Apocalyptic scenes in the greater LA area as Santa Ana winds reaching hurricane-like force drive uncontrollable brush fires.
Wildfires are ripping through Los Angeles County, fanned by hurricane-strength wind gusts as firefighters struggle to combat the blazes. The winds showed no signs of letting up early Wednesday and may intensify in the hours ahead, as conditions remain extremely difficult for firefighters. The Palisades Fire, which broke out near the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, has burned at least 2,921 acres, forcing at least 30,000 people to evacuate. The Eaton Fire, which erupted to the northeast, has burned an estimated 1,000 acres, prompting evacuation orders for over 52,000 residents. In the north, the Hurst Fire grew to 500 acres in just four hours. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) declared a state of emergency and said early Wednesday that more than 1,400 firefighters, first responders and officials have been deployed “to combat these unprecedented fires in LA.”
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Major fires burning in and around Los Angeles are fanned by widespread gusts of 50 to 80 mph and zones of gusts in the 80 to 100 mph range. The strongest winds have been occurring at higher elevations of mountains and foothills, in canyons and around passes.
Gusts in and near the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains:
103 mph at Marshall Peak north of San Bernardino
90 mph in the mountains east of Santa Clarita
85 mph at Henninger Flats northeast of Pasadena
83 mph in Burbank and northern Rancho CucamongaMalibu Hills wind speeds over the past several days. (weather.gov)
In and near the Santa Monica Mountains98 mph in the Malibu Hills
84 mph at Saddle Peak north of Malibu
75 mph at Corral Canyon Park west of Malibu
In and near the Santa Ana and San Jacinto mountains94 mph in Fremont Canyon east of Anaheim
84 mph at Keen Ridge south of Idyllwild
Aside from the very real danger to humans here, there’s another story that will get buried for months but is critical to how this plays out – the same major insurers who have dumped homeowners in Florida because if hurricane risks have also dumped California homeowners due to fire risk. That’s an economic disaster waiting to compound the wildfire damage.Report
If you can’t offer a policy at a price that people will buy and cover the losses, you don’t offer a policy. As in Florida, so in California.Report
They could do just that but it would result in a slight drop in year over year profits, which is what they see as their fiduciary responsibility. No just returning a profit, but returning maximum profit every quarter and thus every year. Because eventually if they follow the road they are on they won’t exist as an industry.Report
If by “do just that” you mean offer a policy that charges a premium that doesn’t cover their losses and pass those losses on to other customers in safer locales by way of higher premiums (and eventually get out competed by insurance companies that don’t and go out of business) or go out of business through rank insolvency. I… uh… kind of see why the insurance companies are electing to not “do just that”. They don’t have “subsidize people to live in flooding and forest fire prone locations” in their mandate nor do I think they should do so. Nor do I think should we do so.Report
What I mean is that instead of subscribing to the current fashion of growing ever larger profits quarter over quarter, they return to delivering steady and consistent profits. Which then means the same amount of premiums, even from customers in higher danger zones, allows them to cover those losses.
The alternative is driving a collapse in the housing industry (at a time when we already have increasing economic homelessness) because banks require insurance to secure mortgages. Insurance knew this was coming and could have priced accordingly. They still could. They are presently refusing to do so.Report
That appears to be economically illiterate. Holding premiums the same in fire prone, or flood prone, areas doesn’t produce steady profits- it produces catastrophic losses. Increasing premiums in higher risk areas doesn’t produce larger profits- it simply prevents catastrophic losses. We see this on the right, Florida’s flood insurance debacle, and on the left, California fire insurance mess.Report
Remember when Texas had a horrible winter and Ted Cruz immediately got on a plane to Mexico?
Mayor Bass is off in Ghana.Report
1) She was already out of the country as part of an official delegation of US officials attending the inauguration of Ghana’s President. Which means she didn’t flee the disaster as it was unfolding.
2) She is apparently headed back and will be in LA shortly if she isn’t already.
These things are not the same, and pointing them out as if they were looks trollish.Report
“Looks?”Report
Since Jay is more concerned with aesthetics it seemed an appropriate word.Report
Let’s face it, it’s not like the mayor could actually do anything but hold a press conference explaining that this is the fault of global warming and has nothing to do with forestry or reservoir levels or anything like that.
It’s President-Elect Trump’s fault, after all. He doesn’t believe in Global Warming, you know.Report
You just can’t stay in a single train of thought can you?
Yes these wires are “caused” by global warming in that the areas where they are occurring are hotter and dryer for more time per year. To the extent that forestry practices and reservoir levels are a contributing factor, those things are controlled by agencies she is not in charge of so she couldn’t have directed them to do anything beforehand.
And yes, if these fires are still going or new ones pop up after he takes office he will bear blame. I’m struggling to understand why you folded him into a conversation about what you see as her bad behavior however.Report
Her bad behavior? What bad behavior has she engaged in? Seriously, name a *SINGLE* thing that she did wrong!
You can’t!Report
You drew the analogy with your OP. Perhaps you should own it.Report
“Own?”Report
Personally, I think that this is the culmination of years and years and years of mismanagement and misplaced priorities.
Blaming the current person would be to blame only one of the bad actors.
This catastrophic failure goes back decades and is the result of dozens of decisions and misplaced priorities.
You know the whole “that’s not a silver bullet!” criticism of any given policy proposal to fix something?
There is not one person who can be blamed.
Though there will probably be a couple who will be scapegoated.Report
Yeah, we only found out about the fires last night at 5PM or so.
And Ted Cruz came back in a hurry too! And nobody talks about that!Report
They don’t talk about it because fleeing DURING the disaster was the bad part. Which the Mayor of LA didn’t do.
Again – these things are not the same. They are not “well you have to understand …” nor are they “Whatabout ….” They don’t resemble each other beyond two career politicians traveling.Report
Is the argument that no elected official should ever go anywhere because disasters could happen at any moment, or that she hasn’t come back quickly enough?Report
The argument is that Republicans can’t be bad because Democrats do things that look the same if you squint hard enough.Report
“Argument?”Report
I think that the argument is that the point of elected officials is to stand there when bad things are happening and say “it’s not my fault, it’s the fault of the other party”.Report
You “think” that’s the argument? It’s your argument; you should know one way or the other.Report
It’s an argument that would exist without me.
It’s an argument that bubbles up from time to time, after a massive failure of government, without any of my input or assistance at all.Report
So you aren’t making an argument on your own responsibility; you’re just channeling the universe?Report
Predicting.
Did you see the Sky News segment below, by the way?Report
There’s nothing you said in this thread that reads as a prediction. And the clip doesn’t bear out what you now say was a prediction. Not that any of that matters. You’ll just say something else.Report
The criticisms seem to have been the obvious ones to make, the ones with the most bite, and the ones that the Democrats In Power In California seem to be least equipped to deal with.
I mean, this is a massive, massive, catastrophic failure and there are only but a handful of plays to make.
1. “Now is not the time for finger-pointing.”
2. “Who is the closest proximal Republican?”
3. “Imagine how much worse it would have been with Republicans in charge.”
Pointing out the feckless people in power makes #2 really tough when there isn’t one. You’re stuck with #1 or #3.Report
Thanks for the quick confirmation.Report
Are you telling me JB is trolling?
No….Report
Sky News peppered Mayor Bass as she returned to the US.
Report
Someone dug this one up:
Report
Had to cut the fire budget to fund the cops (who saw over $100 million added to their budget in the same budget cycle), because likely the same folks upset that she cut the fire budget have been screaming for more cops.
You have two choices: live in a police state, or fund important city services. Pretty much everyone seems to be choosing the former these days. Los Angeles certainly did.Report
That was the choice that California had in front of it?
The only fungible money was between picking whether the money goes to the PD or the FD?
Well, what did the FD do with the money in the last couple of years?Report
They didn’t just cut the fire budget. The police require sacrifices from everyone.Report
I heard that they took money from the high speed rail project. That’s why it’s not finished yet.Report
More to the point, I think that even if the FD got the money instead of the PD, I don’t think that it would have used the money in a way that would have materially helped them deal with this fire.
Sure, maybe they’d have hired a handful more people but how much of that budget would have gone to stuff like Community Outreach or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training?
I imagine that the FD is not the department in charge of making sure that the hydrants are full of water.
We can come up with some hypothetical things that the FD *MIGHT* have done with the money that could help with the problem today, but when we look at what the department actually did with the budget it actually had?
I’m not seeing that more money would have helped, except possibly accidentally.Report
Fruits of global warming and Cali’s decades of NIMBY housing policy. It’s gonna suck.Report
Isaiah Taylor has a harrowing insight into one of the things that brought us here. In response to being asked if it’s true that California was sued to prevent controlled burning, he answers:
My thought was that the best time to have begun heading off this particular fire would have been in 2012.
This is about something that was prevented from happening back in 2007.
I’d be interested in hearing from one of our more environmentally-compassionate folks about whether this fire was greener than the controlled stuff would have been.Report
This was the outcome. The law triumphs over common sense, once again.
“I cannot bring myself to believe that a Forest Service decision to cut brush and use controlled burns to reduce forest fire danger near urban areas is arbitrary and capricious. And I cannot quite bring myself to believe that the categorical exclusion in this case, covering less than one half of one percent of federal land, will have a cumulative impact on our environment requiring years more research, analysis and report writing before we do anything to protect people from forest fires. As a matter of common sense, cutting brush and using controlled burns on parcels no larger than 1,000 acres and 4,000 acres respectively seems most likely to have the cumulative impact of reducing the catastrophic effect of forest fires on people.
Nevertheless, the government’s brief does not point us to anything in the record that supports my intuitive view. The best I can find in the record is some scattered bits that were written after the categorical exclusion was made, saying that the categorical exclusion is not expected to contribute to adverse cumulative impacts on sensitive wildlife species. The briefs and record control, and the government has made no serious attempt to show us why the categorical exclusion was not arbitrary and capricious or that it gave the required “hard look” at the categorical exclusion before promulgating it. A judge’s duty is to decide the case based on the law and the record, not his personal policy preference. I am therefore compelled to concur.”Report
A preview of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, in that courts are less likely to say that the government agency is Inherently Right And Correct because it’s The Government, that they actually have to do the work.
Also interesting, from the “caselaw” linked resource, part III-B: “The Service erred by conducting the data call as a post-hoc rationale for its predetermined decision to promulgate the Fuels CE…”
Which seems a bit of “sauce for the goose” here, because my experience with regulatory review submissions is the same thing from the other side; once you’ve submitted something for regulatory review, that submission is what gets reviewed, and you’re not allowed to introduce new information or corrections except where requested by the reviewer. So if your submission lacks some key safety analysis and is denied on that basis, you have to start over again, you don’t get to say “oh well we actually did that analysis and here’s the result so it’s okay now right?”
And, y’know. It seems like the court’s criticism is “you did a crappy job of your paperwork because you figured it would be rubber-stamped, and we don’t consider that appropriate; do better”. Which is not prima facie a bad attitude to take about this stuff. And yeah, the Sierra Club probably did not have as its goal the assurance of rigorous review and planning, but if the Forest Service had done more than vague handwaving the court likely would have approved the plan.Report
I also seem to recall a new article on the state utility DEFERING miniatous on powerlines and instead giving it to shareholders, which, when those lines sag / fail start fires. Not sure if that issue was resolved or if it’s still being battled in the courts.Report
A grim read and zero comfort to people who have been displaced, but Mike Davis’s Ecology of Fear from the dark ages of 1998 predicted exactly this and offers good insight into how fuel to power these fires accumulates and how the pressure of land development wins out over knowledgeable stewardship of the land.Report
This is one of the things that needs to be fixed.
It strikes me as trivially true that the environmental harms that come from a controlled burn are smaller than the environmental harms that come from a wildfire.
Report
Trump has decided in infinite predictability to use the fires to launch against NewsomReport
Can I attack the mayor?
The Mayor is a Democrat, so… no.
Can I attack the Governor?
The Governor is a Democrat, so… no.
Can I attack the State Government?
The State Government is overwhelmingly Democrats, so… no.
Can I attack the President of the US?
The President of the US is a Democrat, so… no.
What about the President-elect?
*DING*DING*DING*DING*DING*DING*DING*DING*DING*Report
Unfortunately no one has convinced you that your trolling is not quite as clever or convincing as you think it isReport
How transparent do you think attempting to make these LA fires about Donald Trump is?
I am pretty sure that you think that partisan dems will nod their heads.
I am pretty sure that you think that partisan repubs will sputter in outrage.
What I can’t wrap my head around is that your take is that swings will agree that it’s about Trump rather than about the people who actually have their hands on the steering wheel at the moment the Palisades burned down.
Do you really think that they’ll agree with you?
Because I don’t think they will. I think they’ll ask “how in the hell is this about Trump?”Report
Who has said this is about Trump in any way?Report
You must be new around here.
To be fair, after some internet sleuthing, it may be possible after the fact to find Some Guy Somewhere. In a country of 300-odd million people, some very odd indeed, there will almost always be Some Guy Somewhere.Report
Would you like me to find some politicians talking about how this is due to Climate Change and Trump is a Climate Change Denier?
If you agree that politicians probably said such a thing and so it’s trivial to find them, we can both leave it there.Report
Stuff that seems to be coming out now:
No new reservoirs have been built in California for the last ten years.
The fire hydrants in many parts of LA are dry. There’s no water to fight the fires there.
The LAFD made a big deal out of diversity pushes in the last year or so.
The LA Fire Chief cut the Fire Department budget last year by about 17 Million bucks.
There are a handful of people out there, including both Trump and Joe Rogan, warning California that they’re doing a horrible job when it comes to fire prevention.
Interviews with leadership on the ground are pretty much awful. It’s not like there’s a whole lot you can do to make things better, but there are a handful of things you can do to definitely make things worse and they’re nailing the latter.
This is a catastrophic failure, top to bottom.Report
No new reservoirs have been built in California for the last ten years.
A dam does no good if there’s no water available to store in it. Like all of the western states, California’s water is rather grossly oversubscribed.
There are two dam projects underway in northern Colorado. One will raise an existing dam, the other will build an entirely new dam. Both will take many years to fill once built because the only water that can be used is “surplus”, available only in very wet years.Report
Let me say explicitly: I do not think that this fire could have been prevented by doing stuff last year. Even a massive undertaking would not have worked.
We’d have to do stuff starting ten years ago.
For example, California’s 2014 Water Bond.Report
So Cal resident Kevin Drum calls this misinformation:
https://jabberwocking.com/elon-musk-is-the-new-emperor-of-misinformation/
What is your source?Report
Okay, for each one:
“No new reservoirs have been built in California for the last ten years.”
My source for that is a 2023 LA Times article: Have no Prop. 1 water projects been built in California? No, but they are moving slowly
I specifically looked up the Sites Reservoir which, according to Wikipedia: “Construction is planned to begin in mid-2024 with operations targeted to begin by 2030.”
I can’t find evidence of any new Prop 1 Reservoirs.
“The fire hydrants in many parts of LA are dry. There’s no water to fight the fires there.”
My source for that is MSNBC.
“The LAFD made a big deal out of diversity pushes in the last year or so.”
Here’s a copy of the LAFD Racial Equity Plan. Here is a 2023 NPR report on the program: Firefighting is mostly white and male. A California program aims to change that.
“The LA Fire Chief cut the Fire Department budget last year by about 17 Million bucks.”
My source for that is WWLTV: Yes, Los Angeles cut $17.6 million from the fire department’s budget
“There are a handful of people out there, including both Trump and Joe Rogan, warning California that they’re doing a horrible job when it comes to fire prevention.”
My source for saying that about Joe Rogan is Joe Rogan on July 19, 2024.
Trump also mentioned this on Joe Rogan’s show.
“Interviews with leadership on the ground are pretty much awful. It’s not like there’s a whole lot you can do to make things better, but there are a handful of things you can do to definitely make things worse and they’re nailing the latter.”
Here’s Gavin Newsom on CNN and Karen Bass on Sky News.Report
The L.A. Times article regarding the water projects isn’t quite as damning (sic) as I thought it would be. Perhaps the CA legislature could write some deadlines into the law.Report
One of the most major of deadlines seems to have passed.Report
I’m not seeing that referenced in the article.Report
That’s because the article was from 2023 and the major deadline passed a couple of days ago.Report
The CA legislature doesn’t get the final say. Projects are complicated when the largest land owner in the state, who (per the SCOTUS many years ago) holds the most senior rights for water derived from that land, doesn’t have to pay attention to state laws. Back in September the feds denied the permit for the largest reservoir the state was proposing. The Authority that would/will operate the Sites Reservoir conducted probably the largest and most detailed hydrologic and environmental study ever done for a project in California. The Army Corps of Engineers wasn’t satisfied.Report
Such reports as I’ve read for the LAFD chief is that she’s as good a firefighter as anyone else in the department, and that while it may have been for Diversity that a lesbian was chosen as chief she can get the job done just fine.
Now. If all you listen for is “DEI Hire”, then that’s not not true. But this seems like one of those “message” things that the Democrats have had such trouble with lately, where they’d prefer to splutter and gasp about “how dare you imply that she’s not good enough”, instead of saying “yeah she’s a dyke, and she doesn’t get in anyone’s face about it, and she kicks ass at her actual job, so what do you care that the only hose she interacts with comes off a pump truck?”Report
I was talking about the footage where, when asked if she could pick up a 200 pound man, she answered “He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.”
Like, this was *PROMOTIONAL* materials put out by the department. This was, as the kids say, a “mic drop”.Report
also if you’re Explaining Why Jaybird Is Obviously Wrong Because Here’s All These Reasons keep that in mind the next time you scoff that some conservaturd Republikkan is just whining and making up stories and using ex-post-facto scrambling to cover for their obvious racist incompetence.Report
Part of the problem of California in a nutshell:
The problem isn’t necessarily the person who called the Health Department on the guy feeding firefighters for free.
The problem is that the Health Department decided to show up.Report
So you’d rather the health department not follow the law?Report
Was that unclear? I can say it explicitly if you’d like.
THIS GUY WAS FEEDING FIREFIGHTERS OUT OF HIS OWN FREAKING POCKET THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT SHOULD HAVE FOUND SOMETHING ELSE ON THE PILE TO WORK ON.
Perhaps this is an indication that the Health Department has too much funding.Report
So the Health Department shouldn’t respond to reports of health code violations?
Got it.
I mean you will notice he wasn’t fined or stopped.Report
Here’s another fun one involving safety inspections:
“So you’re saying that fire trucks shouldn’t undergo safety inspections?”Report
And in that very same vein: Governor Newsom signs executive order to help Los Angeles rebuild faster and stronger
“Are you saying that these CEQA and Coastal Act requirements for construction do more harm than good?”
“Why are you asking me that instead of asking Newsom, the guy who said we shouldn’t use them, that?”Report
LAFD is throwing the mayor under the bus.
You politics junkies, here’s something to look out for:
An answer to the question: “What would you have done differently than Mayor Bass?”
(Also, look at the answers to the question “What would you have done differently than Governor Newsom?” in the months to come if you want a head start on making bets about the governor’s race.)Report
NBC News is reporting:
Makes me wonder if the “arson” thing is still a conspiracy theory.Report
ATF is likely the only agency big enough – and with enough experts – to examine multiple origin sites simultaneously. And just because there is a routine post-fire investigation doesn’t mean arson will be found. They are covering all the bases, which is a welcome thing – or so I’d think.Report
Oh, I’m not complaining that they’re investigating the multiple origin sites.
There has already been one arsonist arrested, as a matter of fact.
I’ve seen news articles already make distinctions between fires set deliberately to do damage versus fires set unintentionally that go out of control.
(You know what that reminds me of? Arguments about the lab leak theory of Covid and hammering out whether it was a deliberate bio attack versus just an accident made by a sloppy tech.)Report
LA DA announces that nine individuals will be charged with looting and one with arson, though he points out that the arson isn’t related to the large fires but was a much smaller local fire.
He mentions that an Emmy was stolen. He doesn’t mention whether it was Better Call Saul’s.Report