LA Fires: Jan 2025

[jamesdeluxe]

This is now the rainiest SoCal November since 1965.

Does that mean the upcoming fire season will be significantly less dangerous or do things dry out regardless? I'm reminded from my brother's regular updates in Denver that it doesn't matter how much rain comes during late spring (leading him to always say "it looks like Ireland here!"). By mid-summer, there'll be dustbowl conditions where the only green you see is due to irrigation/watering.

 

[snowtrekker]

Does that mean the upcoming fire season will be significantly less dangerous or do things dry out regardless? I'm reminded from my brother's regular updates in Denver that it doesn't matter how much rain comes during late spring (leading him to always say "it looks like Ireland here!"). By mid-summer, there'll be dustbowl conditions where the only green you see is due to irrigation/watering.

It means that "fire season" is essentially over for 2025. For next fire season, though, one wet month - or even a very wet season - doesn't really make a difference in the lower elevations for the same reason as in Denver. By late spring or summer, everything will be dry again. The main seasonal differences are in the timing.

 

[Tony Crocker]

By mid-summer, there'll be dustbowl conditions where the only green you see is due to irrigation/watering.

That is correct. And if the prior winter was rainy there will be extra fuel.

Nonetheless it's very helpful if there is rain in October/November. Highest probability of Santa Ana winds is December/January, so much value if the vegetation isn't still dry then.

 

[socal]

This documentary is pretty great at explaining it all. Worth a watch. Basically more fires lead to less destructive fires. Need large fuel breaks to protect property but letting land stay unburned for decades just makes things worse.

Seems the governor is finally acknowledging this, or at least saying so, but regardless we can’t damage “protected plants” in state parks. It’s because the environmentalists don’t let us, the reason the Palisades fire happened to begin with , they never let them do proper mop up to protect these plants, which all burned anyway.

Watch the movie, it’s entertaining and educational

Hotshot - The Movie

The definitive wildfire documentary, shot with unprecedented access on the fireline from the perspective of Hotshots, the most elite firefighters on earth. Watch THE Hotshot movie today.

www.hotshotmovie.com

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Infernos one year, floods the next. You can have it!

Intense California Storm Brings Flash Floods and Mudslides, Forcing Evacuations

Forecasters said heavy rain was expected to drench much of Southern California through the holidays, and officials warned the storm could be deadly.

www.nytimes.com

 

[jamesdeluxe]

One year later:

One Year After the L.A. Fires: Hope, Blame and Debt

After wildfires destroyed much of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, Southern California is trying to heal, but also struggling with how to move forward.

www.nytimes.com

It'll cost a fortune but isn't a key takeaway (similar to the Maui fire) that they should bury power lines?

 

[socal]

One year later:

One Year After the L.A. Fires: Hope, Blame and Debt

After wildfires destroyed much of Altadena and Pacific Palisades, Southern California is trying to heal, but also struggling with how to move forward.

www.nytimes.com

It'll cost a fortune but isn't a key takeaway (similar to the Maui fire) that they should bury power lines?

For Altadena, that would have helped. I’d say they should put fires out properly instead of protecting plants (which ironically all burned because of their screw up), fill reservoirs, and properly prepare for weather events.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Liz has been doing some training hikes with a Westside group. One of those was in Baldwin Hills where I posted that pic of downtown L.A. with the snowy Mt. Baldy backdrop.

This Sunday was in Pacific Palisades. The Leacock Trail ascends from Bienveneda Ave., a small enclave mostly spared from the fires. I've done many hikes through burn areas in the San Gabriel Mts. but I've never seen anything this lush, especially just one year after the Palisades Fire.

The charred skeleton in the foreground confirms we are hiking in the burn area. Those skeletons were the only plants higher than 3 feet or so, and they were only in scattered locations, which means most of this hillside burnt to the ground. As for all of that new growth, it has probably rained 20 inches here since the first of November. The small white flowers were extra abundant according to the local hikers.

View east over Century City:

View south over the still intact houses we drove by on the way to the trailhead.

The full length of Catalina is on the horizon. One of the hikers looked at the lush hills around us and said it looked more like Ireland than SoCal.

In this SW view you can see most lots in the foreground are empty from where houses burned down.

That's Santa Barbara Island, 50 miles distant, on the horizon.

Palisades Highlands was completely spared from the fire.

Here we view Skull Rock, where the Lachman Fire started Jan. 1 and revived in the wind a week later.

Zoomed view past downtown L.A. to San Jacinto, 110 miles away.

This is the infamous Santa Ynez Reservoir, empty during the fire..

Its cover is damaged and will be replaced this year.

At our turnaround point after 3 miles and 1,200 vertical, Liz appreciates this Lab/Pyrenee mix.

On the way down Liz wanted to check out Skull Rock more closely.

Background view is south over Santa Monica Bay to Palos Verdes and Catalina.

Liz at Skull Rock:

We took an alternate path farther down.

This was one of three trail sections needing repair.

We drove out Lachman Lane and Akron St. Here's a rebuild in progress.

A local woman side that the prior house was only 6 years old and the plans were still around to expedite it.

This lot must have needed deep excavation and so now has a pool after November/December.

Commercial district of Pacific Palisades on the way out:

 

[socal]

Palisades Highlands was completely spared from the fire.
View attachment 48927

That's not true. I have family who live(d) there. Thre's also a bunch that burned lower down.

 

[Tony Crocker]

The small neighborhood immediately north of Santa Ynez Reservoir is completely intact. The larger area in socal's screenshot is called The Summit and is in low resolution in my version of Google Earth (why would it be different than socal's view?) so I can't tell what burned. From the ridgeline where we were hiking I did not notice any due to distance and that most houses were still there. South of where my Google Earth has bad resolution, a high proportion of houses are gone.

 

[socal]

The small neighborhood immediately north of Santa Ynez Reservoir is completely intact. The larger area in socal's screenshot is called The Summit and is in low resolution in my version of Google Earth (why would it be different than socal's view?) so I can't tell what burned. From the ridgeline where we were hiking I did not notice any due to distance and that most houses were still there. South of where my Google Earth has bad resolution, a high proportion of houses are gone.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

The Post is keeping a close eye on LA so they can blame the stalled rebuilding on the Dems. OTOH, it seems crazy to issue permits for very narrow tracts between the beach/ocean and the PCH.

Why Malibu is still a ghost town 18 months after Palisades Fire: ‘It looks like Pompeii’

More than a year and a half after the Palisades Fire tore through Malibu, only a handful of homes along the Pacific Coast Highway have begun rebuilding, leaving the once-iconic stretch a ghost town…

nypost.com

 

[ChrisC]

The Post is keeping a close eye on LA so they can blame the stalled rebuilding on the Dems. OTOH, it seems crazy to issue permits for very narrow tracts between the beach/ocean and the PCH.

Why Malibu is still a ghost town 18 months after Palisades Fire: ‘It looks like Pompeii’

More than a year and a half after the Palisades Fire tore through Malibu, only a handful of homes along the Pacific Coast Highway have begun rebuilding, leaving the once-iconic stretch a ghost town…

nypost.com

Stopped reading the article when the journalist and editor got a basic fact incorrect (it was a national media story for days after Christmas holidays):

Greenberg did ultimately get the permits over a year later, tragically, on the exact same day the Palisades Fire broke out, July 7, 2025.

 

[socal]

Yeah, screw them, they had nice beach houses and are rich right? Its their fault the state didn't do any fire mitigation or adequate water and fire resouces. Its their fault the city of Malibu never put in city sewer with all that tax revenue making reconstruction require multi million dollar subterranean concrete structure for septic.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I don’t know the background history but it does strike me as bizarre that those densely adjoining houses at the water’s edge were on septic tanks in this day and age of Coastal Commission, etc.

While I agree that LAFD was derelict with respect to the fire origin after Lachman on New Year’s Eve, once the Palisades Fire reached those coastal homes which directly adjoined each other, there was close to zero chance that contagion among them could be stopped.

 

[socal]

While I agree that LAFD was derelict with respect to the fire origin after Lachman on New Year’s Eve, once the Palisades Fire reached those coastal homes which directly adjoined each other, there was close to zero chance that contagion among them could be stopped.

Maybe, and I could be wrong, but usually a fire isn't like some wall of unstoppable fire that burns the houses down, it's the embers that start a fire and no one there to put it out, especially in this case with a 4 lane highway seperating these coastal houses from hillside, not bad defensible space. My in laws lived in the highlands, right near where the fire started. He has video showing a firefighter in his yard, the night of the fire putting out spot fires, all night, using his garden hose. No doubt things were bad and just one house going probably would have made defending the rest really hard, but no water and no fire fighters made it impossible. I couldn't find the articles but I remember some about people staying and saving their own houses on the PCH.

Wait till we get all the reassessments removing the value of the houses, people are going to really miss that tax revenue and wish they would rebuild. Those two small areas (Palisades/Malibu) pay 2.5% of total LA County property tax revenue for the entire county while making up .35% of the population.

 

[Tony Crocker]

That section of PCH has significant separation from the Highlands and nearby blufftop houses. But the wind probably blew embers into some of those coastal houses.

Because of where I live I’ve driven through Altadena several times. The expensive areas with big lots in the east and the areas in the foothills with widely spaced houses seem to have about 50% burn rates. But with the smaller lots on grid layout streets in the west it’s more like 80%. There’s no doubt in my mind that density of housing is a key factor in level of destruction, and coastal PCH where the houses actually touch each other is the worst case scenario.