The damage and economic losses in Southern California over just a few days will rival the total economic impact of the entire 2020 western wildfire season, according to AccuWeather experts.
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00:00We're getting the new economic impact numbers from the California wildfires right now, Anna.
00:06And joining us to break down this announcement is AccuWeather chief meteorologist John Porter.
00:12That's right. Good afternoon. Truly tragic situation across Southern California. Breaking
00:18news from AccuWeather's data analytics team. We've upped our estimate based on the latest
00:23reporting and continued spread of the fires across the LA area. Now AccuWeather is estimating
00:29between $135 and $150 billion in total damage and economic loss from the destructive infernos
00:40that have occurred across Southern California. This is going to be one of California's,
00:46certainly probably the top wildfire in modern California history in terms of destruction and
00:54damage and total economic loss and one of the top, unfortunately, in U.S. history,
00:59in U.S. modern history. It shows just how serious a situation this is.
01:04Yeah. And you know, John, comparing it even to other billion dollar disasters,
01:09this is ranking a pretty high. The devastation is just horrendous.
01:14Right. To put it into context, 2020, which was a very active U.S. wildfire season,
01:20the entire season, AccuWeather estimated the cost in terms of total damage and economic loss,
01:25$130 to $150 billion. Here's just a couple of days and several fires have gotten to this $135
01:33and $150 billion number. You see it's far higher than the Maui wildfires, but under the $225 to
01:42$250 billion total damage and economic loss from Hurricane Helene just this summer across the
01:48southeastern U.S. So here at AccuWeather, we always put weather and climate disasters
01:53into context. And you can see this was a very serious wildfire. This is why we're saying
01:57it's the top wildfire in terms of property destruction in modern California history and
02:03one of the top, if not the top in U.S. history. Tremendous impact. So many people
02:09are going to need support here in the coming years as they rebuild.
02:13Yeah, it's just wild just to see how fast that fire rapidly increased and just spread. Thank
02:19you so much, AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist John Porter. Thank you for joining us. We'll
02:23be sure to check back in with you.