LA Fires-Looking For A Scapegoat

So 2025 is off to a Bang. Bombings, Plane Crashes, Fires and of course the our new dream of annexing Canada and Greenland.

I have been meaning to post on the California fires but unlike Lahaina I didn’t see anything nefarious going on there, so lacked motivation.

There was some political BS going on about lack of water and funding and qualifications of the fire chiefs and Mayor. But I looked at that and there was plenty of water, the city and county fire departments get 2.2 billion a year combined with almost 9000 personnel.

The problem with the text alert system was definitely a screw up that requires investigation. Alerting people to evacuate that don’t need to evacuate contrasts with Lahaina not sounding the alarm or sending out alerts.

The fact of the matter is once a fire gets going with 60-100 mph Santa Ana winds and plenty of dry fuel nothings going to stop it until the winds die down except lack of fuel.

California has a history of fires in rural communities surrounded by Forests. This is one of the risk people face. Whats different about this one, especially the Pacific Palisades is it occurred within a major city albeit the Western outskirts of LA City.

The head of the Pacific Palisades is known as the Highlands, a relatively recent development from the 70’s. Its at some elevation from the body of Pacific Palisades below, separated by trees and vegetation and connected by what seems to be two roads

That lighter section at top with Pedra Morado Drive is the Highlands, where Pedra Morada Dr (Someones backyard) was originally sited as the starting point. And the lighter section at the bottom up to the water is the rest of the Pacific Palisades

Here is another picture of the area

Apparently we were told the fire began within the Lower Highlands, got going and swept down toward the body of the Highlands fueled by the wind and dried vegetation separating them.

There were 3 water tanks with a million gallons of water each to fight the fires in the Highlands . Water was used faster than they could be refilled and at some point they were empty but at this point it had already spread. A few houses along the perimeter that might have been saved could not be.

While one reservoir was closed for repair it was not the only reservoir. The main reservoir was full and feeding all the other reservoirs.

It’s also important to distinguish between Los Angeles City and Los Angeles County Fire Departments. The Pacific Palisades is in Los Angeles City while the Eaton fire which burned Altadena and Pasadena areas is covered by Los Angeles County. During big fires they cooperate. Pacific Palisades had 2 fire stations.

The Eaton Fire started at 6:30 pm about 8 hrs after the Pacific Palisades which started at 10:30 AM. This probably contributed to the higher death toll in the Eaton Fire as it was dark and people had returned home from Work.

According to Pasadena Now, residents adjacent to the canyon reported to 9-1-1that one of the electrical towers therein had caught on fire

This post will focus more on the Pacific Palisades Fire. The cause of the Pacific Palisades fire has not been determined. There was no lightning. The Electric company reported no signs of issues with their power lines until an hour after the fire started. Other possibilities are arson or accident. I guess we have to wait for more information.

However, the Washington Post just released a story as I was finishing this. Apparently there was a fire at the same spot on New Years Eve

LOS ANGELES — About 30 minutes after the Palisades Fire started on Tuesday, the firefighters’ radio crackled: The flames were coming from a familiar sliver of a mountain ridge.

“The foot of the fire started real close to where the last fire was on New Year’s Eve,” said a Los Angeles County firefighter, according to a Washington Post review of archived radio transmissions.

“It looks like it’s going to make a good run,” one chimed into the dispatch.

…..Palisades Fire started in the area where firefighters had spent hours using helicopters to knock down a blaze six days earlier.

Residents also told The Post and investigators on scene that firefighters’ response Tuesday was much slower than on New Year’s Eve — a view confirmed by radio transmissions.

A Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman told The Post on Friday that it was not the department’s practice to maintain patrols of past fire sites, even for a few days after fires have gone cold.

“

The University of California at San Diego’s camera network captures smoke at the start of the Palisades Fire, from 10:24 to 10:46 a.m. on Jan. 7.

….. Sentinel-2 satellite imagery taken Tuesday at 10:45 a.m., about 20 minutes after videos show the Palisades Fire began, indicates that the origin of the smoke overlapped with the burn scar from the New Year’s Eve fire. Smoke extends in the direction of the wind, to the south, away from the previously burned area.

On Tuesday morning (Jan 7), with winds topping 80 mph, L.A. firefighters immediately saw the danger when they reached the patch of scarred mountainside from the previous fire: They called in again for air support and estimated that structures could be threatened within 20 minutes.

Michel Valentine, who owns two homes in the neighborhood right by the fire’s origin, one on Via Pacifica and one on Via La Costa, was home for both blazes…..his wife was up on the hill walking their dog and saw “a huge plume of smoke being fanned by the wind,” he said. She thinks she was one of the first people to call 911 at 10:15 a.m. Valentine, a former district attorney for Los Angeles, said that he also called around 10:45 a.m. when he “saw smoke coming from same place,” but that the line was busy. And then he waited.

According to radio traffic, LAFD crews were at almost the same time responding to two incidents in other parts of the city. Both said they would send resources when they could.

At 10:33, firefighters responded, saying they saw the “camera show smoke, showing smoke” from “the second brush in the Palisades” and that “we’re going to divert.”

Several minutes later, an official fighting a small brush fire in West Hollywood told dispatch: “We’re working real hard to spare as many resources we can.”

For the next 10 minutes or so, firefighters called back and forth, asking who was responding, who was on scene:

“L.A. from City Fire Four … do you have ground resources up at the Palisades yet?”

Answer: “Fire Four L.A. Standby. We’re still showing en route”

“Currently, it’s a 10-acre brush fire and heavy fuel on top of a ridgeline,” an official said at 10:48 a.m. “It is 100 percent in alignment with the wind. It has the potential for a few hundred-plus acres in the next 20 minutes. We have a potential for structures being threatened in the next 20 minutes.”

Radio traffic records show that fire trucks were still en route to the fire 25 minutes after it ignited.

“For the longest time, I didn’t see any police, firefighters, not on the ground or in the air,” Valentine said. “I was disappointed because the second fire was moving so fast, and there was no one there.”

Standing outside around 11:30 or 11:45 a.m., Valentine said, he saw the first fire trucks drive up to his neighborhood. But they “took a look at the street and made a U-turn and left because the fire had extended far into the hillside and kept traveling.”

According to radio traffic, first responders arrived in the Pacific Palisades shortly before 11 a.m. and were focused on the foot of the fire, near Palisades Drive.

By 5 p.m., the fire, spurred by wind-driven embers that were traveling up to two miles away, had spread across most of the community, threatening Valentine’s mother’s and sister’s homes, as well as his own.

“It just got out of their control real quick,” he said.

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power equipment stretches across a part of the Santa Monica Mountains near the origin of the fire. Unlike many other utilities, the LADWP does not shut off power to customers during dangerous winds, stating in its wildfire mitigation plan that it “determined that the adverse impact on health, safety, and quality of life of its customers outweighs the perceived benefits derived from preemptive power shut-offs.”

Early on, after the fire started, L.A. Fire Capt. Adam VanGerpen said in televised interviews that it began in a “backyard” and spread up a ridgeline, where erratic winds and embers “pushed this throughout all of Palisades.”

In an interview Friday, VanGerpen said he had been mistaken. His initial description was based on the first dispatch communications to responding firefighters, and conditions on the ground turned out to be more dire when firefighters arrived.

VanGerpen said his department remains focused on fighting the active fires across the region and would shift to investigating their origins once they’re contained.

Asked whether the LAFD had left firefighters on patrol in the area of the New Year’s Eve fire to watch for flare-ups, VanGerpen said that would not have been standard practice — especially a week after the initial blaze. Crews “stay on sight until a site is cold,” he said.

Concerned by the lack of firefighters in his neighborhood, Valentine stayed put. Around 7 p.m. Tuesday, he ran to check on the house he grew up in. Parts of it were on fire. He grabbed a garden hose and got to work.

He then turned around and hiked home up Lachman Lane. He passed about 30 homes that were on fire, he recalled, and there “was no one around.” His clothes became pitted with burn holes, and his hair was singed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/01/12/palisades-fire-origin-new-years-eve-fire

Wow. I will have a lot to say about that in a bit.

Regardless of the cause, and Climate Change is not the cause. Weather is what it is, it changes year to year, even decade to decade for reasons man has little control of and so we have to accept what it is. If you expect more fires, hurricanes, floods, etc then prepare for them.

Anyways, regardless of the cause whats fairly unique about the Pacific Palisades and Lahaina to me is the fire started in a major City and not a rural or unpopulated Forest . Surely there must be systems in place for early detection and response, especially during high wind events.

I have seen little about what the City or County Fire Departments were doing to better respond to a potential fire given they were aware of the dry condition and high winds. This should be the focus but its getting lost in the politics.

With all the tech available and AI surely there is a way to detect fires early without waiting for a 911 phone call, and surely you might want to preposition fire trucks along the perimeter of populated communities at highest risk of a fire during high wind dry condition events. Maybe even have teams of firewatchers out looking..

I understand this may be called Monday Morning Quarterbacking but after Lahaina (2023) and the Camp (2018-Paradise) Fires it shouldn’t be. Those in government and Firefighting should be way ahead of me .

Maybe they have been doing something, and working on some of what I suggested. Looking to hear more about it.

A quick Google search shows that there are quite a lot of folks looking at early detection

WASHINGTON, July 23, 2024 — The Biden-Harris administration today announced it is taking additional steps to safeguard western communities in the face of increasingly dangerous and intense wildland fires by building advanced wildfire detection capabilities using satellite technology. The Department of the Interior and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s Forest Service have signed an agreement with the Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to use the NOAA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite — R series (GOES-R) data to rapidly detect and report wildfire starts. Supported by a $20 million investment from the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law—$10 million each from Interior and Agriculture— this new agreement will use advanced remote sensing capabilities to improve the speed and accuracy of wildfire detection.

https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2024/07/23/biden-harris-administration-advances-early-wildfire-detection-expanding-use-satellites-part

Wildfire sensors research focuses upon real-time and continuous identification of elements found in wildfire conditions, including particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, chemicals, and gases to detect ignition location, allowing for geographically targeted notifications and warnings.

https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/technology-reduce-impacts-wildfires

Each of Dryad’s Silvanet sensors is equipped with a metal oxide semiconductor layer that reacts with gases in the air. When hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and other gases are present — as they are in the early stages of a fire — they alter the electrical resistance of the sensors and create a specific digital “fingerprint.” Artificial intelligence then analyzes the gas composition in real time. The system allows users to geolocate the origin of a fire down to a 320-foot radius from a device.

Dryad has shipped more than 20,000 of its Silvanet sensors to customers worldwide. They cost less than $100 apiece and customers pay a service fee for access to Dryad’s cloud-based platform. The company says it has more than 100 customers in 20 countries, with most of them being local governments and municipalities.

In the US, California’s state fire prevention agency has been testing 400 of Dryad’s sensors in the Jackson Demonstration State Forest, about 160 miles north of San Francisco.

https://cleantechnica.com/2024/12/27/new-tools-make-early-detection-of-forest-fires-possible/amp/

Interesting power point slide of Fire Watch

https://www.countyofnapa.org/DocumentCenter/View/21030/Product-Information-PDF

Yeah, you know just a bunch of smoke sensors placed at strategic spots should do the trick. But nobody wants to pay taxes for their protection, especially the rich. California like Maui has relatively low property taxes. These pay for the Fire Department. While California has high Income taxes, these go to the state, not the City or County.

But even without the high tech sensors, what about common sense. Because you know, that Washington Post Article got be steaming hot, just like I was over Lahaina.

They had a frigging fire in that same area just a week ago. Jesus Louise. Even without Santa Ana Winds and a quick response it took them awhile to put it down and these guys know it’s always possible after a fire looks cold that there is something still burning low just waiting for an accelerant like wind bringing Oxygen to bring it back hot.

This is like the Lahaina fire where they put out a brush fire and then left, and when winds picked up it restarted.

Lahaina with a population of 12,700 had 1 Fire Station and Pacific Palisades with a population of 27,000 has 2 stations. Like the Lahaina fire where the Mau. fire Dept was dealing with other fires the Palisades fire stations were also preoccupied with other fires, delaying a response.

This makes me suspect that there really wasn’t any effort to bolster manpower and response due to the Santa Ana winds, especially only a week after a fire in a problem spot if it reignited due to the winds . Just another day for them responding to calls. I guess these fires are still rare enough that people get lackadaisical given there have been no significant fires in more than 40 to 50 years in many parts of the Santa Monica Mountains.

Wildfires might be looked at as part of the Earths Immune System taking away dead or dying cells. Besides the dry vegetation that accumulates you have older homes built to outdated firecodes , much like Lahaina.

But we always look for someone to blame. A scapegoat. Perhaps there are good reasons not to preposition fire trucks in the Highlands or have watchers looking over the previous fire site. I don’t know but with a Fire Dept of 3500 personnel (City) and $820 million budget maybe more could have been done with the help of the State and County

The other thing to consider is people with new technologies to sell creating disasters that increase demand for their product. No evidence that was the case but like with COVID we should not ASS U ME Accident without ruling out foul play. ATF is there investigating.

Wells Fargo estimates damages and economic losses could range from $60 billion to $130 billion. California has a $4 trillion GDP which is the 5th largest globally. Who should pay for this?

Should they even bother rebuilding in areas decimated by floods or fire if they cant prevent future events?

These are tough questions.

Unfortunately for those affected any rebuild will take years. Fortunately, there was minimal loss of life (although its increased to 24 for all fires) and the number who lost their homes is less than 0.5% of LA population, so life will go on as usual for most although I expect insurance rates will skyrocket throughout the state and maybe even beyond that.

End