LA Fires: Jan 2025

[Tony Crocker]

Do you think that LAers would accept a mandatory power shutdown?

Not necessary to shut down the whole city, only the foothill areas with dry brush below the power lines. If that includes people like us a block away, I'm fine with that.

These strongest Santa Ana wind events are not that frequent. Our local Verdugo mountains block a lot of them. Typically they blow through favorably positioned canyons. But for the big ones like last January and early Dec. 2011 they work like a flooded waterfall and pour over all of the mountains into the basins below.

His bio says that he's lived in LA for 34 years.

That doesn't mean he's immune from media groupthink. The L.A. Times could easily have published that same article.

 

[socal]

His bio says that he's lived in LA for 34 years.
View attachment 47343

Do you think that LAers would accept a mandatory power shutdown?

It also says he’s an English professor.

We have friends who moved back to houses in the Palisades, they all did extensive air and soil testing and found nothing.

 

[tseeb]

PG&E has proactively shutoff power in Northern California. It's called "Public Safety Power Shutoff, or PSPS, which turns off power during severe weather." See https://pgealerts.alerts.pge.com/pg-e-partners/planning-resources/ for more info.

 

[EMSC]

His bio says that he's lived in LA for 34 years.
View attachment 47343

Do you think that LAers would accept a mandatory power shutdown?

Wait, an English professor is pretending to be definitive about weather/science attributions to fires? And claiming to know the science of toxins in the air, soils, etc... That's interesting at least and more potentially a big red flag. Especially for the NYT. I thought they were all about only allowing top educated scientists to talk about science in recent years. And yes I realize it's officially an opinion piece. But seems either very off brand or completely disingenuous by the NYT to publish something like that. I'm sure many non-scientist types who don't believe in the weather changing fire behaviour or etc... would love a similar soapbox handed to them by the NYT.

Note I'm not saying anything he wrote is correct or incorrect. Just pointing out the optics and potential double standards by the NYT at least and probably also by the author himself (I'm sure he demands many degrees and 'expert' status surrounding all sorts of publications and areas in his life, while he writes an article about stuff not really anywhere near his expertise).

Not sure why I care about some random article in the NYT. TONS upon TONS of hypocrisy and double standards by both sides of nearly any debate or the political theatre of most especially in the past decade plus.