Fires, LA Ca. Stay Safe

[Krash]

Originally Posted by huncho

drone shot of the palisades -



horrific

Literally looks like Hiroshima after the bomb. It feels awful to say that, but holy cow, that is devastating.


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[prnceofpersia23]

Horrifying watching from afar, it is apocalyptic.

Prayers for those affected.

[emersm]

So horrific to watch. Praying for all those affected.

[White Collar Boy]

Hard to see. Prayers sent.

[Boothroyd]

Sunset fire, a new one, now threatens to move into Hollywood.

[codecow]

Confirmed my friend’s parent’s house is gone. Bah…

[BNA/LION]

Tragic! Just made a donation to the RedCross. I encourage everyone who can help to do whatever they can. Redcross.org

[Lol-x]

Its devastating, wishing everyone affected and their loved ones the best outcome possible.

[pickettt]

Any members who may become displaced and have dogs or cats that need boarding until you find a stable place to be, DM me.

[1st amg]

This is unbelievable. Raging through city cores is insane. How did it get so out of control?

[TRS1]

So awful. Prayers.

[Maleg]

Originally Posted by 1st amg

This is unbelievable. Raging through city cores is insane. How did it get so out of control?

The weather that makes it a wonderful place to live also makes it fire prone. There will be plenty of fingerpointing, but any small fire in fire prone areas combined with gale force winds is going to explode. No amount of money or equipment will control it once it's loose.

Very sad to see so many homes destroyed. Tough times ahead for thousands of people.

[brandrea]

Originally Posted by pickettt

Any members who may become displaced and have dogs or cats that need boarding until you find a stable place to be, DM me.

Very kind of you

[codecow]

Originally Posted by Maleg

The weather that makes it a wonderful place to live also makes it fire prone. There will be plenty of fingerpointing, but any small fire in fire prone areas combined with gale force winds is going to explode. No amount of money or equipment will control it once it's loose.

Very sad to see so many homes destroyed. Tough times ahead for thousands of people.

I don’t know what mitigation strategies they took.

I live on a hillside right at the mouth of a canyon that had burned in the 1970s but higher up the hill.

The ridge of this hill is bulldozed every summer at the open space interface to roughly the size of a freeway down to just dirt. The other (occupied) side of the hill is very steep and they fence it off and let goats eat the vegetation. The goats take out all the grass and bushes and even eat the bark of the little tree shrub things. So by peak fire season the entire ridgeline has a huge grass break.

Then during red flag, they shut off the power and station a cop car or engine right on the ridge line 24/7.

The last serious red flag we had was way lower winds than SoCal and my power was off for 3d straight, the entire hill front and back had no power, same with the adjacent hill.

Did they do anything like that? Unfortunately I don’t think so.

It will be interesting to hopefully eventually find out what-who started this fire.

With the hurricane force gusts, I’m not sure if any of the normal mitigations would have worked. The recommended 30’ defensible space would not do anything against those winds and embers.

[GB-man]

A boon for the high end architects and home builders there. Imagine the backlog of work they have piling up.

[Krash]

Originally Posted by GB-man

A boon for the high end architects and home builders there. Imagine the backlog of work they have piling up.

I’m wondering if people will build back or move elsewhere. I suppose some will but many won’t.


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[Krash]

Originally Posted by codecow

I don’t know what mitigation strategies they took.

I live on a hillside right at the mouth of a canyon that had burned in the 1970s but higher up the hill.

The ridge of this hill is bulldozed every summer at the open space interface to roughly the size of a freeway down to just dirt. The other (occupied) side of the hill is very steep and they fence it off and let goats eat the vegetation. The goats take out all the grass and bushes and even eat the bark of the little tree shrub things. So by peak fire season the entire ridgeline has a huge grass break.

Then during red flag, they shut off the power and station a cop car or engine right on the ridge line 24/7.

The last serious red flag we had was way lower winds than SoCal and my power was off for 3d straight, the entire hill front and back had no power, same with the adjacent hill.

Did they do anything like that? Unfortunately I don’t think so.

It will be interesting to hopefully eventually find out what-who started this fire.

With the hurricane force gusts, I’m not sure if any of the normal mitigations would have worked. The recommended 30’ defensible space would not do anything against those winds and embers.

I keep reading that there was no water, and the hydrants were dry. That can’t possibly have been helpful.


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[Maleg]

Originally Posted by codecow

I don’t know what mitigation strategies they took.

I live on a hillside right at the mouth of a canyon that had burned in the 1970s but higher up the hill.

The ridge of this hill is bulldozed every summer at the open space interface to roughly the size of a freeway down to just dirt. The other (occupied) side of the hill is very steep and they fence it off and let goats eat the vegetation. The goats take out all the grass and bushes and even eat the bark of the little tree shrub things. So by peak fire season the entire ridgeline has a huge grass break.

Then during red flag, they shut off the power and station a cop car or engine right on the ridge line 24/7.

The last serious red flag we had was way lower winds than SoCal and my power was off for 3d straight, the entire hill front and back had no power, same with the adjacent hill.

Did they do anything like that? Unfortunately I don’t think so.

It will be interesting to hopefully eventually find out what-who started this fire.

With the hurricane force gusts, I’m not sure if any of the normal mitigations would have worked. The recommended 30’ defensible space would not do anything against those winds and embers.

Your thinking is correct. Prevention is where the money should be spent. Range management (fuel reduction) techniques are known to mitigate the severity of wildland fires. Once a fire is active in a high fuel area weather conditions have to be very favorable to control the burn. In dry hurricane force winds the mitigations required to prevent a catastrophe would likely not be politically favorable in residential areas. I would anticipate that this event will precipitate an updated local fire code that requires such mitigations.

[Jackie Daytona]

Best wishes to everyone there! Such a horrible thing to see and watch and think of.

[Blansky]

Originally Posted by 1st amg

This is unbelievable. Raging through city cores is insane. How did it get so out of control?

Wind.

The underlying factor in all these fires in California is usually wind. These aren't really just fires, they're actually firestorms.

Generally fires are fairly easy to contain even in dryer areas, but in California's case the major out of control fires of the past 10-15 years was winds up to 100 miles an hour. It is impossible to contain them.

And during the fall and winter there is a phenomena called Santa Ana winds that instead of blowing in from the ocean as the winds usually do, they blow in from the inland deserts causing very dry and warm conditions. This super heats the vegetation and the air, and when the winds reach very high speeds, fires are impossible to contain because the embers from the tree and bushes just jump forward, across fire breaks and freeways.

The one I was affected by in Santa Rosa Ca in 2017 came about 15 miles from Calistoga and within a few hours burned everything in its wake, jumped a 6 lane freeway and took out an entire subdivision of 1500 homes within an hour or so. All in all 5600 homes.

In some, actually almost ALL the fires in California were started by the wind, and poor maintenance by P&E and the other power companies.

They haven't ascertained what caused the fires in LA yet.

Where I live now, since the Woolsey fire in 2018 the hillsides have been pretty well scrubbed of vegatation and in fact around the subdivision I live in the hills all have sprinklers and green vegetation to try to block any fires that come our way.

The irony of all this is, that people want to live in homes surrounded by forests and trees and greenery but now it is becoming too dangerous.

[enjoythemusic]

Originally Posted by GB-man

A boon for the high end architects and home builders there. Imagine the backlog of work they have piling up.

Good luck getting a permit. Why do you think Suzanne Summers and others bailed, permits are now a nightmare (or so i heard). Isn't there some under 30 running that quagmire? Newly forced income streams to the State when building adds greatly to costs. Of course laws can be changed and competence can be installed, but the costs....

[Blansky]

Originally Posted by enjoythemusic

Good luck getting a permit. Why do you think Suzanne Summers and others bailed, permits are now a nightmare (or so i heard). Isn't there some under 30 running that quagmire? Newly forced income streams to the State when building adds greatly to costs.

I'm not sure why getting permits would be a huge concern. People have been building and rebuilding on the cliffs of Malibu since forever.

As you can see from the videos the majority of the homes in the video are on flat residential streets no different than any subdivision.

Some of the codes may change but I think all the newer homes already had the wood shingles etc removed.

The issues will be insurance as a bunch of insurance companies are abandoning places with fire and flooding and hurricane issues.

My insurance was cancelled by Farmers this year after 35 years.

[Boothroyd]

Originally Posted by GB-man

A boon for the high end architects and home builders there. Imagine the backlog of work they have piling up.

Generally, one will have to access to homeowners insurance to justify a rebuild, and that availability is far from clear at this point.

[Blansky]

Originally Posted by Boothroyd

Generally, one will have to access to homeowners insurance to justify a rebuild, and that availability is far from clear at this point.

You’d think.

But I’ve lived in California for 40 years and even back in the 80s houses on the cliffs of Malibu where houses were catching fire one season and washing down the hills another season, and there are more and bigger houses clinging to the hillside now than there were then.

Sometime it’s not the same people that rebuild but someone does as life goes on. Until it happens again, and they rebuild again.

I’ve never seen an area where anyone gave up on except where the houses washed into the ocean from erosion where the land basically disappeared.

[sickened1]

Originally Posted by Blansky

My insurance was cancelled by Farmers this year after 35 years.

I was just reading about that on here. No wonder a lot of people have moved out of CA. My neighbor who's a retired Sheriff deputy just moved to Idaho (cheaper houses & more affordable insurance).

[enjoythemusic]

To be fair, this is a great opportunity to take all the property and build a modern city like we see in Asia and the Middle East. Bring the power lines underground, new water / sewer, etc. America could use a modern city like Saudi Arabia is doing.

[Boopie]

I respectfully disagree. Permits will be a huge issue, especially in areas subject to the Coastal Commission jurisdiction.

The homes destroyed are nearly all custom homes that are many decades old, and couldn’t be built under today’s codes and standards. There is a limited supply of custom home builders, labor, and building materials. There are going to be how many thousands of homes to rebuild? Not dozens, but thousands.

I’ve lived in LA for almost 40 years, and personally know so many people who’ve lost their homes in the Palisades and in Altadena. This has been so heartbreaking. Every day brings more news of friends who have lost their homes.

It will take years to rebuild. I don’t know where all the people are going to go in the meantime.

[Blansky]

Some information on the insurance issues in California and other places....

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fires-c...m-fair-losses/

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pac...ia-2025-01-09/

[codecow]

A lot of people will rebuild even without insurance. The building cost is low compared to the land cost even after it burns down, especially there. Still, I’d expect that area to lose a lot of value even for the land. If your house was say $5m what is the smoldering crater worth? Who knows…

[Blansky]

Originally Posted by Boopie

I respectfully disagree. Permits will be a huge issue, especially in areas subject to the Coastal Commission jurisdiction.

The homes destroyed are nearly all custom homes that are many decades old, and couldn’t be built under today’s codes and standards. There is a limited supply of custom home builders, labor, and building materials. There are going to be how many thousands of homes to rebuild? Not dozens, but thousands.

I’ve lived in LA for almost 40 years, and personally know so many people who’ve lost their homes in the Palisades and in Altadena. This has been so heartbreaking. Every day brings more news of friends who have lost their homes.

It will take years to rebuild. I don’t know where all the people are going to go in the meantime.

While I agree it's going to be an issue, as the one in Sonoma County was where it took almost 5 years for the first house to be rebuilt and some far longer. But all were eventually rebuilt.


But someone will do it, if not the original home owner, and the areas will all be rebuilt probably with bigger mansions than before. And it will be a major construction boom.

I still don't know how all those houses on the hills in Malibu in the 80s were able to get insurance and rebuild but they all did and many more were built as well.

You know the saying..."they aren't making any more land"...and the land in beautiful places will always be grabbed up by someone.