California mastered earthquake safety. Will it do the same for wildfires?

California’s half-century campaign against earthquakes is a story of sustained effort that has made the state an international leader in seismic safety. Buildings flex instead of crumble. Water systems have redundant connections. Children regularly practice “Drop, Cover, Hold On” in school.

But in January, as the Palisades and Eaton fires tore through Los Angeles County, many of those earthquake-resistant buildings were reduced to ashes. While California worked to enhance its seismic resilience — investments that will prove invaluable when the next major earthquake strikes — climate change was redrawing the state’s hazard map with a growing wildfire threat.

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The governance gap is foundational. For earthquakes, California created permanent oversight bodies like the Seismic Safety Commission to set policy and coordinate standards. For wildfires, the after-action review reveals fragmented authority, conflicting policies on evacuations and poorly defined roles for issuing alerts. Resource shortages compound the problem. Los Angeles County’s Office of Emergency Management operates with just 37 staff for 10 million people, while the sheriff’s department entered the crisis with more than 900 deputy vacancies — gaps that hampered coordination.

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... many residents in January did not understand the difference between a routine “Red Flag Warning” and the rare “Particularly Dangerous Situation” alert. The after-action review calls for basic tools that should already exist, like unified situational awareness systems — revealing how wildfire preparedness lags behind the sophisticated early-warning systems in place for earthquakes.