Wildfires Don’t Care About Median Home Prices

The Franklin Fire in Malibu exploded in size and intensity over the last several days, prompting virtually the entire city’s evacuation. At latest update, CalFire said the fire is almost 4,000 acres in size, and only seven percent contained. Its cause is unknown at this point, though it was fueled in part by strong Santa Ana winds.

The fire sent Pepperdine University students to shelter in two campus building designed to act as fire shelters. Because of the “immediate threat to life,” other residents face a mandatory evacuation order; there are no reports of casualties at this point. At some point the fire jumped the Pacific Coast Highway, and threatens thousands of structures.

Among those structures are, of course, some of the most expensive homes in the country. Various celebrities are among the evacuees; by some measures Malibu’s zip code is among the ten priciest to buy a house in, with a median home price close to $7 million. That doesn’t much matter, of course, to the fire. California wildfires have been increasing in intensity and reach as temperatures warm (and, oddly enough, as polar sea ice diminishes); recent studies have shown how climate change is causing more rapid, explosive growth of fires, making getting out of their way harder and harder.

More than 1,500 firefighting personnel are now involved in fighting the Franklin Fire, and officials said Wednesday afternoon that they are starting to make progress in containing it. Wildfires may not have dominated the disaster space in 2024 like they have in other recent years, but it was anything but a down year: almost 8.5 million acres have burned in 2024, the most since 2020 and climbing up the leaderboard for the past several decades. And that data, from the National Interagency Fire Center, only updates weekly; the numbers will tick up on Friday.