By Jo Nova
Something awful is going down today in California. Pray tonight for the people of the Pacific Palisades, LA. The infamous Santa Ana wind phenomenon is running at 80 to 100 mph. 30,000 people have been ordered to evacuate, so far, and there are two deaths and 1,000 buildings destroyed. It’s winter, but there is no water in the fire hydrants, hardly any firefighting planes, and “it’s like a third world Armageddon”. The fire department can’t do a thing…
Two other fires have broken out around Los Angeles in other areas.
🚨🇺🇸 “OMG OMG”
“That’s a million dollar house – more – OMG”
This is Malibu – one of the wealthiest affluent places on the entire planet, now it’s being burnt to ashes.
Have you ever seen anything like this ever before? pic.twitter.com/XxgzzZ524E
— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) January 8, 2025
Then there are videos like this one, or a raging inferno surrounding the house, with a thousand comments below, wondering if they survived, and asking “why are they filming”? The men sounded far too calm, saying “I’ve turned off the gas”. “Oh Shit”. The scene is so surreal I wonder if this is AI generated, but it may be people raised in Californian education, living through a moment they could not parse.
Holy crap. One of the most terrifying things I have ever seen. Pray.
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 8, 2025
…
One comment below by Kelly Jo says “they got them out”. (We hope so.)
In this video, they’re leaving the house, but the trees outside (the trunks!?) are already on fire.
—
Horrific decision. pic.twitter.com/ibGg258fpa
— Burning Bunny (@Fedsurrection20) January 8, 2025
Just in: Daybreak on Sunset Boulevard
#Newscum is already blaming Trump!
(What else is new?)
Sunset Blvd. & San Vicente.
Heartbreaking 💔 pic.twitter.com/THKJ3amsO9— Aduchka / Ada Bar-Ziv (@ada_ziv) January 8, 2025
…–…
Incompetence plus fuel = disaster
“There’s no water coming out of the fire hydrants.
You don’t see the fire fighters there, because there is nothing they can do — it looks like we’re in a third world country here.
What was your brush mitigation program. The brush up in these hills … probably have been handled, mitigated, pruned, removed for probably thirty or forty years. It was a disaster waiting to happen.”
— Rick Caruso, Real Estate Developer.
Los Angeles refused to fill the water reservoirs and now there’s no water in the fire hydrants to fight the fires.
People are fleeing for their lives while watching their homes & businesses burn to the ground.
This is incompetence at the highest level.pic.twitter.com/boN1BHI34D
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 8, 2025
There’s been no mention yet, but Australian gum trees arrived in Los Angeles in the 1870s and spread like weeds, with help from “over 100 companies” setting up Blue Gum plantations in a boom around 1900. There are historic pictures of Eucalyptus trees on the hillside of the Pacific Palisades. Did the fire loving trees make the fire worse, or were they just the icing on a gargantuan multilayered cake of incompetence?
One video has the sound of “popping” and we wonder about all the EV’s or home batteries that surely line the wealthy streets of the Pacific Palisades and Malibu. We hope everyone’s EV was fully charged before the evacuation. Imagine being told to leave your home immediately and you only needed an hour to charge? If a thousand cars are bumper to bumper it might only take a few to run out of charge and lock up to really screw the traffic flow.
Donald Trump says “Newscum” made it dry to save a worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!) but didn’t care about the people…
It’s winter, but we know they’ll blame “climate change”.
Thinking of you Scott of the Pacific, who can see the fire from his apartment miles away.
Where’s “Elvis’, the firefighting chopper, they’ve been thrown to the wolves.
Hope they remember this when it’s time to vote.
132
Elvis is probably right now at Moorabbin Airport in Sicktoria, Australia. In the US winter it comes here to enjoy the Australian summer.
It’s an Erickson S-64 Air-Crane, tail number OB-2081-P (N179AC).
270
Fire fighting aircraft cannot fly at night for safety reasons. Would have been to windy anyway even in daylight.
101
It isn’t just the eucalyptus – the entire ecology there is a fire ecology. Humans won’t accept it.
The result is the occasional catastrophe. . . Which is what we are seeing now.
310
Exactly. Regions with mediterranean-type climates, i.e. the growing season in winter and hot dry summers, typically have woodland and scrub vegetation with fire as an essential part of its life cycle. The trees have evolved to regenerate from stump shoots or seed after burning every decade or two; without the fires they would be slowly replaced by fire-sensitive species that form a denser shading canopy.
In Australia it’s eucalypts and others in the family Myrtaceae with lots of oil in the foliage. In the northern hemisphere it’s the equally inflammable pines and species like the olives in Greece.
Generation after generation, people keep on building houses in this fire-dependent vegetation, and each time express amazement when they get burned out. As if bushfires are one-off events that will never happen again.
180
I recall not so many years ago LA registering 119 degrees F in the same week as the September equinox.
40
It might sound obvious to some. But the first thing that needs to be done is to look a the trees that remain without fire damage after this all passes over. Then replant only those species.
If you want to live amongst the trees, then pick ones that naturally resist fire. Eucalypts, olives, most pines, junipers, etc are NOT going to be on that list.
It might be wiser to select deciduous trees in that environment. In winter, (now), the leaves have all gone. Damned hard to light up a tree without leaves. And exclude any with stringy bark. It’s just a wick to the canopy.
I’d love to see the look on the face of any council idiot who thought my tree plantings were out of alignment with the native vegetation. Now what is that look? Is it disgust? Is it shock? Is it the face you make when you realise you are too close to some imminent danger?
Who’d know, who’d care? Public serpents need to realise who employee them and I don’t sip lattes.
110
No need to replant anything here, unless it was a pine plantation, and then you’d be thinking twice.
The native scrub regenerates itself, quite quickly.
00
Apart from invasive Aussie eucalyptus trees (highly inflammable) I understand that part of the problem is that anti-environmentalists won’t allow fuel reduction burns, just as in Australia, and so fuel just builds up on the forest floor.
Apart from that, there’s also the possibility of pyroterrorism by a certain demographic.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/01/jihad-by-fire/
340
Eucalypts drop a lot of litter, at the rate of around 8.5 tonnes per hectare. But only 29% of this litter decomposes annually. So it doesn’t take long before the litter builds up to the 20-plus tonnes/ha level that means that once a bushfire starts, it’s impossible to control. An earlier CSIRO division has done a lot of research and tests on how many tonnes of litter is required to make a bushfire basically impossible to control – it’s an interesting read.
220
The Palisades fire a few years ago was arson.
Loads of arson arrests in LA, including recently in December. The high fire risk warnings just act as a cue for the evil and demented.
They bulldoze the abandoned cars out the way.
https://youtu.be/GayXI5vVXhA
190
Aussie bushfire-fighters frequently go to the US to help with forest fires when things get out of control there, just as US ones come here.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/on-the-firefront-aussies-lend-expert-hand-to-battle-us-blazes-20240814-p5k28k.html
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-02/us-firefighters-arrive-in-australia-to-help-efforts/11838086
120
and Canadians also, some friends of our provide accomodation for visiting Canadian fire/forestry guys. They can only come 2 or 3 times under some stupid rule.
70
Rabid environmentalists yearn for a pristine, people-free Earth.
California is full of rabid environmentalists.
But I guess they forgot that they’re “people” themselves.
250
True. Ive been on X recently observing them. They loathe humans with a passion and firmly believe they have no place on earth beyond the indigenous of course and some don’t even like them much. One guy is called Lyle Lewis, he’s written a book called Race To Extinction. He uses the word “soon” but one of his dates is 2055, lol. Among his followers who are all insane in my opinion, would be people more than willing for a bit of arson to speed things along. To his credit, Lyle hates wind and solar because he’s not a hypocrite and hates everything humans do.
There’s a group in Australia called Sustainable Population Organisation (something like that) who sound sensible on the surface, but scratch that surface and you find some pretty radical minds among them.
130
We can only hope for the best for this area of California, but lets hope people don’t forget the clueless Gov Newscum when they vote next time.
200
In the stupidity stakes, I think Newscum can give some of our politicians a run for their money.
BTW, it’s now law in California that it’s illegal to ask for ID from a voter. So basically anyone, including illegals, can vote. Newscum could be there for a long time.
Liberal Hivemind comments about the prohibition of Voter ID in the state:
https://youtu.be/dOgpfLvzb0g
210
No water in the fire hydrants because part of the Left’s decivilisation agenda is to demolish the dams. A lot of them.
But Kaliforniastanis keep voting for the commies…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dam_removals_in_California?wprov=sfla1
280
Part of it is just that you can’t build ANYTHING in California anymore due to mountains of red tape and DEI/ESG regulations that thwart you at every turn. That’s why they have a housing crisis, why the high-speed ‘train to nowhere’ still hasn’t carried a single passenger 15 years after it was approved, and why not a single reservoir has been built in the past decade with the billions of dollars that California voters approved for that purpose back in 2014. My guess is most of that money has been skimmed off the top by dozens of elected officials, government bureaucrats and construction contractors, never to be seen again. Just like the billions Biden dropped on EV charging stations and rural broadband that haven’t resulted in any actual construction.
300
Seems like dam building is done by the same team that does bullet rains to nowhere and billion dollar chargers. Lots of money but little to show for it.
VICs Big Build and Snowy2 project managers say hold my beer!
130
OMG! They destroyed 80 dams in one district alone. That’s almost the equivalent of what happened in Spain, which then lead to urban floods.
140
Im still yet to see one person whose life or property has been spared due to the erection of a wind turbine or solar panel .
320
The streets were so clogged with cars that a bulldozer was being used to clear roadways for emergency vehicles.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/video/news/bulldozer-moves-abandoned-cars-to-create-path-for-emergency-vehicles/vi-AA1x8yLf?t=46
It appears that evacuation requests were too late and roads unable to cope with the traffic density.
221
Hi Rick. Like to think that work went into earning each red thumb i score. Proud of the quickly growing number of un-explained red thumbs my comment below got i look up and see you with one. What for? How come you get that for just handing on the simple truth? Life is not fair.
94
It may have been that there is already a more comprehensive link up thread #4 that shows similar video of the same bulldozer clearing the roadway. It could be a nervous mouse. Unless there is a comment that disputes the comment then who knows!
30
Bulldozer drivers enjoy knocking things over. If instructed to push cars away few would spare the cars.
31
The comment on the news was that they had to clear a path for the fire trucks.
20
Many Strange Things happening in the run up to the Trump inauguration!
Mostly man made and some of them are deliberate.
Trump once again seizes the moment and pins the blame fair and square on environmentalists, the Democrats and Governor Gavin Newsome (Newscum).
Watch the Streisand effect as the Democrats respond to this and try to blame Trump.
250
According to Anthony Watts Santa Ana winds and California wildfires have always been a problem predating the arrival of Europeans.
But the Newscum idiot and other lefties are to blame as well and cleaning up excess timber and rubbish should always be the top priority.
And anyone caught deliberately lighting fires should serve much longer prison sentences as well.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/01/08/why-california-wildfires-are-not-climate-driven-a-historical-and-meteorological-perspective/
250
Wildfires have always been a part of the California landscape, but they didn’t become a problem until people started building in/near wooded areas.
The indigenous population were never bothered by wildfires because they got the heck of of California before the fire season kicked off. They would often set fires on their way out so that when they returned in six months there would be plenty of grass and new growth for game animals to feast on.
Even after California was built up in the early 20th century, wildfires were mostly limited to rural forested areas because property developers razed the forests around developed areas and logging activity made sure there were plenty of fire breaks across the landscape.
It wasn’t until the late 20th century that property development in heavily wooded areas became prevalent, and the California logging industry was largely regulated out of existence, and environmentalists shut down fire-mitigation practices like prescribed burns and clearing out undergrowth and downed trees, and stopped building reservoirs (and stopped filling the ones they had) to ensure there were ample supplies of water if needed. Protecting fish was more important than protecting people and property. Not coincidentally, that’s when wildfires became a major problem.
300
Sequoias are pyrophytes and need fire for reproduction, so fire is something usual sice evolution started sequoias to adapt for fire.
140
FWIW
How to handle a fire department! –
“Prepare to Be Shocked: Los Angeles’ Fire Chief Is a DEI-Obsessed ‘LGBTQ’ Woman Who Wasted Millions”
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2025/01/08/in-a-shocking-turn-of-events-las-fire-chief-is-a-dei-obsessed-lgbtq-woman-n2184093
260
Unbelievable but true. The scum lies very thick on the ground once clueless lefties poison the well.
210
Indeed.
The fire “chief” is more obsessed with quotas than competence for the job.
She should be personally sued for compromising the effectiveness of her fire department.
Firewoman Sam is not as capable as Fireman Sam.
It comes down to strength.
Even a lot of men will get pushed over holding a fire hose. That’s why there used to be minimum standards for strength.
And men are more likely to be able to smash down a door to rescue someone in a house fire.
Strength and aggression count in a highly physical job like firefighting.
See UK video: https://youtu.be/zb_WYGtZ7K4
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You’ve not only got to hold them for extended periods but they have to be dragged to reposition.
60
The fish rots from the head. LA mayor Karen Bass, an excellent public servant, right now serves her subjects in Ghana, Africa. At least we know that she did not start the fires.
120
Probably studying how to manage a ghetto full of African Americans, so good work.
Her and the LA Fire Chief, good as two people off sick.
60
California decided to choose the smelt fish which President TRUMP mentioned, over human lives, quite consistent with Leftist ideology that human lives don’t matter.
In any case, I’m sure they could still save the fish and not shut down the water supply.
The fish was just the excuse to demolish the dams.
330
FWIW – more of “that settled science”
“Snail darter revisited: Famous fish that halted a dam’s construction is not endangered after all”
https://phys.org/news/2025-01-snail-darter-revisited-famous-fish.html
Comments here – https://instapundit.com/694773/#disqus_thread
Opens with
“Anthony Cagle
3 minutes ago
What would we do without Experts(TM).”
160
In Komifonica it is the delta smelt eaten by introduced striped bass not klimate change
150
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/01/08/why-california-wildfires-are-not-climate-driven-a-historical-and-meteorological-perspective/
100
There are literally thousands of towns in the US (and elsewhere) that have forest growing intermingled with residential communities, droughts, high winds, and instances of fires starting from a wide variety of causes.
Both the frequency and scope of disaster are typically greater in California.
This is a function of governance. Having endured two hurricanes recently, and two evacuations, and 20,000 dollars of
damage, I’ve had a chance to reflect on my choice to live on the coast.
It’s fine, I have boats in the backyard. I have sunsets. Its my choice. I also have utilities protected from flood,
hurricane shutters, a home built to code that recognized the probability of high winds. We button up and leave once in
a while (sometimes twice in a while), then come back to a community that is also resilient.
There is a small probability of being the target of an eye wall, which would cause a total loss. WE have accounted for this.
There is a likelihood of a period without power and services after a storm. We have also accounted for this.
Our County and State over the years have managed a wide variety of mitigations, and preparations for those without the resources to cover their own needs.
Hurricanes happen every year.(So do the Santa Ana winds, and brush fires.) By the way, we also have forests, and fire risk. We also have utility companies – most seem to function well both in preparing for disasters and in responding to them.
California “authorities”, who have regularly excoriated Florida and it’s governor, should be ashamed of themselves.
They are being tested by nature, as we were, and do not seem to be doing well.
Nonetheless, we wish the victims well, and will, of course help in the recovery. Without political bias, as we suffered from FEMA during our recent trials.
230
I must take issue with Mr. Trump’s characterization.
He is not new.
160
But he is scum.
111
The fire “management” seems to be a bit “wonky”
Actually a GLOBAL issue; a win for the eco-nazis.
Furthermore, California seems infested, not just by fruits ans nuts, but bu a considerable coverage of good-old Australian natives. Not just the “A-lister” and wanna-bes around Whorliwood, but Eucalyptus trees.
Originally imported, a century and a half, at least, ago, because North America needed SERIOUS hardwood for wharf piles, among other things.
Eucalypts are both ‘fire-climax” and reasonably fire-resistant. They also drop a steady rain of oil-rich leaves and a Lot of bark all year round. This litter leaches chemicals that alter the soil to the detriment of other tree species; less so, weeds and such, This soil degradation is called, as per the standard Russian soil terminology, Podzolization.(19th Century Russians were the pioneers of soil science. They dad to be if you realize hoe little good, arable land there was / is in Russia).
Because the Aussie invaders arrived as SEEDS, they did not come with a lit of the microscopinf parasites thet munch on seedlings.
If a strict “fire-suppression” regime is instituted by the”caretakers, the fuel load on the ground, and in the forest crown aggregates very quickly.
Only a few years ago, the scale of these types of fires in Kommifornia threatened the entire electricity service system, because seriously big trees were growing UNDER the transmission wires.. NOBODY sent out the chainsaws and slashers to clear the relevant ground,
After these fires go through, there will probably be rain. A good thing? sometimes. With sufficient ground load of litter and hardy weeds, there can be sufficient fuel load to “cook” the top couple of feet of soil. Thus, all the small beasties , from funghi to rodents, also get “cooked and the top-soil becomes sterile dust. A modest shower of rain will wash this dust into every gully and waterway available. MORE “eco-engineering” at play.
But, govenor Gruesome and his ilk NEED such “disasters ti justify whatever wacky, west-coast policies ther are concocting.
And, thus, the cycle repeats.
BTW,similar land degradation occurs ANYWHERE the soil is overcooked. The vast conifer forests of North America and some places in Europe play the same game..
I wonder how many “political” scientists will ever acknowledge such things.
220
I don’t really believe in the existence or definition of weeds, but if there was ever a case for a successful environmentally destructive weed, it is the Eucalyptus, and I’m referencing the Australian condition. Luckily, it’s useful for firewood and timber (some of them).
80
If the potential for catastrophe was not so great, all this leftie BS would be funny./sarc
80
There is a theory here from 103 years ago that things can catch fire like this due to there being excessive RF. That is too many and too strong wireless signals. I wonder if the simpler possibilities should be considered. For example it is wise to avoid people who say the 5G phone system is to bring in aliens from the planet of the brain eaters. It may not be unwise to wonder if these systems can cause grass to dry a little faster or electro statically charged items to spark slightly more often.
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/211750120
I wonder if there has been an upswing in abiotic gas production there. A problem that requires safe extraction and combustion. Just Ban EV’s and use gas for the street lights. Would the whole area be a near permanent huge burning seep pit if man had not saved nature from itself?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpNvEnG6YLk
26
Lighting?
There’s LOT of that about, already.
20
If it has already been safely extracted and burnt or in the case of dead trees and grass, harvested and burnt then it can’t happen again, until more grows. The problem then is not enough lighting. Vandals can’t burn it if it is already fertilising the ground as ash or the sky as CO2.
42
Lighting?
GAS Lighting; that is!
20
Lighting gas lighting that is. Not just lighting gas lighting but tossing electrical lighting in the lighting bin, lightly.
The idea, although too complex for post vaccination reading comprehension is to use the hydro carbons from there. That is lighting the lighting instead of switching it on.
This will require removal of “There’s LOT of that about, already.”
Take it away and the EV with it.
01
The popping sound is the ammo cooking off.
100
Can’t find the video. But the sound reminded me of the Luton Airport carpark on fire, and that was not ammo.
Popping was probably the wrong word.
51
Again the US death rates from fires and burns is over 3 times the rates for Switzerland and Australia.
But they’ve improved a long way over the last 44 years.
And the world death rate data is also much lower since 1980.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fire-death-rates?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~Low-income+countries~High-income+countries~Upper-middle-income+countries~Lower-middle-income+countries~AUS~CHE~USA
101
The improvement in those fire and burns death rates since 1980 are obvious when we understand the world population in 1980 was only 4.4 billion and over 8 billion today.
in the USA 1980 230 million and in 2023 337 million.
In Australia 14.7 million then and 27 million today.
In Switzerland 6.3 million then and 8.8 million today.
31
Is LA like Australia with forests backing right up to housing? Incredibly poor management if so, same as Australia.
Most of the houses burned by fires in Aus are basically in forests or right next to them. Trees should be cleared well back from housing. Won’t save them all, you still get embers falling from huge fire fronts falling and igniting, but it would save most of them.
200
Regardless of the prohibition of fuel reduction burns in Australia, thus ensuring bushfires are extreme, I fail to understand why people insist on living in known bushfire risk areas.
150
The radiant heat from a decent “crown” fire will flash-ignite” a timber structure from 25-30 metres away. See also: “Living tissue”.
Furthermore, serious forest fires create their own “weather, which often gets “wild” as the terrain changes from”flat” to “lumpy” and vice versa.
The erosive rain that usually follows big fires may well be precipitated, so to speak, by the large amount of particulate matter and this local “feral” weather
110
Why do we never ever learn. In all the squillions of column inches given to bloviating over our terrible fires, not a single thought ever appears about whether fuel should be cleared away around houses. Botania in Chile showed the way, and still we don’t learn.
NO FUEL, NO FIRE!
130
“not a single thought ever appears”
Come on, man! See this:
https://www.dnr.wa.gov/firewise
The concept of “Firewise” seems not to have crossed into CA.
Defensible Space – Prepare Your Home
I’ve cleared trees, brush, added loads of gravel, and re-sided the house with fire resistant materials. Firewise is not a new concept.
It does take time and money. CA government would rather follow a “woke” agenda.
90
Sorry, I should have qualified with “in Australia”. AFAIK, no Australian government or ABC document or report gives any priority to clearing fuel away from houses. If it is there somewhere, they don’t exactly publicise it.
41
And, if your rain gutters are full od fallen, dead leaves and they ignite, the flames will go up into the ceiling space of the building. Something to be said for “Mediterranean” style gutters on the ground and rain just running straight off the roof.
But the whole “fire-wise” concept is a package of interlocking practices.
Also a lot to be said for single-level dwellings; MUCH easier to flush, blow or scoop out the accumulated detritus.
Rainfall handling systems that also feed into water storage tanks is another field for creative thought Too much leaf litter flushed into the storage tanks taints the water, as “stuff” leaches out of the decaying leaves. “First Flush” and leaf box technology is your friend
50
The CSIRO did a lot of good work several decades ago on how to protect a rural property from bushfires. Principal of these was fuel reduction.
30
I think Burbank airport recorded wind speeds of 85 mph. How far back should you clear the vegetation to prevent embers traveling at 85 mph from reaching your house?
These fires weren’t just about vegetation. Houses themselves were acting as forest crowns with the fire leaping from house to house. Homes a long, long way from any forests were obliterated. Altadena and Pasadena had thousands of homes burnt. By the time the media mentioned 1000 homes the other day, I’d warrant it was into the five figures by then.
The mayor will be facing questions. She reduced the fire fighting budget by $17.5M.
10
Folks need to get away from the concept of a “house amongst the gum trees” dream. One bushfire in WA burnt down a lot of houses in a country area – turns out it was a new country estate, built in the treeline on the hilltops above the farms. Great for the views, but not when a bushfire roars through, as did happen. The farms in the valleys on the cleared land were ok.
100
A story of the incompetence and attitude of fire managers in Australia.
Our house is banked right up against tall open forest. One tree fell and destroyed half of the house. I went to the local fire department and enquired about removing trees. A young guy with badges on his shoulders came out. I took one look at him and thought, oh no, he’s green.
He literally scoffed at my suggestion, and belittled me by saying, “what we do for fires is not what people think, we can do an assessment for a burn of the understory”. Removal of trees was out of the question according to him.
Cut a long story short, I went to council and it turned out, there was actually a condition on the original DA, stating trees must be cleared to a zone of 45m on our property. I had no idea as I’m not the original owner, but was delighted to here it. Further, it was a condition set out by the fire department. So this green fire chief had no idea of his own rules. His arrogance and incompetence was his own personal pure green mind and power trip.
330
In WA (at least here in the south) new builds on bush blocks need 20m clearance and a fire rating evaluation.
60
20 meters is nothing when you have a towering eucalypt above you. We ended up going to 60 and didn’t tell anyone.
30
Another fun characteristic of Eucalyptus species is the sudden shedding of branches, small and LARGE. Hence the old camping adage:
“Look up (for potential dead-falls), look down (for animal tracks and potential”waterways”), look around( for flammable undergrowth AND a quick way out if things suddenly get wet or “hot”). NEVER, EVER camp in dry creek / river beds.
There is a serious Gum Tree a few housed from my place. An easy 100 feet tall, it is very old and probabluy nearing “demise.several houses in the radius of 100 feet. It is still exhibiting green foliage in the upper crown, but less as the years pass. Removing it will be qan expensive business. Out in the “wild is an easy task: Cut it down with your trusty industrial chainsaw end dice it up fir firewood. If the stump is in an inconvenient place, several bags of AFFO will fix that. Doing either or both of the above in suburbia will attract unwanted attention. It is entertaining to see how far the “stump will fly when suitably propelled.
00
Was watching this unfold on X for the last couple of days. Yesterday a few idiots were blaming climate change including Bernie Sanders. I took great heart in a lot of the replies he was receiving which were mostly pointing out the idiocy of his comment. Very erudite replies discussing urban encroachment, minimal fuel reductions, poor resources, arson etc. But mostly that these fires are completely natural and have been happening for eons. Sound familiar?
240
Looks like they finally hit peak stupid . I wonder if Newsom was playing the violin ? The timing ahead of Trumps inauguration is curious.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYuldgIOelY
110
I saw a clip of Newsom imploring people to get out of their homes with the line ” I have never attended a memorial for a house”. He was clearly frazzled but was showing great concern for the people under threat.
I think California is a hive of good intentions with far too much reliance on the power of make-believe. This is the area of the world where make-believe comes to life. But reality is a much harsher teacher than movie sets.
100
I have been through 2 strong bushfires on 5ac in an outer suburb of Sydney -had all the surrounding fences and internal fences burnt with fire coming in 3 direction including burning the bitumen in the road at the front of the house. The family stayed to put out the fire close to the house. I would always prepare and then stay to fight. That way you save the animals (horses, dogs, chickens etc), save yourself and save your house. The insurance paid for the fences. Probably one years premium in ten years so the insurance company is ahead.
50
Most of the people in Pacific Palisades were probably good with the greenie POV so it is difficult to have any sympathy.
101
And well heeled enough to have sprinklers installed, but I haven’t noticed anything of that nature yet on tv coverage.
51
But rumour has it that sprinklers require water.
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But on the plus side, LA saved $20M by fire dept budget cuts.
/SARC
/SARC
Approaching $1/2 Trillion in insurance claims already, assuming the insurance companies can even remotely pay that.
Until 2012 it wis illegal to catch rainwater on your property. How many properties could have been saved if they all had on site water tanks for use by property owners or firefighters (who ran out of water)?
Next up, the political blame game.
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Dear Jo,
Back in 2018, after the last lot of horrible fires in southern California I wrote:
… houses in California (outside the major cities) are large, built on small blocks, and typically built of wood. In the new semi-rural subdivisions they are so tightly packed that fires spread from one exploding house to its neighbour, and so on; the suburb has become the fuel. In this situation, staying to defend your home is unrealistic. Whole-town evacuation has become the norm … resulting, as usual, in many lives being lost in vehicles trapped by fast moving fires.
So where does all this leave California? To summarise: (i) the climate is conducive to bushfires; (ii) the vegetation is highly flammable, especially when dried out by Santa Ana winds or its northern equivalents; (iii) management policies favour emergency response over preparing potential fire grounds; (iv) increasingly, firefighters are relying on water/retardant dropping aircraft, despite the fact that they are useless in suppressing high-intensity fires; and finally (v) there has been a vast increase in the number of people living in fire-soft, fire-vulnerable townships at the bushland interface. These people generally are not bushfire-savvy, and do not appear to be well-versed in how to design and maintain a fire-resilient house and garden.
So the claim that the recent Californian fires are “the result of climate change” is so superficial as to be ridiculous. In fact, the slightly longer fire seasons currently being experienced there could be seen as a bonus, as they provide a greater window of opportunity for carrying out light burning in forests in which people live. I can remember when I lived in western USA in the 1960s, the American fire community was already keenly aware that it was about to face a bushfire crisis, thanks to the Smokey Bear approach. Nobody had heard of ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ in those days.
The Californian bushfire situation is a complex and difficult one, and blaming climate change is not only simplistic, but unhelpful. This is because it distracts attention on what to do right now to ensure the killer bushfires do not happen again next summer. Worst of all, blaming climate change provides authorities with an excuse for flawed bushfire policies and programs.
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Incredibly and sadly, there are about 24 fires responded to every day in Los Angeles county caused by homeless people. When Santa Anna winds are blowing, conflagrations such as this are virtually inevitable.
https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2025/01/08/what-started-las-firestorm-we-have-some-ideas-n4935774
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We are fortunate to get the above contribution from Roger Underwood. Roger is ex chief of the Western Australia gov dept of land management and has vast experience of dealing with fire.
I recall, from (was it?) ten years ago an article in Quadrant by him. Relying on my memory, it tried to explain a recent California disaster with WA experience. There is much in common, but in some ways California has it worse – there is the native Chaparrel, a very flammable tree that once on fire cannot be extinguished, worse than Eucalypts. Combined with the notorious Santa Anna wind, the fire spreads very fast.
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ATTENTION: Attached below is an intelligence assessment published in 2016, entitled “A New Paradigm in Wildfire Combat.”
It draws inspiration from the successful war-fighting operations of LT GEN Sir John Monash and the Australian Corps, at the Battle of Le Hamel and The Battle of Amiens, which led to the Allied Victory.
Monash was a meticulous military commander and engineer.
He was the first to use a Combined Arms approach to war-fighting. ie. Infantry + Artillery + Armour + Airpower + Logistics….
These lessons have been updated into a Combined Arms approach to fire-fighting, by including Armoured Strike Teams into our fire-fighting arsenal.
Read for yourselves ~~ and weep for those now facing the firestorms.
A New Paradigm in Wildfire Combat
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Hi Jo,
Love your blog. Just a correction to what Caruso said. He said the brush hadn’t been trimmed or managed in 30 or 40 years. Heard his quote over and over on the radio today.
Scott
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… added “or forty” to the post. Thanks. I was surprised he only talked about brush and not the trees.
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Quote also says “have been” when I he is saying havent been.
I beleive Caruso is the losing candidate in the last race for Mayor.
10
Would anyone care, or dare, to estimate the CO2 emissions from this latest round of fires in California. Must be massive, and any hopes of a reduction for last year and this current year have just gone up in smoke !!
40
My weather App Just warned me that here in Hobart, Tasmania we have an extreme heat warning of 24 degrees C! The severity is rated “severe with an extreme threat to life or property.”
They gave a special callout to the other side of the State- 26 degrees C. Perhaps they’re concerned about the 28 degrees forecast for Saturday.
Those are all beautiful days.
Their definition of extreme seems to me to be … extremely exaggerated. Possibly politically biased.
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Ha ha – Air-conditioning “normal” is 22c
20
Sulphur causes sunlight reflecting cloud and cooling … they stop the sulphur and … it warms.
They used to dredge rivers to keep the channels clear and drop the water level … they stopped dredging it starts flooding again.
They used to clear deadwood and/or allow small regular fires to keep the deadwood from building up … they stopped, now they get massive fires.
It’s all manmade … and all done for “environmental” reasons … and then the eco-nutters blame it on anyone but themselves.
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I was just thinking during the Depression there was the WPA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
I think during this period there was a lot of forestry and land management and water infrastructure, often a bit makework, to employ the unemployed.
This also helped marginal landscapes in CA become valuable real estate.
Post WWII some of this land management structure remained and the management continued.
Into the 60s this system slowly disappeared especially as the ideology that disparages ‘anthropogenic’ intervention swept the political managerial class.
Now we have the intellectual common sense social decline of the affluent political managerial class … and the managed slowly become unemployable.
And here we are.
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Is it an Act of God as he doesn’t like Democrats and especially pompous Hollywood slebs? Sorry to hear that James Wood is caught up in it and I hope he comes out of this OK.
So with El Nino they have had a wetter period with lots of things enjoying strong growth, especially grass which is often overlooked for its ability to burn and spread fires. With the lesbian DEI-hire at the head of the LA Fire Department, no surprise that proper fire management took a much lower priority.
30
The BBC followed up their reports on the wildfires last night with the usual ‘has climate change made the fires worse?’. I tuned out then but caught the usual ‘this might…this could…perhaps this has..’ garbage. I try not to listen too closely as my blood pressure can’t cope, but I don’t think any mention was made of inadequate regular clearance of brush (colour me surprised).
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