The number of Western residents personally affected by extreme weather events rose dramatically over the past two years as millions more Californians faced catastrophic wildfires, according to new polling.
That includes people in Southern California where state officials say wind-driven fires in January killed 27 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures.
Those wildfires — combined with other disasters including heat waves, storms and floods — sent the percentage of Western residents reporting direct impacts from disasters from 30 percent in 2023 to 43 percent in 2025, said data released by Gallup on Tuesday.
“It’s a big shift, and certainly these [wildfire] events we’ve seen recently are happening in urbanized areas where more people are going to be affected by them,” Jeffrey Jones, Gallup’s senior editor, said during an interview.
