Fires, Earthquakes & Smog

The physical risk. Sylmar and Northridge, the San Andreas, the wildfire seasons and the Santa Ana winds, the 2025 firestorm, the smog that made the air famous, and the drought.

Part of Los Angeles

36 moments in this segment.

1. 1915 - Fire works display over the lake at Venice ca1915. Los Angeles, 1915. From the Wikimedia Commons historical-photo collections.
2. 1927 - LA River flood (1927). A bridge destroyed by flooding on the then-untamed Los Angeles River.
3. 1928 - St Francis Dam disaster, 1928 (newsreel). Reuters/period newsreel of the dam collapse that killed hundreds.
4. 1933 - The Griffith Park fire (1933). Crews fight the deadly 1933 Griffith Park fire that killed dozens of relief workers.
5. 1934 - La-crescneta-flood-times. Los Angeles, 1934. From the Wikimedia Commons historical-photo collections.
6. 1947 - Bradbury Fire,1947. Los Angeles, 1947. From the Wikimedia Commons historical-photo collections.
7. 1957 - Whittier Narrows dam project (copy), 1957. Los Angeles, 1957. From the Wikimedia Commons historical-photo collections.
8. 1962 - "Smog Menace" (British Movietone newsreel). A period newsreel on LA’s choking smog.
9. 1965 - 1960s pollution in Los Angeles (archival). Los Angeles, 1965.
10. 1965 - Air pollution in LA at its worst (archive). David Hoffman’s archival smog footage.
11. 1965 - 1960s Los Angeles air pollution (Kinolibrary). Archival film of the smog crisis.
12. 1972 - LOW-HANGING SMOG - NARA - 542683. Los Angeles, 1972. From the Wikimedia Commons historical-photo collections.
13. 1972 - SMOG, SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS - NARA - 542676. Los Angeles, 1972. From the Wikimedia Commons historical-photo collections.
14. 1972 - MT. WILSON OBSERVATORY - NARA - 542677. Los Angeles, 1972. From the Wikimedia Commons historical-photo collections.
15. 1975 - GRAFFITI DEFACES ROCKS IN THE MALIBU CANYON AREA NEAR MALIBU, CALIFORNIA, WHICH IS LOCAT…. Los Angeles, 1975. From the Wikimedia Commons historical-photo collections.
16. 1975 - U.S. ^1 NEAR THE PACIFIC OCEAN NORTH OF MALIBU, CALIFORNIA, ON THE NORTHWESTERN EDGE OF …. Los Angeles, 1975. From the Wikimedia Commons historical-photo collections.
17. 1975 - GARAGE SALE SIGN ATTACHED TO A TREE OFF MULHOLLAND DRIVE IN THE SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS D…. Los Angeles, 1975. From the Wikimedia Commons historical-photo collections.
18. 1975 - LEO CARRILLO STATE PARK ON HIGHWAY ^1 NEAR MALIBU CALIFORNIA WHICH IS LOCATED ON THE NOR…. Los Angeles, 1975. From the Wikimedia Commons historical-photo collections.
19. 1975 - AERIAL OF THE SANTA MONICA MOUNTAINS LOOKING SOUTH, NEAR MALIBU, CALIFORNIA, WHICH IS LO…. Los Angeles, 1975. From the Wikimedia Commons historical-photo collections.
20. 1987 - Whittier Narrows earthquake, Oct 1, 1987 (KPIX). The 1987 quake that struck the LA basin.
21. 1987 - Whittier earthquake report from Downey (1987). Local coverage of the 1987 quake.
22. 1994 - 1994 Northridge earthquake - news footage. News film of the damage.
23. 1994 - Northridge quake - live coverage, 1/17/94. Extended live coverage from the morning of the quake.
24. 1994 - Northridge earthquake - aerial views of damage (1994). Aerial footage of the destruction.
25. 1994 - First reports of the Northridge earthquake (NBCLA archive). The live news as the quake hit, 17 Jan 1994.
26. 2019-01-17 - Looking back at the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The quake that struck before dawn on 17 Jan 1994.
27. 2025-01-11 - Fire and Ash - how the fires spread. The first part of NBC Dateline's report on the January 2025 wildfires, anchored by Lester Holt, tracing how the Palisades and Eaton fires took hold across Los Angeles County. It is the network's contemporaneous record of the week.
28. 2025-03-20 - Anatomy of an urban firestorm. A PBS Terra documentary on what turned the January 2025 fires into an urban firestorm, set against the history of cities destroyed by fire. It treats the event as a question of wind, fuel and building stock rather than as spectacle.
29. 2025-05-08 - A house built to survive the fire. An architecture channel examines a Pacific Palisades house designed to resist wildfire and what it implies for how the city rebuilds. It moves the fire story from footage to construction standards, siting and materials.
30. 2025-06-14 - Where the city rebuilds after the fires. Business Insider uses satellite imagery and interviews with environmental scientists, planners and residents to ask how Los Angeles should rebuild the neighbourhoods lost in January 2025. The question of building back in the same places is the central unresolved one.
31. 2025 - Drone video of the Palisades fire devastation (LA Times). Aerial footage of the January 2025 fire.
32. 2025 - Palisades fire tears through SoCal (ABC7). Live news footage of the 2025 fire.
33. 2026-01-08 - A year after the fires, still displaced. NBC4 reports one year on from the January 2025 wildfires, with thousands of residents still out of their homes and responsibility for the fires still disputed. The recovery, not the burning, is the longer story.
34. 2026-01-17 - The Northridge earthquake (1994). The most destructive US earthquake of its era.
35. 2026-07-27 - An Emmy for the firestorm coverage. The Television Academy awards the 2026 Los Angeles Area Emmy for live coverage of an unscheduled news event to ABC7's team for its reporting on the Southern California firestorms. The local Emmys are the industry's own record of what the city's newsrooms covered that year.
36. 2026-08-09 - New fires in Burbank and Santa Clarita. KTLA covers crews fighting several new wildfires across Los Angeles County, among them the Walnut Fire in Burbank and the Tasha Fire near Santa Clarita. Fire in the chaparral is a recurring condition of the region rather than a single event.