Ray Ford: A Santa Barbara Writer and Author

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Environmental journalist Ray Ford is based in Santa Barbara, California, and has been there his whole life. When he first got on the phone, Ford wanted the reporter to have a mental picture of the area in which they were traveling. He described the geology of the land, the ways the mountains don’t only move north to south, some east to west.

 He described how the population gets into these fire situations, “You get the difference in air temp and pressure on the front side of the mountains which then can result in short, intense fires that go to the east. Then you have north-to-south fires going into the city. You get this air corridor that is 20-30 miles long and can carry winds from the deserts. You get fires that will start on one side of LA and will burn all the way to the ocean.”

Ray Ford: Photo taken by Ford

Ford is highly educated when it comes to wildfires, in his book Santa Barbara Wildfires, he discusses the history of wildfires, the evolution of them and how people have utilized resources over time to put out these fires. “It’s amazing seeing how we’ve evolved from using World War II era devices to the ways technology has developed today to put out these fires.” Ford currently is a writer for the NoozHawk of California.

Regarding the fires that have recently happened, Ford expresses a lot of frustration towards the new Trump Administration, “How stupid that they chose to dump water that will never reach the Palisades, and now it is threatening farmers for the summer. All for the sake of blame.” He hates how wildfires have become a political pawn. Ford wants the focus to be on the people and the landscape. Focusing on what people can do to help prevent mass devastation from occurring.

What is this way of preventing mass destruction from occurring? Ford believes it comes from the places we choose to build, and the material we choose to build with. “You take 40 years plus of houses built with no fire codes, insurance isn’t necessarily geared towards fires, and now when these homes get destroyed, due to property value skyrocketing, they may not even be able to rebuild.”

The topography of the Palisades/Los Angeles area includes a group of inland valleys, a coastal plain separated by low mountains that are interspersed with steep passes, an arc of still higher mountains, and a long seacoast. In turn, brush fires spreading on the mountains, and dry vegetation in front of homes can lead to a catastrophic end if the conditions are right. The canyons in between this mountain range provide an area prone to the wind to spread the fire so quickly.

And what about the rebuilding process? “We have about six to eight thousand houses burned in the Palisades area with tremendous amounts of stuff to be removed. toxins from the houses, toxic ash needs to be moved.”

Toxic ash comes from the melting of furniture, plastics, and anything that shouldn’t be burned in the first place. Residents have to figure out how to remove this toxic ash and safely dispose of it, and only then can the rebuilding process begin. “Material stuff is a straightforward process. How do you rebuild a neighborhood when you now have twenty blocks of people who have to move out for 5 years? These neighborhoods will never be the same. What are the odds that all those people will come back three years later? You can’t recreate that.”

He said that something he is bound to see happen is the loss of community in neighborhoods. “These people have lived by each other for so long, if they all can’t rebuild, well you lose the community.”

He discussed the different state parks that were affected. He gave me insight into how to reach Will Rogers Historic State Park, where reporters plan to be covering. He talked about how the neighborhoods nearby have been almost completely leveled, but most of the park, besides the house, remains intact and unharmed.

This story is part of a semester-long investigative reporting project into the 2025 California wildfires. It was created by an advanced reporting class in the Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies program at UW-Milwaukee. Other stories from the project are available here.

This work was made possible through the support of MPC Endowment Ltd., the philanthropic affiliate of the Milwaukee Press Club.