New Research by Turner College Economist Frank Mixon Investigates Los Angeles Area Surfers' Responses to Beach Closures in the Aftermath of the 2025 Pacific Palisades Wildfires

Contemporary news coverage of the property damage and human cost associated with the California wildfires of 2024 and early 2025 provided some of the most heart-wrenching images of a natural disaster in U.S. history. According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, more than 8,000 individual fires had, by the end of 2024, burned almost 1.1 million acres of California property and destroyed more than 1,700 structures. The combination of drought conditions, thick underbrush and Santa Ana winds worked to extend the fires into January of 2025, particularly around Los Angeles and San Diego. Prominent among these fires was the Pacific Palisades fires, which began in the Santa Monica Mountains in Los Angeles County on 7 January 2025 and would eventually devastate large swaths of Pacific Palisades, Topanga and Malibu before ultimate containment of them on the last day of the month. More than 30 lives were lost as a result of the fires and estimates of the property and capital losses occurring during the fires range from a low of $76 billion to a high of $131 billion. These and other costs have already been the subject of academic inquiry.

Against this backdrop, new research by Turner College economist Frank Mixon and Spencer Eli Kagan of the University of California – Berkeley asserts that there are still other issues related to these fires that deserve at least some attention in the academic literature. Among these issues is the decision by California governmental authorities to close multiple access ramps connected to the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) for months after containment of the fires. These closures were accompanied by a loss of access to nearby beaches and, thus, to some of southern California’s high-quality surf breaks. As Mixon and Kagan point out, surfing is a key component of the culture of southern California, and, like the human action occurring in response to the wildfires, that related to the informal governance of a surf break includes both positive and negative elements. In response to beach closures, many Los Angeles area surfers migrated to open breaks, thus increasing congestion at these surf breaks. The added congestion caused by the migration tested the social norms that traditionally govern surf break utilization. Thus, as Mixon and Kagan argue, the migration of surfers in response to the California wildfires serves as somewhat of a natural experiment in the efficacy of customs and norms in governing the use of a common-property or common-pool resource such as a surf break.

To understand how the California wildfires have impacted surf break usage patterns in the Los Angeles area, the authors conducted several structured interviews with southern California surfers. Perhaps the most interesting and relevant qualitative element gleaned from the structured interviews is how sudden cuts to access after the Los Angeles area wildfires reshaped crowd dynamics across Los Angeles area surf breaks. When key surf breaks became functionally unavailable, the breaks that remained open experienced crowds far beyond their typical carrying capacity. Another striking qualitative result was the post-wildfires shift in surfing norms within the lineup. More specifically, there was a prevailing sentiment, perhaps best expressed as “these guys need a break,” reflecting a shared understanding that displaced surfers had limited options. General aggression levels appeared lower than expected, even when traditional violations such as “dropping in” occurred. The structured interviews revealed that surf break type also played a role in shaping post-wildfires surfing norms. At beach breaks, where waves peak in multiple shifting sections, there was more ambiguity about priority. A drop-in can carry greater plausible deniability, and surfers may accept informal compromises, perhaps best expressed with the comment, “I got this section, you take the next one.” In contrast to the strict territoriality often associated with point breaks, these overloaded beach breaks required practical accommodation. If every surfer insisted on strict priority and full wave ownership, weaker or less assertive surfers could easily spend hours without catching a wave. This environment highlighted the importance of skill hierarchy (heterogeneity) in crowded lineups, as navigating crowd density is itself a form of expertise. The situation created a tension between the conventional norm of “first-to-the-curl, first-in-right” and a more collective ethic acknowledging that displaced surfers also had a legitimate claim to limited common-pool surf break resources. Lastly, the structured interviews indicated that water quality was another important component in the migration decisions of Los Angeles area surfers, as chemicals and debris from the wildfires entered the ocean at or near the surf breaks that remained accessible. These spillovers only augmented bacterial invasions that typically hampered the use of Los Angeles area surf breaks before the wildfires. This new environmental factor likely further shaped both crowd distribution and surfing behavior.

Mixon and Kagan classify the in-migration status Los Angeles area surf breaks to allow for statistical analysis of the migration patterns of Los Angeles-area surfers in the aftermath of the wildfires. The results suggest that Los Angeles-area surf breaks that exhibited the fiercest degree of localism before the wildfires were 31.4 percentage points less likely to experience in-migration from Los Angeles-area surfers who were displaced from other surf breaks due to beach closures related to the wildfires. At the same time, beach closures due to the wildfires seem to have pushed displaced surfers toward more congested surf breaks, and toward surf breaks with low water quality. The takeaways from these results are that surfers who were displaced from their usual surf spots as a result of the wildfires sought to avoid migrating to Los Angeles area surf breaks that were known to exhibit the highest degree of localism prior to the wildfires, and that in doing so they ultimately migrated to surf breaks that were known to be the most congested, and to offer anything other than the cleanest water, prior to the wildfires. Given the additional finding of a greater likelihood of migrating to alternative surf breaks offering the highest quality waves, the seemingly sub-optimal behavior perhaps emanated from both the surfers’ attempts to maintain a customary surfing experience and their experience with a more accommodating attitude displayed by previously territorial local surfers that is described through the structured interviews.