It’s not ‘traditional’ wildfire season – so why have the California fires spread so quickly?
A real-life drama is unfolding just outside Hollywood. Ferocious wildfires have ballooned at an “alarming speed”, in just a matter of hours. Why?
What caused the California wildfires?
There are currently three wildfires torching southern California. The causes of all three are still being investigated.
The majority (85%) of all forest fires across the United States are started by humans, either deliberately or accidentally, according to the US Forest Service.
But there is a difference between what ignites a wildfire and what allows it to spread.
However these fires were sparked, other factors have fuelled them, making them spread quickly and leaving people less time to prepare or flee.
The main culprit so far is the Santa Ana winds.
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What are Santa Ana winds?
So-called Santa Ana winds are extreme, dry winds that are common in LA in colder winter months.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection warned strong Santa Ana winds and low humidity are whipping up “extreme wildfire risks”.
Winds have already topped 60mph and could reach 100mph in mountains and foothills – including in areas that have barely had any rain for months.
It has been too windy to launch firefighting aircraft, further hampering efforts to tackle the blazes.
These north-easterly winds blow from the interior of Southern California towards the coast, picking up speed as they squeeze through mountain ranges that border the urban area around the coast.
They blow in the opposite direction to the normal onshore flow that carries moist air from the Pacific Ocean into the area.
The lack of humidity in the air parches vegetation, making it more flammable once a fire is started.
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The ‘atmospheric blow-dryer’ effect
The winds create an “atmospheric blow-dryer” effect that will “dry things out even further”, said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
The longer the extreme wind persists, the drier the vegetation will become, he said.
“So some of the strongest winds will be at the beginning of the event, but some of the driest vegetation will actually come at the end, and so the reality is that there’s going to be a very long period of high fire risk.”
What role has climate change played?
California governor Gavin Newsom said fire season has become “year-round in the state of California” despite the state not “traditionally” seeing fires at this time of year – apparently alluding to the impact of climate change.
Scientists will need time to assess the role of climate change in these fires, which could range from drying out the land to actually decreasing wind speeds.
But broadly we know that climate change is increasing the hot, dry weather in the US that parches vegetation, thereby creating the fuel for wildfires – that’s according to scientists at World Weather Attribution.
But human activities, such as forest management and ignition sources, are also important factors that dictate how a fire spreads, WWA said.
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Pic: Reuters
Southern California has experienced a particularly hot summer, followed by almost no rain during what should be the wet season, said Professor Alex Hall, also from UCLA.
“And all of this comes on the heels of two very rainy years, which means there is plenty of fuel for potential wildfires.
“These intense winds have the potential to turn a small spark into a conflagration that eats up thousands of acres with alarming speed – a dynamic that is only intensifying with the warmer temperatures of a changing climate.”
The flames from a fire that broke out yesterday evening near a nature reserve in the inland foothills northeast of LA spread so quickly that staff at a care home had to push residents in wheelchairs and hospital beds down the street to a car park.
Nicholas Rossi, an American man who faked his death and fled to Scotland to escape rape charges, has been jailed for at least five years.
The sentence handed down to the 38-year-old is the first of two he faces after being convicted separately in August and September of raping two women in 2008.
Utah has “indeterminate sentencing” – meaning jail terms handed down are in a range of years rather than a fixed number, with release dates set by the state’s parole board.
Nicholas Rossi appearing in court in August. Pic: AP
During August’s three-day trial, Rossi’s accuser and her parents took the stand – with the victim telling the court that he left a “trail of fear, pain, and destruction” behind him.
“This is not a plea for vengeance. This is a plea for safety and accountability, for recognition of the damage that will never fully heal,” she said.
Brandon Simmons, a prosecutor in the case, alleged Rossi “uses rape to control women” and posed a risk to community safety.
Rossi – whose legal name is Nicholas Alahverdian – maintained his innocence during the sentencing hearing. In a soft, raspy voice, he said: “I am not guilty of this. These women are lying.”
He was first identified in 2018 after a decade-old DNA rape kit was examined.
How Rossi was caught
But in February 2020 – months after he was charged in one of the cases – an online obituary claimed he had died of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Rossi was arrested in Scotland the following year while being treated for COVID, after hospital staff recognised his distinctive tattoos – including the crest of a university he never attended.
A protracted court battle meant he wasn’t extradited until January 2024, with Rossi claiming he was an Irish orphan named Arthur Knight who was being framed.
Investigators identified at least a dozen aliases that he had used to evade capture over the years.
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One of his victims had been recovering from a traumatic brain injury when she responded to a personal advert that Rossi had posted on Craigslist.
They began dating and were engaged within a couple of weeks – and according to her testimony, Rossi had asked her to pay for dates and car repairs, lend him money, and take on debt for their rings.
She told the court that Rossi raped her in his bedroom one night after she drove him home – and went to police years later after discovering that another woman in Utah had come forward with accusations.
Rossi is due to be sentenced for the second conviction in November.
US
‘Ukraine can’t win war,’ says Trump – as reports emerge of another tumultuous meeting with Zelenskyy
Donald Trump has said he doesn’t think Ukraine can win the war against Russia – as reports emerge of a less-than-harmonious meeting between the US president and Volodymyr Zelenskyy .
Asked about the conflict by a journalist during a visit to the White House by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Mr Trump responded bluntly: “I don’t think they will,” before adding: “They could still win it, I never said they would win it… War is a very strange thing, a lot of bad things happen.”
It is a marked change from his comments a few weeks ago at a UN gathering in New York where he said Ukraine could retake “all of its territory”.
And it comes after the Financial Times claimed the behind-the-scenes of Mr Trump and President Zelenskyy’s meeting in Washington on Friday had descended into a “shouting match”.
According to the paper, the US president repeatedly told his Ukrainian counterpart to accept Vladimir Putin‘s terms for ending the war – warning him that the Russian leader would “destroy” Ukraine if it did not agree.
Mr Zelenskyy later attempted to pour water over the suggestions, saying their meeting was “positive” and that Ukraine was preparing a contract to buy 25 Patriot air defence systems as a result of their talks.
However, Mr Zelenskyy said he did not secure the Tomahawk missiles he had wanted for Ukraine. The long-range missiles would have been a major boost for Kyiv.
“In my opinion, he does not want an escalation with the Russians until he meets with them,” Mr Zelenskyy said.
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Meanwhile, Hungary’s foreign minister Peter Szijarto has announced he will visit Washington on Tuesday. It follows claims from Mr Trump that he would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Budapest soon.
Will the pair meet again soon? File pic: Reuters
And on Monday, US secretary of state Marco Rubio had a phone call with Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
According to the state department, Mr Rubio and Mr Lavrov spoke about possible concrete steps to implement understandings reached during the call between Mr Trump and Mr Putin last week.
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Mr Rubio had, a statement said, also “emphasised the importance of upcoming engagements as an opportunity for Moscow and Washington to collaborate on advancing a durable resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war, in line with President Trump’s vision”.
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Also on Monday, French president Emmanuel Macron announced there will be a meeting of the coalition of the willing in London on Friday which Mr Zelenskyy will attend.
The coalition – co-chaired by Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Macron and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz – has the aim of bringing countries together to protect a peace deal in Ukraine.
Dozens of websites, banks and apps are being affected by a major internet outage.
The problem, which started on Monday morning, appears to be related to an issue at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
As of 9.20am, there were more than 2,000 reports of the Amazon Web Services outage in the US alone, according to Downdetector, which monitors issues and outages in real-time.
On its service status page, the company said it was seeing “increased error rates” and delays with “multiple AWS services”.
Here’s what we know so far.
Pic: PA
Pic: PA
Pic: PA
What has been affected?
Multiple banks, the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) website, mobile phone networks and video-chatting platform Zoom are among the websites having technical issues.
All Amazon products – including Prime Video and Amazon Music – have also been affected, as well as the main Amazon website.
Here’s a full list of what has been affected by the internet outage, according to Downdetector:
• Snapchat
• Ring
• Roblox
• Amazon Web Services
• Life360
• My Fitness Pal
• Amazon
• Xero
• Signal
• Canva
• Fortnite
• Blink Security
• Zoom
• HMRC
• Clash Royale
• Clash Of Clans
• Asana
• Wordle
• Slack
• Smartsheet
• Epic Games Store
• Duolingo
• Amazon Alexa
• Jira
• Vodafone
• Tidal
• Coinbase
• Atlassian
• IMDB
• Amazon Prime Video
• Pokemon Go
• BT
• Peloton
• EE
• Ancestry
• Square
• Playstation Network
• Eventbrite
• Amazon Music
• Sky
• Flickr
• Hay Day
• Rocket League
• Perplexity AI
• Dead By Daylight
• Bank Of Scotland
• Lloyds Bank
• Halifax
What has AWS said?
AWS confirmed it was suffering from “increased error rates and latencies” for multiple services.
In a statement on its website, the company said: “We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause,” an update on its website says.
“We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share.”
The company is posting regular updates on the situation and said its engineers were “immediately engaged” as soon as they spotted the issue.
Concentrated in the US
ThousandEyes, a website that tracks the performance of local and wide area networks, servers and applications, shows many of the outages appear to be concentrated in the US.
A large portion is focused in Virginia, which is widely considered as the global capital for data centres.
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