Study: As wildfires increase, Southern California may experience landslides nearly every year

Mudslides in Montecito killed 23 people in 2018, weeks after the Thomas Fire engulfed the area. Photo: OnSceneTV

A new study finds that fire-prone areas in Southern California can expect landslides nearly every year, with major events expected roughly every 10 years.

The results show that residents face a double whammy of increased wildfire and landslide risks caused by climate change shifts in the state’s wet and dry seasons, according to researchers who mapped landslide areas in the southern half of the state.

“This is our attempt to get people to think about where these hazards are before a fire breaks out,” said Jason Kane, a hydrologist at the US Geological Survey in Denver and lead author of the new study in the journal Future of Earth. For interdisciplinary research. “By thinking proactively about risks, you can begin to develop more detailed response plans for their inevitability.”

Wildfires make landscapes more vulnerable to landslides when rainstorms pass, as the water strikes unstable, dry soils and scorched plants.

Kane said that geologists routinely conduct landslide risk assessments after wildfires have occurred, but that there is often not enough time between a fire and a rainstorm to implement an effective emergency response plan.

In the study, Kane and colleagues combined historical fires, precipitation and landslides data with computer simulations to predict where landslides are likely to occur after wildfires in Southern California, how large these landslides are and how often they can be expected.

Their goal was to identify the areas of the state most vulnerable to landslides before they happen, in a manner similar to how geologists map earthquake risk.

Their results show that small landslides can now be expected roughly every year in Southern California. Large landslides capable of damaging 40 or more structures can be expected every 10 to 13 years – roughly the same as a 6.7-magnitude earthquake in California, according to the study.

The results also suggest that more torrential rains, which are likely to occur in the coming decades, could mean that California residents face greater risks from landslides that damage property and put people’s lives at risk.

“We will have a longer season to burn, and then when it rains, it will collapse more difficult,” said Kane. This is a bad recipe for debris flow after a fire. The reason you can expect one nearly every year is because it doesn’t take a lot of rain to cause it. “Rainstorms that can lead to debris flows – this is a kind of diverse garden storm.”

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