By james art 
What are the Santa Ana winds fueling the California wildfires?
The Santa Ana winds are a famous wind event in California. It’s fueling wildfires in Southern California.
As thousands of people fled wildfires that tore through Los Angeles County this month, you may have wondered what the wildfire risk is in your area.
While wildfires are mostly associated with the western states, including the massive fires in California in 2020. or in Oregon last year, analysis of FEMA data reveals significant wildfire risks in unexpected areas.
USA TODAY analyzed data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine how many people live in high-risk areas and determine the location of those communities.
The FEMA index calculates wildfire risk based on a community’s expected annual fire losses, assigning scores from very low to very high. A ‘very high’ risk area means it has significantly higher scores than the rest of the country.
The analysis found that about 3.3 million people in the U.S. live in areas where wildfire risk is “very high,” while another 14.8 million live in areas with “relatively high” risk.
Most of the high-risk population lives in urban areas. While densely populated areas in California dominate these high-risk areas, the threat is not limited to the state.
The top three metropolitan areas with the most people in “very high” wildfire risk areas are all in California: Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim. Together, these metros have about 1.2 million residents in “very high” wildfire risk areas.
Read more about how this risk plays out in different communities here.
Parts of metro Utah, Florida, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado and Nevada are also very high risk areas. For example, about 58 percent of the 180,000 residents of St. George, Utah, live in a “very high” wildfire risk area.
Outside of metropolitan areas, FEMA maps show high-risk locations in states not typically associated with wildfires, such as Florida, West Virginia and New Jersey.
Two things that have changed over the past few decades contribute to the threat.
Many parts of the country have become hotter, drier and subject to “flash droughts” that dry things out quickly. And a growing number of people want to live in or near wild lands that have evolved to burn.
Even as the risk rises, Americans are flocking to areas at “very high” wildfire risk in significant numbers. Metro population growth with people in areas at high wildfire risk increased by approximately 70% between 1990. and 2020, while the population in the average American metropolitan area has increased by about 40%.
A recent government report noted a rapid rise in the cost of homeowners insurance, with climate change making things harder for homeowners and insurers. Research shows that human-caused climate change has already led to more frequent and larger wildfires, a trend that is expected to continue.
FEMA’s data reflects this: The agency’s projections show that no county is expected to see a reduction in wildfire risk through mid- to late-century.