LA Fires: Jan 2025

jamesdeluxe said:
Do you think that LAers would accept a mandatory power shutdown?
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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.
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That doesn't mean he's immune from media groupthink. The L.A. Times could easily have published that same article.
 
jamesdeluxe said:
His bio says that he's lived in LA for 34 years.
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Do you think that LAers would accept a mandatory power shutdown?
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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.
 
The good news is that I still have home insurance. It's up 33% from last year and is now more than my property taxes!

Prop. 13 caps annual property tax increases to 2%. The home insurance is now 269% higher than in 2019.
 
Tony Crocker said:
The good news is that I still have home insurance. It's up 33% from last year and is now more than my property taxes!

Prop. 13 caps annual property tax increases to 2%. The home insurance is now 269% higher than in 2019.
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Thats a crazy increase. I think mine has increased by 50% in that same timeframe due to inflation on replacement and repairs.
 
If there is one state that should be divided, it is California:

I have lived here forever, and do not know anything about LA or SD. Nor do I care about the residents.

I know Southern California is too beautiful; it's seductive.

Unfortunately, I was born when California - SF was where we went for tech
 
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ChrisC said:
I know Southern California is too beautiful; it's seductive.
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Reading bits and pieces of history over recent years, I've realized that the weather here has been the driver of SoCal's growth from a very early time.

California's initial growth and statehood came from the Gold Rush and SF's gateway/supply center to it. SoCal was a remote cattle ranching backwater.

The railroad came from SF in 1876, but the second transcontinental railroad went from L.A. through southern Arizona to Texas in 1883, less weather problematic than the first one through Wyoming and over the Sierra. This allowed rich people from the East to visit and they were wowed by the climate, which exists nowhere else in the USA. So they built second homes here, and with refrigerated railroad cars soon started a citrus industry. Florida's citrus industry did not get pushed far enough south to avoid disruptive freezes until after about 1910.

Early 20th century growth industries were aerospace, attracted by the climate, and Hollywood, same plus the varied geographies available within compact distances.

My parents were among countless people who passed through on the way to the Pacific during WWII, noticed the climate just like those wealthy easterners in the 1880's and decided they wanted to live here. For nearly 30 years after WWII it was not that expensive to live here. In one way it was cheap vs. most of the US because both heating and cooling costs are low.

The first real estate price explosion was in the late 1970's. L.A. County population was 2.8 million in 1940, 4.2 million in 1950, 6.0 million in 1960 and 7.0 million in 1970, eased to 7.5 million in 1980. The immigration surge pushed it to 8.9 million in 1990. Growth then slowed and population has been stable near 10 million since 2000.

Real estate prices?
1975 - 1981 +169% (avg 18% per year)
1981 - 1982 -12% (recession less severe than most of US)
1982 - 1990 +146% (avg 12% per year)
1990 - 1996 - 21% (recession more severe than most of US)
1996 - 2006 +228% (avg 13% per year)
2006 - 2012 - 27% (inland SoCal counties hit much more, some places more than 50%)
2012 - 2024 +141% (avg 6% per year)
 
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Haven't seen anyone post about this:

Officials arrest man in Florida on suspicion of starting devastating Palisades Fire​

"Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, is facing a federal charge of destruction of property by means of fire in connection with the Palisades Fire, according to Bill Essayli, the acting US attorney for Southern California.

The suspect, who used to work as an Uber driver and lived in the Pacific Palisades at the time, did not enter a plea at a federal court appearance on Wednesday in Orlando."
 
The L.A. Times has been all over this. It has only fanned the flames of critique about why that area of the Jan. 1 arson was not being monitored with the wind forecast for Jan. 7.
 
If we're still talking fires, how about the fact that the Palisades fire was in fact caused by the lack of following protocols on attending to the still smoldering Lachman fire? Pretty damming stuff. Sadly for us residents the city and state will be even more broke and have worse services as they pay what will be an incredible settlement to property owners.

LA Times Link
Firefighters mopping up a small brush fire that authorities say reignited as the Palisades fire five days later were ordered to leave the original burn scene even though they complained the ground was still smoldering and rocks remained hot to the touch, according to firefighter text messages reviewed by The Times.

To the firefighters’ surprise, their battalion chief ordered them to roll up their hoses and pull out of the area on Jan. 2 — the day after the 8-acre blaze was declared contained — rather than stay and make sure there were no hidden embers that could spark a new fire, the text messages said.

On the morning of Jan. 7, according to federal authorities, strong winds stoked the remnants of the New Year’s Day blaze into the firestorm that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes in Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Topanga.
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In one text message, a firefighter who was at the scene on Jan. 2 wrote that the battalion chief had been told it was a “bad idea” to leave the burn scar unprotected because of the visible signs of smoldering terrain. “And the rest is history,” the firefighter wrote in recent weeks.
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In the text messages, firefighters complained that commanders failed to make certain that the mop-up was finished.

A second firefighter said in January that crews at Station 69 in the Palisades were surprised that they were told to roll up their hoses the day after the fire, according to the texts.

The firefighter was told that tree stumps were still hot at the location when the crew packed up and left, according to the texts. As a standard precaution, the hoses had been left there in case hidden embers sparked a flare-up.

A different firefighter said this month that crew members were upset when told to pack up and leave, but that they could not ignore orders, according to the texts. The firefighter also wrote that he and his colleagues knew immediately that the Jan. 7 fire was a rekindle of the Jan. 1 blaze.
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The battalion chief listed as being on duty the day firefighters were ordered to leave the Lachman fire, Mario Garcia, did not respond to requests for comment.
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In a previous interview with The Times, Villanueva said firefighters remained in the burn area for more than 36 hours and “cold-trailed” it, meaning they used their hands to feel for heat, dug out hot spots and chopped a line around the perimeter of the fire to ensure it was contained.

He said firefighters returned on Jan. 3 for another round of cold-trailing after a report of smoke in the area.

“We went back over there again. We dug it all out again. … We did everything that we could do — cold-trail again,” he said. “We did all of that.”

The Times asked the LAFD to provide dispatch records that would corroborate firefighters visiting the site on Jan. 3, and officials did not provide them.
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