Before the Los Angeles disaster, wildfires drove others out of California

Christina Welch still remembers what the sky looked like the day the wildfire came within 2 miles (3.2 km) of her Santa Rosa, California, home.

It was the 2017 Tubbs Fire, the most destructive in California history at the time. Mrs. Welsh's neighbor woke her up in the morning, telling her to grab her belongings and get out. When Mrs. Welsh opened the door, ash was falling from the sky and smoke filled the air.

Then, in 2019, the Kincade Wildfire forced her parents to evacuate for five days.

The final payment was for Mrs. Welch. Following a tip from a friend, she packed up her belongings and drove across the country to her new hometown: Duluth, Minnesota.

“It was just the culmination of it all,” the 42-year-old said. “There are so many times that I would go through each fall worrying about what would start a fire, if I would lose a house.”

Ms. Welch is one of many people to have left California in recent years due to climate disasters, even before the deadliest wildfire in Los Angeles history killed 25 people this month.

Just this week, a new, fast-moving wildfire broke out in Los Angeles County, northwest of the city, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate an area already reeling from devastation. Trump said last week that he would soon visit Southern California to view the devastation from the fires.

So far, climate experts say, they haven't seen a mass exodus from the country due to climate change — and it's hard to estimate how many people have left for that reason. However, the state's population growth rate has continued to decline since 2000, according to the US Census.

But scientists and demographic experts say that as climate change disasters become more extreme and unpredictable, the number of people leaving the state could rise, leaving some cities ill-prepared for the task of welcoming new residents.

“There could be this wave of new people saying, ‘You know what? California won't work for me because this is the third time in five years that I've had to close my doors due to severe soot and smoke,” said University of Michigan data science professor Derek Van Berkel.

“We have to start preparing for those eventualities, because they will become more frequent and more extreme.”

A number of climate-related factors may prompt Californians to leave for home over the next decade. From 2020 to 2023, wildfires destroyed more than 15,000 structures in California, according to Calfire. At least 12,000 structures were lost in the Los Angeles fires earlier this year.

The state faces other climate change impacts as well, including flooding. Sea level rise could put half a million Californians in flood-prone areas by 2100, according to the state Attorney General's Office.

The state also deals with at least two earthquakes on average each year of magnitude 5.5 or larger, according to the California Department of Conservation.

As climate disasters become more extreme and more frequent, home insurance rates in the state have also continued to rise. More than 100,000 Californians have lost their home insurance since 2019, according to a San Francisco Chronicle analysis.

More of a local phenomenon, climate migration is, so far, more of a local phenomenon, said Jeremy Porter, head of climate impacts with First Street, who are looking for higher ground in their city to avoid flooding, with some looking at their home state or So he searches for higher ground in their city to avoid flooding. Climate risks are being modelled.

But in recent years, he said, fewer people have begun flocking to cities outside California that declare themselves potential “climate havens.”

The term comes from climate adaptation researcher Jesse Keenan, who created a list of places in 2019 that are expected to be affected by climate change.

Near the top of the list is Duluth, Minnesota, a former industrial city, of about 90,000 people, a population that has grown slowly since 2020 after years of stagnation.

One of the city's draws is its proximity to the Great Lakes, the chain of lakes that includes the largest body of fresh water in the world. About 10% of the United States and 30% of Canada depend on lakes for drinking water.

“In a scenario where resources are becoming scarce, this is a huge advantage,” Mr. van Berkel said.

The Great Lakes water supply attracted Jamie Beck Alexander and her family to Duluth. Worried by three consecutive and devastating shooting seasons in California, Ms. Alexander, her husband and two young children piled into the camper van and drove across the country to Minnesota in 2020.

Ms. Alexander found similarities between the progressive small town and their old hometown of San Francisco.

“There's a real depth of connection between people, deep roots, things that I think are important for climate resilience,” she said.

Ms. Welch ignored her friends who thought she was crazy to move to a city known for its record snowfall and icy conditions, with an average of 106 days a year of freezing temperatures. She said that the beautiful and magnificent city on a hill had become hers.

“There are a lot of people here who love where they live and want to protect it,” Ms. Welch said of Duluth.

Although some cities have embraced their designation as climate havens, it remains a challenge for small local governments to find the resources to plan for new residents and climate resilience, Mr. Van Berkel said.

Mr. Van Berkel is working with Duluth and other cities in the Great Lakes region on climate change planning, including welcoming new residents who move due to climate change.

The city of Duluth declined to respond to the BBC's request for comment on how it is preparing for potential climate migrants.

Right now, Mr. Porter said, the Great Lakes region and other “climate haven” cities are not seeing high levels of migration. But if that changes, many will not be ready.

“It will take significant investment in local communities… for those communities to be able to meet the kind of population that some of the climate migration literature suggests,” Mr Porter said.

Housing availability in Duluth, for example, can be an issue, Alexander said. She said that although the city has space to create new housing, it does not currently have enough new developments for the growing population. As a result, in the years since she moved there, housing prices have soared.

Mr Van Berkel said any new housing and other developments needed to be done with climate change in mind.

“We don't want to make potentially very costly mistakes with our infrastructure when we have climate change rearing its ugly head,” he said.

In 2024, a Category 4 hurricane destroyed more than 2,000 homes and businesses in the Kelsey Lahr climate refuge in Asheville, North Carolina.

She moved there in 2020, drawn to the city's warm climate, restaurant and music scene, after a series of devastating wildfire seasons and mudslides near Santa Barbara, California.

Before moving, Ms. Lahr researched extensively the most climatically staged places to live, with Asheville ranked near the top because of its more moderate temperatures and its inland location, which protects it from flooding.

But last year, Hurricane Helen tore through western North Carolina, killing more than 100 people in the state and removing Ms. Laher's new hometown of Asheville. Many were left without power for about 20 days and without safe drinking water for more than a month.

“It is clear that southern Appalachia is not the ‘climate haven’ it was built to be,” Ms. Lahr said.

In Deluth, Ms. Alexander said her family quickly learned they could not escape climate change.

During their first summer, the city was exposed to the same smoke and poor air quality that led them away from California—this time from Canadian wildfires.

“It was like, 'This is a really deep joke that the universe played on me,'” she said. “Unless we address the root cause (of climate change), we will always feel like we need to pick up and move.”

She has since moved to Wisconsin for personal reasons, but says she doesn't regret the first trip to Minnesota. Ms. Lahr also regrets moving to Asheville.

Although Ms. Lahr often misses the ancient forests of Yosemite National Park in California, where she spent her summers working as a park ranger, a future that may bring more climate disasters requires sacrifices.

“I increasingly believe climate refuges are a myth,” she said. “Everyone should assess the risks they are in and go from there.”