By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Wildfires that devastated parts of the Los Angeles area in January indirectly led to hundreds of deaths in the ensuing weeks, far exceeding the official toll of 31 fatalities, according to a study released on Wednesday.

The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, or JAMA, estimated 440 “excess deaths” were attributable to the fires from January 5 to February 1, using models that compared predicted mortality under normal circumstances to actual numbers documented during that period.

The additional deaths likely reflect a mix of factors, including increased exposure of people with heart and lung disease to poor air quality from smoke and toxins released by the fires, as well as healthcare delays and disruptions, the study said.

The findings “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 researchers wrote.

Two wind-driven wildfires that erupted during the first week of January on opposite sides of Los Angeles damaged or destroyed nearly 16,000 structures combined – laying waste to much of the seaside district of Pacific Palisades and the foothill community of Altadena.

Together, the blazes scorched 59 square miles (152 sq km), an area larger than Paris. 

The official tally of people who perished as a direct result of the fires stands at 31, after the most recent set of human remains were unearthed in Altadena in July, six months after the fires.

Governor Gavin Newsom in February requested nearly $40 billion in wildfire aid from Congress. Some estimates put economic losses from the fires at more than $250 billion, making the conflagration one of the most costly natural disasters in U.S. history.

The JAMA study acknowledged some limitations, saying the data may need to be revised upward in the future and the research did not reflect any fire-attributable deaths beyond Feb. 1.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)