As the Los Angeles wildfire spread closer to his home, George Elmaraghi was anxiously waiting for an evacuation order.

“When I saw the fire, from our backyard, almost parallel to our house, I was like, OK, we gotta go.”

George’s home in Altadena was destroyed in what is now the city’s most destructive wildfire. That fire is still burning and George and his family, along with 150,000 other displaced people, are now grappling with trauma, homelessness, insurance claims – and the ultimate decision of whether to rebuild or walk away.

For Gabrielle Canon, the Guardian’s extreme weather correspondent, this unprecedented fire must be understood as a compound climate disaster: the disastrous end result of a chain of events exacerbated by the climate crisis.

Gabrielle explains to Michael Safi why popular anger is growing around the Los Angeles mayor, Karen Bass, and unpacks the potential climate crisis implications of incoming US president Donald Trump’s record on misinformation, fossil fuel extraction and federal disaster response.