Science
The Wildfire Researchers Who Burn Houses Down on Purpose
A group in South Carolina is burning houses to better understand how wildfires spread.
On a sweltering spring day in South Carolina, a worker they call the “Burn Boss” stands by a house, holding a torch. The radio crackles with a countdown, “3, 2, 1!”
And the Burn Boss sets the house on fire.
Within minutes, flames breach the walls and enter the building. They set alight a sofa, a bed, a closet full of clothes and a kitchen stocked with cooking oil and potato chips — all fuels for an accelerating blaze. Moments later, the light and heat roar outward from shattered windows, forcing onlookers to step back.
This is a test.
A nonprofit in South Carolina is in the unusual business of intentionally burning down houses built for this purpose in order to learn how best to protect people and their property against catastrophic wildfires.
As climate change amplifies heat waves and droughts, it is priming wildfires to burn bigger and faster. At the same time, people continue to move into areas more vulnerable to fire. This one-two punch is driving record financial losses as homes and entire communities burn.
Controlled experiments like these are contributing to a growing body of evidence suggesting that losing entire communities to fire is not inevitable, if the right steps are taken when designing homes and neighborhoods. If you can “prevent this house from igniting, you’ve likely prevented the next one from igniting,” said Murray Morrison, the Managing Director of Research at the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, or IBHS, the organization running the test.
Disastrous wildfires used to be thought of as relatively isolated events, but there’s been a significant change in their frequency, said Michael J. Gollner, the director of the fire research laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. “We have to start recognizing that our communities are no longer safe,” he said.
Tests like the one in South Carolina are an acknowledgment that climate change is already affecting people’s lives in potentially devastating ways.
After the test house ignites, IBHS employees track the flames as they burrow under the roof, shatter windows and send a torrent of embers toward a second building downwind. While they’re studying the blaze, a wall of industrial turbines fan the flames with gusts up to 50 miles per hour — roughly the same wind speeds that helped to fuel the wildfires in 2018 that destroyed Paradise, Calif., one of the most devastating disasters in recent years.
By the end of the experiment, millions of data points will capture exactly how a fire might spread from house to house. This is precisely the kind of blaze that’s becoming more common as wildfires reach into dense neighborhoods.
Few organizations have the funding and facilities to study fire in this way. In a series of experiments, researchers have burned down 14 “test” homes. They tweak the building materials, wind speeds and other variables to mimic real-world conditions. The video above shows the downwind building, equipped with a half-million dollars of sensors and equipment, as it measured the danger posed by its fiery neighbor under one of these scenarios.
These and other experiments have taught valuable lessons. For example, use building materials and methods designed to withstand embers, heat and flames. Remove flammable things in the yard, particularly within five feet of a building, to lower the chance of fire reaching it at all.
An analysis found that communities combining these strategies were twice as likely to survive a major conflagration.
The insurance industry, which is the primary source of funding for IBHS, is using its research. California requires insurers to offer discounts if homeowners upgrade their properties to be more fire-resistant. Some of the biggest savings come from meeting a collection of standards that qualify for a certification under the IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home program, rather than making individual changes. California’s fifth-largest insurer, CSAA, now guarantees policies to anyone with the certification.
Studies also show that the distance between buildings is important. Ideally, according to IBHS research, homes would have 30 feet or more between them to minimize the chance that one becomes fuel to burn the other.
Of course, the distance between homes is impossible to modify once a neighborhood has been built. But “can we reduce the exposure enough that the hardened materials on the neighbor’s structure actually prevent your home from igniting?” asked Dr. Morrison. “What you’re trying to do is stop the catastrophe, not achieve perfection,” he said.
Even though California has some of the country’s strongest standards for new construction, it has struggled to keep pace with the wildfire threat. After devastating fire seasons in 2017 and 2018, private insurers began rapidly dropping customers, pushing more than 500,000 homeowners onto the state’s costly, bare-bones insurer of last resort. Many people have decided to forgo coverage altogether.
In an effort to lure insurance companies back into the state, California lawmakers have taken steps to require people to reduce their fire risk.
In 2020, the state legislature passed a bill requiring people in particularly fire-prone places to clear flammable materials from the first five feet around their house. However, some local officials and neighborhood organizations objected, and implementation of the plan has been delayed.
Unwilling to wait, the city of Berkeley, Calif., enacted its own local version of the rules. They took effect in January. “This is an area where there is a strong body of research,” said Colin Arnold, the assistant fire chief at Berkeley Fire.
As this map shows, homes in Berkeley with starkly different fire risks can exist on the very same street, depending on construction methods, vegetation nearby and proximity to other houses. By focusing on the blocks closest to the fire-prone hills to the east, Berkeley officials hope to lower the threat posed to the rest of the city.
Building-to-building fire risk in Berkeley
To ease the transition, fire officials started with voluntary inspections and community groups are helping clear brush for neighbors at no cost. And local landscape architects are helping residents adapt their yards in ways that they still find attractive.
Wildfire isn’t a new threat; it’s been affecting humanity for millennia, said Roy Wright, the president of IBHS. “I don’t want us to ever assert that we can somehow design ourselves out of this risk,” he said. The goal, instead, is to put people in a place where “the risk doesn’t feel catastrophic.”
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta filed a complaint Thursday alleging that a cohort of the companies that make “forever chemicals” partook in a massive corporate shell game to defraud the state and others.
In an amendment to a 2022 lawsuit filed by Bonta against the makers of these chemicals, the state now alleges that several DuPont spin-off companies — New DuPont, Corteva, Chemours and Qnity Electronics — worked together to create a “fall guy” company designed to take the financial hit stemming from several multibillion-dollar pollution lawsuits while keeping the companies’ most valuable assets out of reach.
“The DuPont Defendants cannot game the system by illegally moving assets out of reach, dodging liabilities for the harm they have caused, and calling it restructuring,” Bonta said in a statement. “I look forward to ensuring that these companies are held accountable for PFAS pollution and that their assets cannot be hidden behind corporate walls while their responsibilities are left behind.”
The Second Amended Complaint, as the new amendment is called, was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina on Thursday.
DuPont did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
In 2022, Bonta sued 20 chemical manufacturers, including 3M and DuPont, alleging the companies knew about the dangers of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances — or PFAS — when they made and/or sold products containing them. The suit also claims the companies failed to warn the public about the environmental and health risks of those chemicals and in many cases concealed the risks.
That lawsuit remains active and ongoing.
PFAS chemicals are found in a variety of consumer items, including food packaging and cookware, and are linked to cancer and other illnesses and health risks such as developmental defects, infertility and reduced bone density in children.
They are resistant to environmental degradation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency and hundreds of scientific studies. They have also been found in the bloodstreams of 98% of people tested, as well as in wildlife, fish, water — including rivers, lakes and nearshore waters — and soil.
Data from the State Water Resources Control Board show PFAS chemicals are in drinking, ground and surface waters in the state. They’ve been detected in at least 146 public water systems serving 16 million Californians, as well as in aquifers that provide millions of Californians with water through unregulated domestic wells.
According to a news release from Bonta’s office, the fraudulent DuPont scheme worked like this: By 2013, the original, “Old” DuPont company knew it faced billions of dollars in environmental cleanup costs and legal damages due to its PFAS products. To protect its assets and make itself appealing for a merger with industry giant Dow Chemical, the Old Dupont company initiated a multi-phase restructuring plan, which it called “Project Beta.”
Bonta referred to the original DuPont company as “Old Dupont” and a newer version as “New DuPont” in his filing.
It started with the creation of a company called Chemours, which the Old DuPont company spun off in 2015. The Old DuPont company transferred its PFAS business to this new company and extracted almost $7 billion in cash, stocks and notes from the new company. The new company was also forced to assume all of Old DuPont’s historical PFAS liabilities and sign an agreement to indemnify Old DuPont against them.
Bonta claims this was a sham transaction, leaving Chemours holding the liability bag with no way to pay the environmental debts it would incur should the courts come calling.
Old DuPont merged with Dow Chemical in 2015, and according to Bonta’s claim, the new company, DowDuPont, was again structured in a way that would protect the new company from any remaining PFAS liabilities.
In 2019, the company went through another reshuffling. A “New” Dow was created, which took the materials science assets, as well as a company called Corteva, which took the company’s agricultural businesses. A New DuPont company was also formed.
During this same year, Chemours sued the other DuPont companies, claiming it had been handed a financial time bomb because of the PFAS liability it had been left with. The company alleged the 2015 deal was a sham that set them up for bankruptcy.
In 2021, the companies sat down to resolve the lawsuit. Chemours agreed to drop the lawsuit and waive its right to sue. In exchange, Corteva and New DuPont agreed to split the costs of future PFAS liabilities with Chemours 50/50 — but only up to $4 billion.
Bonta alleges that $4 billion was a gross underestimate of the potential legal damages they were likely to face. The result of the agreement would have capped Corteva and New DuPont’s liability at $2 billion and saddled Chemours with any and everything else — a number he claims is likely to far exceed $2 billion.
Chemours also had insurance policies that would have helped pay for the PFAS lawsuits. However, Bonta alleges that Chemours sold 100% of those insurance payouts back to its sister companies in 2025 for a lump sum of cash that was worth less than half of what the insurance was actually valued at.
By transferring away its best assets (the insurance) while keeping the massive debt, Chemours was hollowed out so it can’t pay its potential creditors, including California.
To further protect their wealth, New DuPont is accused of continuing to chop up its remaining valuable businesses and separating them. For example, the court filing claims they took their profitable electronics business and turned it into a totally separate, independent company called Qnity.
Bonta claims these restructuring moves violate the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act and the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act. He is asking the court to stop the companies from selling, spending or moving any more assets or profits that belonged to the original, or Old DuPont company, in order to ensure that California gets its payout if the chemical companies lose the lawsuit.
“Ultimately, the question is whether courts will ‘pierce the corporate veil’ to allow California and other plaintiffs to hold new Dupont and other breakout companies liable,” Albert Lin, a law professor at UC Davis, said in an email.
“Courts are willing to pierce the corporate veil if spinoff companies are created to engage in fraud or wrongdoing or to evade legal obligations,” he said. “Allegations that Dupont undercapitalized or underinsured Chemours and other entities can support veil piercing.”
California is reporting more cases of cyclosporiasis than it would on average for this point in the summer, including two recent cases where residents ate at out-of-state Taco Bell restaurants, according to state health officials and data.
Despite the uptick, officials say California is not included in the cyclosporiasis outbreak that’s hit 15 states, sickening tens of thousands of people with prolonged bouts of diarrhea.
However, officials with the California Department of Public Health told The Times the number of cases is “now higher than what we might expect for this point in the season.”
Latest cyclosporiasis case breakdown in California
California’s cyclosporiasis data now includes probable cases — meaning an ill person showed signs and symptoms of the parasite but the case lacks laboratory confirmation — as well as internationally acquired cases, significantly increasing the state’s case count from previous estimates in June.
Between Jan. 1 and July 15, there were 201 confirmed and probable cyclosporiasis cases in California, the state health department reported.
Of the total number of cases, 39 were domestically acquired, meaning these infected people became ill either in the state or after traveling within the United States.
The rest became ill after traveling internationally, it’s unclear where the sick individuals had traveled to.
“To date, CDPH is aware of 2 cases that traveled to an affected state, ate food at a Taco Bell location and are determined by CDC to be linked to the outbreak,” the agency stated. Because the parasitic disease was contracted from contaminated produce out of state, California is not counted as being a part of the current outbreak.
Of the 201 confirmed and probable cases in California, 11 people were hospitalized, officials said.
There have been no deaths in relation to the California cases of cyclosporiasis.
Why cases in California have gone up
Public health officials are working with local health departments to actively monitor cyclosporiasis cases statewide to determine if there are potential outbreaks here, and identify a possible cause for the increase in cases.
The agency said the high number of cyclosporiasis cases could be attributed to:
- Cyclosporiasis receiving recent, national attention due to the multi-state outbreak. “This has led to increased awareness of the illness in California and nationwide, which has likely led to increased testing for the illness,” the Department of Public Health stated. “We may be identifying more cases than we have in previous years.”
- Overall improvements to the department’s surveillance and data collection methods.
- An increase in cases in travelers to areas with cyclosporiasis outbreaks, whether international or domestic.
What’s happening in the multi-state outbreak
To date, 15 states have reported high numbers of cyclosporiasis cases; the epicenter continues to be in Michigan, whose state public health department has reported more than 12,400 sickened residents, 279 hospitalizations and two deaths.
The two patients who died may have had underlying health conditions that made them particularly vulnerable to the gastrointestinal illness and dehydration that can come with the disease, Michigan public health officials said.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cyclosporiasis is rarely fatal.
On Thursday, Michigan officials said the state’s data now suggests that, “new cyclosporiasis case reports are slowing, including a downward trend in diarrhea-related emergency department visits.”
On average, people exposed to cyclosporiasis — typically through contaminated food or water — start to feel sick seven days after exposure, but symptoms can take up to 14 days to appear.
Given the weeklong average incubation period, Michigan data suggests that:
- Most exposures occurred in late June to early July.
- The majority of the contaminated produce is likely no longer available for consumption.
The outbreak, which began in May, has affected tens of thousands of people who reported feeling ill after eating Taco Bell products with shredded lettuce.
Traceback and outbreak data have linked the shredded iceberg lettuce supplied to the Taco Bell locations to the Salinas-based company Taylor Farms and its Taylor Farms de Mexico facility in Central Mexico.
The company, also known as Taylor Fresh Foods, announced last month it was voluntarily recalling various products including chopped lettuce, shredded lettuce, blends of iceberg, romaine lettuce and salad mixes that were supplied to restaurants and retailers in 27 states.
Since May 1, the CDC has laboratory-confirmed 10,468 domestic cases of cyclosporiasis and is aware of more than 12,255 additional cases that have yet to be laboratory confirmed.
Officials say the true number of cases is likely higher because some people recover without medical care and are not tested for the parasite.
Researchers in Los Angeles have made a ribbiting new discovery at the La Brea Tar Pits and Museum — an extinct amphibian from the ice age.
The spadefoot toad, or Spea labreae, is one of only two ice age amphibians to have been found in the U.S. The other is an extinct species of tree frog in Florida, known as Hyla baderi, according to the museum.
“While the toad may be much smaller than the mammoths and saber-toothed cats that made the Tar Pits famous, this discovery has a big impact on our understanding of the climate at the end of the last ice age,” the news release read.
The discovery of the spadefoot toad was made two years ago but published recently in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology and marks one of several discoveries made at the Samuel Oschin Global Center for Ice Age Research at the La Brea Tar Pits, where the museum is undergoing renovation.
Unearthing the spadefoot toad wasn’t the result of a targeted search — it happened by accident, much like many of history’s greatest finds.
Dr. Alberto Cruz, the lead author, was reviewing the rarely studied collections of amphibians and reptiles as a postdoctoral fellow at the La Brea Tar Pits when he noticed an amphibian that looked different from the others.
At first glance, he thought he was looking at a specimen that had been sick or injured rather than a new species. Upon closer inspection, he realized that wasn’t the case.
This incomplete sacro-urostyle bone (base of the spine that connects to the hips) is the holotype specimen used to describe the new species, Spea labreae.
(La Brea Tar Pits)
To identify the spadefoot toad, Cruz said he examined the bones of amphibians found at the Tar Pits, a collection that hadn’t been analyzed in nearly 30 years. He then compared the collection with the 80 specimens at the Herpetology Collection at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum and the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of Berkeley.
“I thought: ‘Oh my gosh, this is a new species,’” he said. “This material is originally from the 1950s, but when you study it again, you can find gold in these specimens. It’s very cool.”
Researchers say amphibians provide a window into the past because they don’t travel far during their lifetimes and are sensitive to climate change. When their fossils are discovered, it helps scientists piece together how local environments changed over time.
“If you change the environment, you change the vegetation, the climate is warmer or colder, it affects these animals directly,” Cruz said.
The miracle behind Cruz’s discovery is that amphibians such as frogs, toads and salamanders rarely make it into the fossil records because of their fragile skeletons.
Emily Lindsey, curator and excavation site director at the La Brea Tar Pits’ center, said the discovery of the ice age toad is an example of the ongoing discoveries being made at the museum.
“There’s definitely more to come,” she said.
Also detailed in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology is the first record of another amphibian: the Mexican burrowing toad —Rhinophrynus. The species, which still exists, once inhabited the Southwestern region including Los Angeles. Researchers note that its closest known population is now roughly 1,550 miles away in southern Mexico.
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