Estimated 440 deaths reported from Jan. 5 to Feb. 1, 2025, with minimal impact on results when excluding certain causes of death
By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Aug. 12, 2025 (HealthDay News) — An estimated 440 deaths from Jan. 5 to Feb. 1, 2025, in Los Angeles County were attributable to the Los Angeles wildfires, according to a research letter published online Aug. 6 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Noting that 30 direct fatalities were reported in two major wildfires that impacted Los Angeles County in January 2025, Eugenio Paglino, Ph.D., from the University of Helsinki, and colleagues estimated excess deaths attributable to the Los Angeles wildfires. Weekly all-cause death counts were extracted by county of residence for Los Angeles County. The model was fitted on data from 2018, 2019, and 2024, excluding 2020 to 2023. Excess deaths were calculated as the difference between observed and expected deaths, and population-attributable fractions were calculated as excess death divided by observed deaths.
The researchers found that weekly deaths consistently exceeded expected deaths during the period from Jan. 5 to Feb. 1, 2025, in Los Angeles County. A total of 6,371 deaths were observed versus 5,931 expected deaths. In Los Angeles County, 6.9 percent of the observed deaths (440 deaths) were excess deaths. Excluding selected causes of death had little impact on the results; slightly more conservative estimates were seen with use of an alternative, controlled interrupted time series design; the number of excess deaths was increased when including data from 2023.
“The findings from this study underscore the need to complement direct fatalities estimates with alternative methods to quantify the additional mortality burden of wildfires and of climate-related emergencies more broadly,” the authors write.
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