The 2025 Palisades and Eaton Fires: What They Revealed

# The 2025 Palisades and Eaton Fires: What They Revealed

$100 billion in losses. Thousands of homes destroyed in hours.

The 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires weren't just devastating. They exposed the limits of our current system.

## What happened

In early 2025, Santa Ana winds hit 100+ mph. Multiple ignition points. Fire spreading faster than traffic on a highway. Embers raining down miles ahead of the flames.

Fire departments faced an impossible situation. Simultaneous fires across huge areas. Roads jammed with evacuating cars. Hydrants running dry from demand. Winds too strong for aircraft. Flames moving faster than engines could reposition.

## The math problem

Here's what nobody wants to say out loud: fire departments cannot protect every home in a mega-fire.

This isn't criticism of firefighters. They're doing extraordinary work in impossible conditions. But the numbers don't work:

- 50,000+ homes in evacuation zones
- Maybe 200 fire engines available
- Fire spreading across 50+ miles of front
- 4-6 hours from ignition to full involvement

Triage happens whether anyone admits it or not. Crews focus on structures they can actually save. Homes without defensible space or hardening become unsaveable.

## My family's house

We almost lost it during the Eaton fire.

The fire moved so fast that departments couldn't cover everything. My brother Trent drove through ember showers to find a fire crew and physically led them back to the house. Without that, we'd have lost it.

Meanwhile, friends who had done the work—cleared brush, maintained defensible space—still lost their homes because crews couldn't reach them in time.

That's what led me to start Wyld Safe. If emergency services can't get to everyone in a mega-fire (and they can't), homeowners need better tools to protect themselves.

## Infrastructure failures

Beyond stretched fire departments, systems failed across the board:

Water systems: Hydrants ran dry. Pressure dropped to nothing. Reservoirs couldn't keep up with simultaneous demand across dozens of neighborhoods.

Communications: Cell towers burned. Radio systems overloaded. Conflicting evacuation orders confused people trying to get out.

Power: Utilities shut off electricity preventatively. No power meant no water pumps. Rural properties with wells had no water at all.

## What this means

You cannot rely solely on emergency services to save your home in a mega-fire. This doesn't mean giving up on community fire protection. It means supplementing it.

What you can control: home hardening, defensible space, emergency water supply, backup power, evacuation planning.

What you can't control: when fire starts, wind conditions, response times, whether infrastructure holds.

## Multiple layers

Effective protection needs multiple layers working together: community-level response, infrastructure resilience, individual preparation, and increasingly, technology that operates when humans can't be present.

The 2025 fires proved that hoping for the best isn't a plan. If you live in fire country, personal preparation isn't optional.