First report put out this morning on the issue,
20+ Looters arrested....

My view, put them in ankle chains and give them a shovel, rake etc right on the front line.....

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, January 09, 2025 - 08:57 pm: Edit

A chain of reservoirs feed LA and are relied on for wildfire episodes. Four of those reservoirs were emptied or demolished for political reasons that do not need to be discussed here. Restore that missing water, and the pressure improves, not totally restored, but seriously improved.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 11:06 am: Edit

Conditions this morning are “bad, but not as bad”.
Winds are down but going to return.
Ten dead and more missing.
Palisades fire 20,000 acres 6% contained,
Kenneth fire 1000 acres 35% contained.
Hurst fire 775 acres 37% contained.
Lidia fire 390 acres 75% contained.
Eaton fire 13,700 acres 0% contained.
Escape roads ordered a decade ago were never built due to budget.
Plans to bring north California water south were blocked by California government for dubious environmental reasons.
Fire department (LA) cut by $18m (or $25m) to fund migrants.
Up to 20% of fire equipment sidelined due to mechanics laid off.
National Guard called up but none seen on site yet. Reserve equipment was donated to Ukraine.
10,000 homes 1,000 other structures destroyed.
At least 20 looters arrested.
Thousands of homeowners had no insurance due to California cost caps, 500,000 of them in LA county. More insurance companies threatening to leave. Destroyed homes cannot be rebuilt as insurance costs would be more than mortgage. California last resort coverage has $740m cash to pay claims that were $460 billion before these fires. California is broke and cannot pay the claims.
Cause of fires not known, speculation rampant.
Drought conditions have been bad and made the fire situation incredibly dangerous but California and LA did nothing to get ready.
Be VERY careful to stay out of swamp. I had to step into the ankle deep parts but the truth had to be told. Stay way back from where I went. Jean won’t delete this post but she and I will delete further political comments.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 11:32 am: Edit

I will add that TOO MANY people rely on too little water supply to live and raise crops in what should be a desert.

Sure it's nice there, but then consequences happen.

I worked a year at DTRA in New Mexico and on the White Sands Missile Range a group of us were discussing how that area used to be used for ranching. The ranchers were bought out and the lands taken over by the Feds. That is where the first nukes were detonated. We all agreed that getting stuff blown up there was about the perfect use for the lands. We'd build a thing and then in would come something to blow it up. Really cool next level stuff.

Gosh forsaken place. Pretty yes. Some great people. But I hated it there.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 12:02 pm: Edit

A Canadian "super-scoop" firefighting aircraft has been grounded after damage from a private drone that was operating over the fire zone (in violation of federal law).

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 12:08 pm: Edit

For what it's worth: the Hollywood Reservoir has been permanently drawn-down since 1931, because the Mulholland Dam was of the same design (and designer) as the catastrophically-failed St. Francis Dam; the Mulholland Dam was found upon inspection to lack what was at the time considered sufficient uplift relief, which might possibly lead to destabilization, and was deemed unsafe were the reservoir to be filled to design capacity.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 01:02 pm: Edit

And why in the intervening 93 years was the dam not repaired / upgraded to meet the required safety standards??


Garth L. Getgen

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 02:12 pm: Edit

They discovered the problems with it in the early years of the Great Depression, and there was simply no money available to do anything about it. That was followed by World War II, when there was no manpower to do anything about it.

By the time anything *could* be done about it, more was understood about the fault lines in the area, and engineers realized that the sides of the designated reservoir represented a truly dangerous slide risk in the event of a big quake, such that even if the dam was fully up to standards, a slide in a capacity-filled reservoir would be absolutely disastrous (overtopping any such dam with the attendant risk of bringing the dam down).

Mulholland Dam should never have been built where it is in the first place, if more had been understood about the geological issues at the time.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 02:17 pm: Edit

Mind, what the city *was* able to do about it with the limitations imposed by the Great Depression was to mound up a ridiculous amount of earth against the face of the dam, then plant the heck out of that earth. Today, only the top ten meters or so of the face of the dam are visible. Removing all of that would be a logistical nightmare.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 04:33 pm: Edit

While much is made that suburban fire hydrants aren’t intended to fight wildfires, the ones in LA are designed to provide more firefighting pressure than the ones in Amarillo or Denver or Chicago. Even so, the reserve water tanks ran dry in 12 hours and the backup reservoirs are a less effective supply farther away.

I am trying to find a list of the dams removed that cause water reserves to be lower. I found four on the Klamath River but they seem too far north.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, January 10, 2025 - 06:16 pm: Edit

Total damage $150 billion

California current building permit laws will make rebuilding expensive and very very expensive.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, January 11, 2025 - 01:46 am: Edit

California has imposed a one-year moratorium preventing insurance companies from cancelling policies. The companies say this will cause them billions in losses that they have to pass to other customers in other states.

Changes to building codes will make destroyed houses much more expensive to rebuild, in some cases it will prevent them from rebuilding.

California is broke and deeply in debt. It's cool to say that somebody must force California to do a better job (e.g, clear brush) but California asks where the money comes from as they have no money to do that stuff now. Even Republicans in California are saying the only escape is a Federal bailout in the billions of dollars; 49 other governors are saying "no chance" to that.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Saturday, January 11, 2025 - 04:57 am: Edit

California is broke and deeply in debt.

Things nobody ever discusses about financial losses,
are Sales Tax (especially concerning legalized shoplifting) and Property Taxes where there are no longer Structures to Tax....
Last estimate I heard, over 10k structures (Homes, business etc), even discounting insurance, regulations etc, time and workers to even work on reconstruction will hamper things....

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, January 13, 2025 - 05:20 pm: Edit

As of this morning the toll is 24 known deceased and still 20 looters arrested. The curious thing is that the 20 looters included one illegal migrant who was caught carrying a blow-torch. It is not thought that he started any of the existing fires but was apparently going to start one to cover his other crime (stealing).

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Tuesday, January 14, 2025 - 11:07 am: Edit

... And there're folks on BOTH sides of the aisle out there who are already making political hay over the fires.

Webmom? You're right to want to feed folks to the `Gators...

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 12:19 am: Edit

From what i gather about the CA insurance law (103) they passed years ago, it prevents insurance companies from raising the rates annually to properly match the markets (property value and property replacement costs) and forced the mismatch in coverage we have today. Add to that the increased growth of wild fire high risk areas due to the last decade and a half of drought conditions (i lost a job in 2012 out here due to the State cancelling our company’s water contracts as things ran dry) and you have insurance companies dropping coverage all over the state or flat out leaving CA (in terms of customer base). Those that remain have maxxed out the rates as much as they can under the law in a mad push to find $ just in case.

Personally i agree with the notion that the hydrant system was not designed to handle this event and even fully stocked with water would have save maybe a handful more of houses at best. They claim that the money the fire department did get (on their smaller budget) was mostly earmarked for salary increases and a minority of it was for equipment. Fully staffed paid and even with equipment they were not stopping these winds and ember driven firestorms.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 04:45 am: Edit

Congress is planning to tie aid to California to changes in policy. California cries "no fair" and demands that 49 other states pay for the loss without any requirement for California to reduce the fire risk.

There is no question that forestry failures are a major cause of the fires. Years of deadfall, brush, and debris were never cleared, turning the forest into a tinderbox. Supposedly this was done to allow the forests to be more natural, but one has to ask if that was just an excuse to spend the money on other things. Other areas of the world clear the forests floor and no one has the kind of fires that California has.

Similarly, controlled burns to create firebreaks were never done, supposedly for natural environment, but really so that the money could be spent elsewhere.

The forest industry was all but shut down by the California government for "natural environment" reasons but if that had been done the fire would not have spread so fast or wide because the standard practice of clear-cutting strips through the forest creating defacto firebreaks.

Landowners were not allowed to create their own fire breaks on their own property, which would have saved hundreds of homes if not more.

Six years ago California was warned that it was a really bad idea to let the northern California river water flow into the ocean instead of into reservoirs that could have been connected to systems to move the water to the south. This was not done because of the smelt fish being endangered. Or maybe that was an excuse to spend the money on other things.

Six years ago Los Angeles was warned that letting their storm water run into the ocean instead of holding it in reservoirs (that would have to be built). Those reservoirs would have kept water for the Pallisades fire hydrants for several days, but this was never done.

Years ago California was warned to construct a few dozen miles of roads to provide evacuation routes for pocket-communities in valleys with one road in/out. These projects were ordered but somehow never got built.

Years ago, California was warned that holding insurance rates to artificially low levels would force insurers out of the state and force residents into a badly underfunded high-risk pool. Nothing was done.

California and Los Angeles cut their fire budgets, despite warnings not to do that.

The electric utilities in California did not clear fire hazards around power lines, generators, or substations. The money went elsewhere.

Maybe climate change made things worse; it didn't cause this.

All of the above are facts that are not disputed. You can argue that there were other factors and causes and decisions and you'd be right, but decisions made (for good or bad reasons) by the California government definitely made things worse. If they want my money they can start behaving responsibly. Otherwise we are just buying a drunk a drink.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 11:56 am: Edit

If your house burned down, you can get your real estate taxes reduced to the value of empty land but that could be two thirds of the original.

You still owe your mortgage but fire insurance if you had it should pay it off.

Rents are jumping by the legal maximum of ten percent, but vacant houses that were never offered for rent can now be offered for rent at whatever the market is, which is a LOT.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 02:57 pm: Edit

I have still not seen any report on what started the fires. Lightning strikes, wind-blown power lines, etc. Human agencies are possible as in unattended barbecue (to avoid politics). I would like to know what started the initial fire, as subsequent fires were most likely caused by embers from it.

By Dal Downing (Rambler) on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 05:30 pm: Edit

Steve Patrick not an answer but, a recap of where the investigation are going according to USAToday.

Palisades Fire

Officials have not said what caused the fire, but in recent days investigators have honed in on a ridgeline in western Los Angeles where the fire is believed to have started.

Eaton Fire

One of the lawsuits filed aginst Southern Cal Edison includes eyewitness accounts of a fire near one of the company's utility towers. It also includes data that it says showed electrical grid disruptions occurred before the blaze started – which the company has disputed.

Hurst Fire

Southern California Edison said a downed powerline was found near where the fire started, but said its not sure when the line had been knocked down.

So one traced to A recreation area and two leaning towards Southern Cal Ed.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, January 15, 2025 - 06:08 pm: Edit

There will always be fires, started by something (lightning, arson, power lines, campfires, vehicular accidents, meteors, and other things. The real duty of a government is in putting the fires out after it starts, and (before it starts) doing things to keep the fires from spreading.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 01:08 am: Edit

There is always a cost associated with your home depending on the climate were you live.
What you can do is chose a wise way to pay; taxes to your government so they can protect you by various means, premiums to insurers so you get something back when the worst happens, or not at all. (In the last case you gamble nothing will happen.)
Obviously it would be best to pay for preventive measures first, but then there is this thing with taxes and how politics is done in some countries.
It wouldn't hurt to remind people that when they see forest managers, firefighters and rescue teams etc, and feel gratitude, that they are there only because you pay taxes.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 01:12 am: Edit

Heh, I recall "'With law the land shall be build" and the corollary is, ofc, that it is maintained by taxes.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 10:36 am: Edit

Carl? One thing I try to do whenever reasonable, is if I have a social encounter with someone in law enforcement or firefighting (or some other public safety and welfare profession), I greet them with, "May you have a boring day."

With only the rarest of exceptions, it's appreciated.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, January 16, 2025 - 03:18 pm: Edit

Dal Downing: I am not blaming anyone, but I have an interest in knowing how these fires in particular were started. Ultimately I am sure some human agency is the cause (as noted, lightning is ruled out). But the honest question of whether or not it was started deliberately or not comes up. Probably it is accidental, but one needs to know. Yes, the subsequent spreads are the result of human decisions and the lack of firefighting abilities are also the result of human inaction and ignorance, but the start of the fire is what I want to know. Once the initial conflagration was started the wind born embers did the rest.