How Wildfires Get Their Names

The Los Angeles region is currently in a state of emergency due to a string of wildfires driven by extreme drought and Santa Ana winds. The fires have killed at least 25 people and burned more than 40,000 acres, an area larger than Washington, D.C. 

Like hurricanes, wildfires that develop into emergencies receive names. The most destructive in Los Angeles right now are the Palisades and Eaton fires.

How the two types of natural disasters get named, however, is totally different. 

The World Meteorological Organization methodically names tropical cyclones using rotating lists of easy-to-pronounce, traditionally male and female names. In the U.S., the National Hurricane Center takes the same approach and creates name lists separated by region: Atlantic, Eastern North Pacific, and Central North Pacific. Once a storm reaches the meteorological criteria to warrant a name, the next name in the queue is applied. First up for the Atlantic in 2025 is Andrea, followed by Barry, Chantal, Dexter, Erin, and Fernand.

This system simplifies the information chain for meteorologists, emergency management workers, and the public, and it replaced less efficient methods of yore, like naming a storm after the first noteworthy ship it damages or the saint’s day on which it occurred. 

Both organizations retire names after they are attached to a particularly destructive or historic storm. (Andrew, Katrina, and Sandy have all been delisted.)

As for wildfires, the process is much less formal. Once emergency responders arrive at the scene of a new fire, they affix the name of a nearby location and then it usually sticks. The ongoing Palisades and Eaton fires are named for, respectively, a Los Angeles neighborhood and a canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains. Like hurricane names, the designations help communication and streamline firefighting strategy among emergency workers.

Sometimes names get shortened. The 2018 Carr fire was named after Carr Powerhouse Road, and the 2017 Nuns fire after Nuns Canyon Road. 

This can lead to odd names. In 2012, the Dump fire, which began at—you guessed it—a landfill, irritated some residents of Saratoga Springs, Utah, who thought outsiders might transpose the description onto the town itself. In 2015, firefighters in Idaho battled what they called the Not Creative fire. It was the 57th wildfire they had to name that year in a state lacking in unique place markers.

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