by By Steve Gorman
Los Angeles (Reuters) -Wildfires who destroyed parts of the Los Angeles area in January indirectly led to hundreds of deaths in the following weeks, according to a study of 31 fatalities much greater than the official toll of 31 fatalities.
The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or Jama, estimated 440 “excess deaths” due to the fires from January 5 to 1 February, with the help of models that predicted mortality under normal circumstances compared to actual circumstances that have been documented in that period.
The extra deaths probably reflect a mix of factors, including increased exposure of people with heart and lung disease in poor air quality of smoke and toxins released by the fires, as well as delays in health care and disruptions, the study said.
The findings “underline the need to supplement the estimates of direct fatalities with alternative methods to widely quantify the supplementary mortality burden of forest fires and climate -related emergency situations,” the researchers wrote.
Two forest fires driven by the wind that broke out in the first week of January on the opposite sides of Los Angeles, damaged or destroyed nearly 16,000 structures – that were waste on a large part of the district of Pacific Palisades and the Foothill community of Altadena.
Together the Blazes have scorched 59 square miles (152 km²), an area larger than Paris.
The official number of people who died as a direct consequence of the fires is 31, after the most recent set of human remains were dug up in Altadena in July, six months after the fires.
Governor Gavin Newsom in February almost $ 40 billion in natural fire aid from the congress. Some estimates give economic losses of more than $ 250 billion, making the sea of fire one of the most expensive natural disasters in American history.
The Jama study recognized some limitations and said that the data might have to be revised upstairs in the future and that the investigation did not reflect the fire-resistant deaths that goes beyond February 1.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman; editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
