue vehicles,