Wildfires – Climate or Criminal?

By Dr Graham Pinn, The Saltbush Club, ©2025 

(Jan. 10, 2025) — The year 2024 produced much anguish over fires, with attempts made to blame the regular events on “unprecedented” climate change. The season is just kicking off here but elsewhere, in the Northern winter, things are hotting up early!

Just a few days into January 2025, the season has already started, with a major fire in Los Angeles; typically, the usual “catastrophic” fire season begins around May. Seven fires, including on the iconic Sunset Boulevard, have created significant damage, with tens of thousands evacuated, and only two under control (am 9/01). The city, with a population of 4 million has a massive urban sprawl, resulting in an area 50% bigger than New York.

The cause is yet to be evaluated, with temperatures as low as 3 degrees it is difficult to relate it to excess heat, no doubt some will try; strong winds are exacerbating the damage, with already (Day 2) a thousand homes lost. The timing of onset of fires, and their multiple inner-city sites, are all strongly suggestive of arson.

The Northern Hemisphere summer bushfire outbreak in 2024, had begun in Portugal, the Government declaring a state of emergency, and the massive scale needing help from outside countries. The Government believed many fires were started by accident or intent, Reuters reported 14 arrested, with 125,000 hectares, burned.

Major bushfires in Greece threatened Athens in August 2024, and again, led to requests for help from other countries; the inevitable cry of “global warming” ensued. The previous year’s summer fire-storm in Greece, in 2023, had led to 140 arrests, officials had blamed negligence or arson for the majority of the blazes. Estimates are that 60% of fires in the Italian summer of 2023 were also intentionally lit, with 22 arrests. Spain’s Asturias region was hit by 90 fires that year, most believed to be lit by arsonists, labelled “fire terrorists”.

Of over 6000 fires in 2023 in Canada, were blamed on climate change, half were believed to result from human accidents, some shown to have been caused by arson. Interestingly, a Canadian man, who claimed fires were deliberately started by government agencies, was, in January 2024, himself convicted of starting 14 fires the previous year. The all-time record holder, inevitably from the US, is John Orr, believed to have lit over 2000 fires between 1984 and 1991.

There were no lightning strikes in September 2023, when a series of small fires in the East of Australia joined up into a mega event, most were man-made. In the New Year, before the rains came, an outbreak in North Adelaide was a suspicious event, and an arrest made, several fires near Geelong in January 2024, were again being treated as suspicious. Fires, in March on the outskirts of Perth in WA, resulted in arrests made. There were also suspicious fires on the Sunshine Coast and the Whitsundays. In the Northern Territory one man was charged over 18 fires, with dozens more suspected, arson was reported in central NSW, with 24 charged. Fortunately, and unanticipated by BoM, rain stopped play!

Read the rest here.

Dr Graham Pinn is a retired Consultant Physician.