New research suggests deaths related to La Firestorm could rank in the top 400

In Los Angeles County, the January fire destroyed thousands of homes and killed 31 people, making it the most destructive in the history of the region.

But new research suggests that the fires in Eaton and Palisade may be much more reflected than those reported in the coroner’s report.

A research letter published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The county is estimated to have 440 more deaths than is usually expected between January 5 and February 1, a period that began a few days before the fire broke out. The higher such deaths, the higher the number of deaths, may reflect the impact of health damage, such as increased exposure to poor air quality, or delays and disruptions in health services due to fires.

While the direct effects of wildfires and other climate-driven disasters are evident in hardship communities, the lingering consequences can be quantitative challenges. The toxic smoke exposure and environmental damage caused by wildfires can last for months, even years after the flames are extinguished.

“Authorizing death to wildfires is almost an impossible task,” said Andrew Stokes, an associate professor at Boston University. “This study highlights the need for these types of modeling efforts to truly bear the real burden of these catastrophes.”

To generate their findings, the study authors compared the death toll recorded in Los Angeles County from January 5 to February 1 with the death toll involved in the same period in 2018, 2019 and 2024.

According to their model, 6,371 deaths were recorded during the nearly month of the fire, while 5,931 deaths were expected based on data from the past few years.

Official deaths often depend on easily identifiable causes, including burns and smoke inhalation. But these figures sometimes fail to capture the complete loss of natural disasters.

According to county medical examiners, 19 people died in the Eaton fire and 12 people died in the Palisade fire. Many people were eventually found in the remains of destroyed property.

But the study believes that the actual death attributed to the fire is more than 14 times the official count.

“The difference is shocking,” Stokes said.

Heat waves, hurricanes and other disasters have been the subject of similar research, but when wildfires break out in sparsely populated areas in rural areas, they can be challenging. Stokes said that since the Palisades and Eaton fires occurred in “one of the most densely populated areas in the United States, it is possible to use national mortality statistics to establish a reliable baseline trend to estimate excess deaths.”

“What we do here is nearly impossible to do for camp fires or other wildfires that occur in the state or more rural areas of the country,” he said.

Still, Stokes noted that the study was not the whole story of the effect. Firefighters and other first responders, as well as residents inside and outside the fire zone, may face future health problems caused by smoke and ash.

According to the Department of Public Health, the number of fire-related hospital visits in Los Angeles County jumped significantly during the January fire. But wildfire smoke can drift hundreds of miles, and the specific number of deaths and hospitalizations associated with exposure usually waits until a natural disaster is known for months and years.

A study published by the Luskin Innovation Center at the University of California, Los Angeles found that over the 11-year span, there were estimated 55,000 premature deaths in fine particulate matter that sucked PM2.5 or soot from wildfires.

“What we do here is a quick assessment of mortality rates in LA wildfires,” Stokes said. “So we’re only focusing on the acute periods of LA wildfire burning. But we hope there will be further research to evaluate the long tails of these wildfires.”