• Firestorms in Los Angeles have burned over 5,000 acres, destroying homes and killing two people.
• One of the two biggest blazes, the Palisades Fire, could be the costliest in US history.
• The fires have spread so fast in part because of a windstorm and flood-drought whiplash.

All was well in Los Angeles at around 10 a.m. on Tuesday.

Less than 24 hours later, 2,925 acres of the Pacific Palisades were ablaze in what is being called the worst wildfire in Southern California since 2011.

Three more blazes have ignited in the area, with one, the Eaton Fire, engulfing another 2,000-plus acres.

Firefighters had not contained the blazes as of Wednesday morning, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.

More than 1,000 structures have burned, at least two people have died, and the fires could get even worse in the coming hours.

California is no stranger to fires, but this situation is different and especially dangerous for a few reasons.

An 'urban firestorm' that could be the costliest in history

Few brush fires in California history have intruded into such vast areas of dense, urban housing.

The UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain called it an "urban firestorm" as he assessed live images of the developing Eaton Fire on Tuesday morning.

Perhaps the best historical comparison is the 1991 Tunnel Fire, which raged through more than 1,500 acres of Oakland, but it was smaller than either of the two giant blazes in Los Angeles. It killed 25 people and injured 150, and ranks as the third-deadliest and third-most-destructive fire in California history.

The true toll of this week's fires won't be clear until later.

Swain said that he and several colleagues have estimated that the Palisades Fire could be the costliest on record in the US because of the number of structures burning and the fact that those homes are some of the most expensive in the world.

"We are looking at what is, I think, likely to become the costliest wildfire disaster in California, if not national history, along with a number of other superlatives," Swain said.

A historic windstorm spread the fire fast

A powerful windstorm buffeted the flames throughout Tuesday and into Wednesday morning, with gusts of wind reaching up to 90 miles an hour, according to the National Weather Service.

During a 2 ½ hour period overnight, the Palisades Fire's size more than doubled, per the fire service's reports.

The winds were so powerful on Tuesday evening that water- and retardant-dropping aircraft could not fly.

It's a phenomenon that scientists have warned about: a deadly combination of high winds and dry, open land — such as the brushland now being swept by flames in Los Angeles — amounting to fires that move faster than emergency responders can keep up with.

"It's certainly unusual how fast it's grown," Douglas Kelley, a researcher at the UK's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, told Business Insider. "It's definitely a lot faster than I guess a lot of people were expecting in the area at the time."

A study published in Science in October found that while only about 3% of US fires over a nearly two-decade period could be considered "fast fires," they caused disproportionate damage.

"The most destructive and deadly wildfires in US history were also fast," wrote the study's authors, led by University of Colorado Boulder's Jennifer Balch.

Between 2001 and 2020, fast fires accounted for 78% of fire-destroyed buildings and a full 61% of suppression costs — or $18.9 billion, the scientists wrote. And they are getting more frequent, the study said.

The windstorm was bad luck. But the other primary factor in the fires' rapid explosions — the fuel — is strongly linked to the climate crisis.

Weather whiplash made abundant fire fuel

Southern California has experienced heavy rainfall and flooding the past two winters — which is a huge part of the problem.

Abundant rainfall spurred an explosion of grasses and brush, the primary fire fuel in Southern California. Then, with very little rainfall in the past few months, all that vegetation was flash-dried.

Kelley said those dry conditions made the Palisades especially susceptible to a fast-spreading fire.

This is part of a growing phenomenon that Swain calls "hydroclimate whiplash," or weather whiplash. As global temperatures rise, many parts of the world, especially California, are seeing more violent swings between extreme wet and extreme dry conditions.

The same confluence of weather whiplash and extreme winds was behind the Camp Fire, Swain said. That November 2018 blaze in Paradise, California, was the deadliest and most destructive in the state's history, destroying 18,804 structures and killing 85 people.

• The downfall of Assad has threatened Russia's military presence in Syria along with its wider strategic objectives.
• Russia's bases in Syria made it a major diplomatic player in the Middle East.
• The bases were also crucial for its activities in Africa.

The fall of Bashar Assad has thrown Russia's military presence in Syria into question. It also poses a threat to Russia's ability to project power throughout the Middle East and beyond.

On Sunday, Syrian rebels, led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, overthrew Syria's longtime autocratic ruler.

It followed a dizzying two-week campaign that caught the world off guard and many are now trying to work out what will come next for the country.

Russia has been a close ally of Syria and has leases on two military bases in the country, giving it a strategic foothold in the Middle East.

"It hits them hard," Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior advisor to the Counter Extremism Project, said of Russia.

He added: "Syria has been their most reliable Arab ally."

A springboard to power

In 2017, Syria granted Russia a 49-year lease on the Hmeimim air base and the Tartus naval base, in return for military assistance.

Russia has used the bases to project power in the Mediterranean and into Africa, and as a counter to NATO's southern flank.

"These bases are the most important bases outside the direct sphere of Russian influence," Andreas Krieg, a Gulf specialist at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King's College London, told Business Insider.

Ann Marie Dailey, a geopolitical strategist at RAND, told BI that despite its massive landmass, Russia "doesn't have great geography for power projection."

"It doesn't have warm water ports that have direct access to the oceans," she added. "And so having a port in the Mediterranean is incredibly strategically useful."

Hmeimim, meanwhile, gives Russia a refueling base and overflight access throughout the Middle East and on to Africa, she said.

On Sunday, Ukrainian military intelligence said that Russia had pulled two ships from Tartus, and had transferred weapons from Hmeimim.

BI was unable to independently verify the report.

But satellite images captured by Planet Labs PBC show Russian warships that had been seen in Tartus earlier this month were gone as of Monday.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia intended to have serious discussions with future Syrian authorities about access to the bases, but that it is too soon for now.

The potential loss of influence in Syria is not just about state power. The bases have also allowed support for the activities of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner.

"If you look at the Wagner footprint in Africa, you can tell that it's been enabled by the fact that they have that access in Syria to support those operations," said Dailey.

According to the Institute for the Study of War, losing the bases in Syria will "immediately" interrupt Wagner's rotation and resupply efforts.

Russia's ambitions for global leadership

Russia's involvement in Syria is a legacy of the Soviet era when the USSR traditionally maintained strong ties with other socialist states.

Russia propped up the Assad regime for more than a decade, notably sending aid during the 2011 Arab Spring, and troops and weapons to help counter the uprising in 2015.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had many reasons to stick his neck out for Assad.

"By backing Assad, Russia positioned itself as an indispensable player in regional politics, thereby increasing its diplomatic leverage," said Ali Bilgic, a professor in international relations and Middle East politics at the UK's Loughborough University.

But the huge cost of invading Ukraine appears to have forced Russia to choose between the two.

It "really speaks to how stretched thin Russian forces are," according to Dailey.

Putin has based Russia's international stature on the idea it can play a major role in different parts of the world, said Cristian Nitoiu, a Russia-focused lecturer in diplomacy and foreign affairs, also at Loughborough University.

Yet Putin's refusal to help Assad this time "basically shows that Russia was unable to support one of its long-lasting friends," Nitoiu said.

"The events in Syria can be seen as a sort of strategic failure on the part of Russia, and the optics look really bad," he added.

An uncertain future

In a statement on Sunday, Russia's foreign ministry said it was maintaining contact with "all" Syrian opposition groups, adding that while Russia's Syrian bases are on high alert, there's no serious threat to their security at the moment.

Russia has called Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham a terror group — so the fact that they are communicating with rebel groups now "demonstrates the importance of these bases," Dailey said.

HTS is also designated a terror group by the US and the UN.

What the US does regarding events in Syria will also be pivotal to what sort of foothold Russia can maintain, Loughborough University's Bilgic said.

On Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump posted on Truth Social: "THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!"

Should the US withdraw all involvement, Russia could exploit any ensuing power vacuum. But "this scenario appears improbable," Bilgic said.

In fact, diminishing Russian influence in Syria is a huge strategic draw for the US, he said, adding that there is also a concern that a new Russia-backed government could give room to ISIS, as well as threats to Israeli security.

Russia's presence in Syria has also helped it shape its objectives in energy markets, Bilgic said.

"Economically, the Tartus base played a role in Russia's energy strategy, helping to counter competing projects like the Qatar-Turkey pipeline," he said.

A grim reminder

What has happened in Syria in recent days may lead to some sleepless nights in Russia.

"I think it will rattle some folks in the Kremlin to see just how quickly Russia's military had to withdraw," Dailey said.

Assad's fall may also be a grim reminder for those in power in Russia of the necessity of crushing domestic resistance quickly, she said.

"Anyone in the Kremlin, because they've studied Russian history, knows that an autocratic regime can crumble very quickly."