How Safe Are Coachella Valley Cities From Wildfires?

If 2025 has taught us anything so far, it’s that Mother Nature is out to get us.

Her fury warned us years ago, when we tried to fool her in those oleomargarine commercials. Now, Southern California is reeling from a relentless string of disasters — torrential rains, atmospheric rivers, floods, droughts, earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires, even tornadoes. No wonder Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga’s “Die With a Smile,” with its world-ending subtext, reigned on the pop charts all spring.

The Washington, D.C.–based Population Reference Bureau keeps statistics on natural disaster deaths. While wildfires represent a relatively small number of overall disaster deaths — 84 of  almost 20,000, or less than half a percent, between 1970 and 2004 — it can be argued that fire is the scariest.

Fires seem omnipresent. The National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, reports that the number of wildfires has ballooned since people started keeping tabs on them in 1983. A map on its website showing affected areas indicates wildfires have impacted the entire country. (Perhaps only a remote part of the Midwest is safe.)

How great is the threat? Are we prepared for Mother Nature’s next tantrum? What new tools are on the horizon? As Moses discovered, you can learn a lot from some of these bushes that keep burning.

We’re Safer in the Coachella Valley

Riverside County stats tell us that only about 7 percent of all fires in the region can be classified as “wild.” However, they are thirsty, consuming remote rural areas and spreading closer and closer to homes, businesses, and urban parks.

A blaze at Windy Point and Highway 111 scorched 541 acres for six days in September 2011. The Mountain Fire surrounding Palm Springs charged across 25,000 acres in just three days in July 2013. The Palm Fire of Desert Hot Springs in 2017 remained active for 56 days. In 2020, the Snow Fire lit up more than 6,000 acres around Snow Creek after a vehicle caught fire, causing poor air quality that closed the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway. Just last year, the Tuscany Fire on June 17, 2024, started on City View Drive in the Little Tuscany neighborhood of Palm Springs, consuming more than 126 acres, according to Cal Fire, and scarring the side of Mount San Jacinto — a dark patch that remains visible today.

Where people go, fire tends to follow. Some incidents grab headlines more than others: like the Dry Falls Fire of  1980, when four kids playing with matches ignited 28,000 acres of the San Jacinto Wilderness; the 1973 construction blaze at Bob Hope’s spaceship of a house that delayed its completion for several years; or the suspicious 1943 event that leveled the mobster-owned Dunes Club casino in Cathedral City.

While damaging, they’re hardly comparable to the infernos erupting elsewhere in the state. “Absolutely, you’re safe” is how Palm Springs Fire Chief Paul Alvarado described the Coachella Valley’s low threat level in a Jan. 15, 2025, interview with The Palm Springs Post. As fires consumed Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, the chief noted L.A.’s accumulation of fire-fueling vegetation and trees over the last century was particularly problematic, while the Coachella Valley has only “some light, flashy fuels … which is still dangerous” but not as threatening as surrounding Southern California cities face.

So, we can relax?

To a degree, if you’re paying attention to Cal Fire. In April, the agency released its latest Fire Hazard Severity Maps, which chart the “very high,” “high,” and “moderate” hazard zones across Southern California. Desert Hot Springs, Palm Springs, Palm Desert, and Wildomar were the only Riverside County cities to show declines in “very high fire hazard” acreage since 2011. Back then, Desert Hot Springs had 26 acres in that category, and Palm Desert had 8. This year’s map shows 0 for both cities. Meanwhile, Palm Springs saw its “very high” fire risk acreage fall from about 8,000 in 2011 to just 1,280 today.

“We don’t have anywhere near the wildfire threats that coastal cities do,” says Jim Cornett, a well-known desert naturalist and author of more than 40 books about the region’s flora and fauna. “The risk [of wildfires] is less than 5 percent of what the rest of Southern California sees.” 

But?

Cornett is not entirely optimistic. Rapid growth in areas that abut Riverside County concerns him. “It’s a new fuel corridor,” he says, one that can lead straight from the Inland Empire’s sprawl onto City View Drive. When there was nothing along the interstate for miles, there was less material to spread the flames.

Another problem: clogged evacuation routes. “It’s a scary prospect,” says KESQ News Channel 3 chief meteorologist Patrick Evans. “The big issue is that we are likely to be cut off — without means of leaving. Interstate 10 may well be severed in both directions.” (A Coachella Valley Association of  Governments spokesperson says the CV Link — a bicycle, pedestrian, and low-speed EV pathway planned to cover 40-plus miles from Palm Springs to Coachella — might serve as a safety valve.)

Ironically, other villains in the story are the hillside forests themselves that self-immolate at regular and unpredictable intervals. As fire behavior analyst Linda Ferguson of  California Interagency Incident Crisis Management Team 4 said in an interview with Andrew Avitt of the U.S. Forest Service, “Each forest, each ecosystem, is meant to burn once every so many years,” referring to the kind of wildfire essential for clearing away old growth, recycling  nutrients, opening canopy cover, and making way for new growth.

First responders are also concerned about the notorious winds that whip through dry, crispy ground cover, potentially flicking embers everywhere, as well as motorcycles without spark arrestors, people smoking, target shooting, sky lanterns, and utility mishaps.

Another bad actor: invasive and highly flammable fountain grass, best replaced by native plants, suggests The Reserve Club’s horticulturist and arborist Lori Gavitt.

Then there are the arsonists, extremists, haters, and loners like Carl James Dial, serving a 15-year prison sentence for firebombing a Coachella mosque in November 2014; Guy Edward Bartkus, who blew up a Palm Springs fertility clinic — and himself — in May; and Brandon McGlover, who is serving a 12-year sentence for using a barbecue lighter and a can of WD-40 to set nine fires that burned 13,000 acres near Idyllwild in July 2018.

Children may pose one of the scariest threats of all. Kids playing with fire caused an average of 8,100 fires each year between 2014 and 2018, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

We can’t protect ourselves from every scenario, but we can prevent wildfires and slow the spread if they do ignite. Experts recommend a three-zone approach to minimizing risk: using noncombustible materials like gravel and concrete within 5 feet of your home, regularly clearing brush and dead plants within the next 30 feet, and thinning vegetation and properly spacing trees up to 100 feet or to your property line.

The Future of Firefighting

Cities used to catch fire on the regular. London practically disappeared after the Great Fire of 1666, Canada’s Great Fire of  1919 consumed 5 million acres, and, most famously, Chicago took a huge hit in 1871, when an Irish immigrant’s careless kerosene usage tore through a Second City made of wood. Some historians suggest that it wasn’t until the San Francisco fire in 1906 that governments started to impose fire codes and increased their supervision.

However, there is new thinking on the subject — and the future looks bright.

Beyond fire codes and regulations designed to protect us, the internet has improved how we communicate and access information. The city of Palm Springs, for example, posts its official plans on its website, offering a signup page to receive text alerts about nearby incidents. Watch Duty, a volunteer-driven mobile app and website providing real-time information and alerts, proved useful during the January wildfires.

(At one point, nearly 1 million volunteers — including active and retired firefighters, dispatchers, and first responders — were reporting for duty.) First Street Foundation’s Risk Factor tool helps homeowners and real estate agents assess a property’s potential for environmental risks including fire.

Firefighters  are  also benefiting  from  scientific breakthroughs. Since 1992, much of their gear has been fashioned using polybenzimidazole (PBI), making their workwear flame-resistant.

Those tracking the efforts to contain the Palisades and Eaton fires in January were given hope when the planes were finally able to take off. Now, there’s more to cheer with the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus’ introduction of what it calls a “firefighting ecosystem.” According to the company’s website, this suite of aircraft, helicopters, satellites, and communication solutions “enables pilots to detect fires at an early stage, monitor and analyze their progress, bring firefighters to the scene, help them extinguish fires in demanding environments, improve coordination of all ground and aerial means, and support life-saving operations, going where nothing else can.”

The most controversial new weapon in use today might be the contracting of private firefighter companies by government agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service during wildfire seasons. They provide additional power and resources when public agencies are overwhelmed. These are client-funded services, accessible primarily to those who can afford them, which raises questions about access and equity. 

Not all solutions come from the professionals. As the flames neared his property, one homeowner in Pacific Palisades put his fiddling sprinkler on his roof, turned on the valve, and evacuated. His house survived.

Still, the experts have plenty to say on the subject. Some are writing books, like Deandra K. Lee (Living With Fire: Understanding, Preventing, and Recovering From Wildfires) and Janet C. Arrowood (Living With Wildfires: Prevention, Preparation, and Recovery). Meanwhile, the National Wildfire Coordinating Group provides leadership enabling interagency wildland fire operations among federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial partners and publishes coping manuals for many audiences, including elementary schoolteachers.

Reading alone will not save your property. Planning, however, might. Cal Fire, for instance, provides guidelines for retrofitting your home on a budget.

Of  the four classical elements — earth, wind, water, and fire — the latter stands apart as the sole element humans can create. Fire is both a gift and a curse, biblical and pagan, wickedly beautiful yet brutally destructive. There’s no surefire protection against infernos — danger lurks, waiting to strike.

Let’s hope we can read the smoke signals correctly.