Hero scientist who saved hundreds with early LA fire forecast warns: ‘This is not over yet’
A scientist who runs a small Facebook weather page is being credited with saving hundreds of lives by warning Californians to prepare to pack up and flee the approaching wildfires before they even started.
Edgar McGregor, 24, used his local page, Altadena Weather and Climate, to correctly predict conditions that would be “cataclysmic,” People magazine reported.
On Jan. 6 — a day before the major wildfires started — he warned that “Southern California is about to be blasted by one of its most powerful Santa Ana windstorm[s] in recorded history” with “world-record fire danger.”
Then on Jan. 7, the day the Palisades Fire started, the climate scientist warned his neighbors to stay up, stay hyper-vigilant and prepare to evacuate — which many credit for saving countless lives.
“I haven’t even been able to process that mentally,” McGregor told People of being called a hero. “I didn’t run into a burning building and get third-degree burns trying to save someone’s life. So people are sending me all these comments and I’m thinking to myself, I just did my job.”
McGregor saw signs at the end of last year that the weather conditions could lead to historic fires, he said.
“I knew on Dec. 30 that when this windstorm hit, the conditions would be carbon copies of the conditions that were on the ground in Lahaina, Hawaii, and in Paradise, which both were completely leveled and lost around a hundred people each day,” McGregor told PEOPLE.
“I told people, if a wildfire breaks out, there’ll be a thousand homes burned down. This would be cataclysmic,” he said.
On Facebook, McGregor warned readers to turn their cars outwards and place all necessary or irreplaceable items and documents in their cars or by the door.
“I knew that that warning might’ve been a little bit excessive, but as it turns out, a thousand homes are not even a fraction of the loss, the ones that were lost,” he told the outlet.
McGregor’s forewarning partially stemmed from his daily hikes in the Eaton Canyon, where he saw large swaths of dead trees that he knew would make perfect fuel for a disastrous fire.
“I knew this was coming. I certainly didn’t think January was the month it would occur, but I hope that I did my job in warning everybody,” he said.
While his house in Altadena is still standing, many of his neighbor’s homes and structures in the surrounding area have been completely wiped away.
“It could have been any community around here that got it. It just happened to be mine,” he told the outlet. “I think what was most important, for people who lost their homes, was [that] I was able to get them an additional 30 minutes or an hour or even 12 hours to prepare and to pack their cars.”
Now McGregor shares regular updates for thousands of Californians as four major fires burn through 62 square miles — roughly three times the size of Manhattan.
“I think for the most part the immediate threat is over,” he said, noting there is still potential for additional windstorms and mudslides once California sees some rain.
With the potential for additional disasters, McGregor warned: “What I’m saying is, this is not over yet.”
