What sparked the L.A. fires is different from the underlying causes

As the wildfires in the Los Angeles area continue to rage for a second week, threatening lives, homes and businesses, government officials and the public have begun debating what caused them.

President-elect Donald Trump was quick to blame Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom, claiming in a social media post that he had “refused to sign the water restoration declaration.”

Newsom responded, “There is no such document as the 'water restoration declaration.' That is pure fiction,” and announced a new website to try to counter misinformation about the causes of the fires.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, meanwhile, has begun its own official investigation into the cause of the wildfires.

“There’s a lot of misinformation floating around, and a lot of people want answers — which is understandable. And we will provide those answers,” Ginger Colbrun, an ATF spokeswoman, said over the weekend. “But we have to get additional people here and investigate.”

Immediate cause vs. underlying causes

As is often the case in California after a devastating wildfire, the “People want answers” part of the equation takes on an ideological dimension, pitting those who focus on an immediate cause — such as arson or damaged power lines — against those who blame underlying conditions like climate change.

In the Kenneth Fire, for instance, police arrested a man last week who they said was attempting to light a fire in Woodland Hills. Residents of Altadena also reported what they described as flames originating from power lines in the area that they believe started the Eaton Fire.

At the same time, climate scientists continue to emphasize the growing body of evidence showing that climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels is making wildfire conditions much worse.

On its website, the American Association for the Advancement of Science emphasizes that in the Southwest, it has been the “driest 22-year period in at least 1,200 years, based on soil water content,” and that research has shown that “human-caused climate change was responsible for 42% of that soil dryness.”

“In the western United States human-caused climate change caused more than half the increase in forest fuel aridity (how dry and flammable vegetation is) since the 1970s and has approximately doubled the cumulative area burned in forest fires since 1984,” the AAAS states.

So-called “climate whiplash” is another underlying factor, whereby one weather extreme seems to follow another due to climate change and rising global temperatures. Although 2025 is off to a record-dry start in Southern California, the past two years experienced extraordinarily wet conditions that resulted in super-charged plant growth. When conditions turned dry again, this created especially dangerous wildfire fuel.

Who pays?

Assigning blame is important when it comes to compensating victims.

The ATF investigation, which could take months to complete, will be key when it comes to the inevitable barrage of lawsuits, which have already begun to be filed. Many of the largest wildfires in California in recent years, for instance, were determined to have been started by faulty power lines owned by public utility companies like Pacific Gas & Electric, which have paid billions in settlements to victims.

In November, the utility companies Hawaiian Electric Industries (HEI) and Hawaiian Electric Company (HECO) agreed to pay $4 billion to the victims of the 2023 Maui wildfire, which killed 102 people and destroyed more than 2,200 structures.

While pinning the blame for wildfires on utility companies has resulted in massive settlements, the legal landscape continues to shift, as more people begin to understand the role that climate change is playing in some natural disasters.

On Monday, the United States Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from oil and gas companies being sued by the city of Honolulu for “the immense costs and consequences of the climate crisis caused by the defendants’ misconduct,” the Associated Press reported.

A growing number of lawsuits brought by states is looking to blame oil companies, who, they say, have long known that the use of their products is making the world’s climate more dangerously unpredictable.

This week, a law signed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul went into effect obliging fossil fuel companies to pay $75 billion over the next 25 years to help pay for climate change damages to the state. The law is similar to one passed last year in Vermont.