– Leaves crunched under Eli Lichter-Mark’s boots as he walked through his back yard in Topanga in the Santa Monica Mountains, where a drought driven by climate change has siphoned moisture from the oak tree canopy. “You’re here at the crunchiest time,” the beekeeper told Al Jazeera.A sign on the road leading to his house declares: “Danger – extreme fire hazard area.” A 20-minute drive from the Los Angeles sprawl, the community of about 8,000 people is a tinderbox. Most people live in wooden bungalows, built at a time when the fire risk was lower.Three years ago, Lichter-Mark and his wife moved into a home constructed in 1938 with redwood siding, in front of a hill covered in dense brush. “I brought in a group of guys and we probably pulled out six trailers full of brush, sticks, leaves, small trees and branches,” he said.
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