Life-threatening' windstorm fans fires in Southern Calaifornia as blazes burn in Los Angeles

OK @IBTL

 

When disaster strikes a liberal area, celebration and trolling time!

When disaster strikes conservatives - only a sicko would politicize.

 

can't vouch for this but perhaps you or someone else has done the research already



full text:

Unfortunately yes. In 2007 the Sierra Club successfully sued the Forest Service to prevent them from creating a Categorical Exclusion (CE) to NEPA for controlled burns (the technical term is "fuel reduction"). The CE would have allowed the forest service to conduct burns without having to perform a full EIS (the median time for which is 3.5 years). See: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-9th-circuit/1175742.html

John Muir project helped to claw back the full scope of Categorial Exclusions from the 2018 Omnibus Bill as well (though some easement did make it through).

In 2021 the outgoing Trump BLM was served with the following notice of intent to sue by the Center for Biological Diversity for their fuel reduction plan in the Great Basin: https://biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/grazing/pdfs/Fuel-Breaks-Fuels-Reduction-NOI-Draft.pdf BLM backed away from the plan after the transition.

These are specific cases, but the cumulative outcome is that CA state agencies don't even try it because they know they'll be sued.​

 

Indefensible

 

you get what you voted for

 

I was reading up a bit on controlled burns, which would have helped with some of the past fires in the state and other regions.

A lot of experts don't think it would have helped here as the 100mph winds would have blown embers past any firebrake or burn area. Most valuable and realistic - is adopting fire-resistent building codes. Yeah you can get rid of things like wooden fences which lead a fire right to a house, and all the vegetation and greenery that makes places look nice, but if you build the homes to resist fire in the first place, a lot of this could be avoided.

 

Let's just clear up some misinformation going around.

... Excerpt...
Trump misleads about California water policy
As Los Angeles firefighters raced to contain blazes in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood Jan. 7 and Jan. 8, the area's hydrant water pressure ran low, and some hydrants stopped producing water.

Trump, in a Jan. 8 Truth Social post, blamed Newsom's management for the water issues, and said Newsom had refused to allow "beautiful, clean, fresh water to flow into California."

"Governor Gavin (Newsom) refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way," Trump said. "He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn't work!), but didn't care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid."

Trump's posts seemed to blame the water constraints on statewide water management plans that capture rain and snow as it flows from Northern California. But experts said those plans would not have affected the fire response.

Southern California has plenty of water stored, said Mark Gold, the water scarcity solutions director at the Natural Resources Defense Council and a Southern California Metropolitan Water District board member.
to exist. Newsom's press team said on social media, "There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction."

Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to an email asking for clarification; after publication, a Trump spokesperson emailed PolitiFact referring to a plan from Trump's first term that would have directed more water from the federal Central Valley Project to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley.

Newsom and then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the Trump administration over the plan, which they said violated protections for endangered species, including Chinook salmon and Delta smelt — a slender, 2- to 3-inch fish that is considered endangered under California's Endangered Species Act.

But here's the kink in Trump's logic: The Central Valley Project provides no water to Los Angeles. The regional water district receives some water from the State Water Project, which also collects water from the Delta-Bay area and shares some reservoirs and infrastructure with the Central Valley Project. But most of the extra water from Trump's plan would have been sent to the San Joaquin Valley, and it's wrong to connect water management further north to the firefighting challenges in Los Angeles.

The local water system failed because the city's infrastructure was built to respond to routine structure fires, not massive wildfires across multiple neighborhoods, experts told us. Ann Jeffers, a University of Michigan civil and environmental engineering professor who studies fire engineering, said she doesn't know of any industry standard for designing city water supplies to fight the kind of fire that erupted in the Palisades.

Dryness and high winds meant that "these fire events would be likely to exceed a given design basis, if one even existed," Jeffers said. Chris Field, a Stanford University professor and climate scientist, said climate change worsens these conditions.

WATCH: Warming climate created 'perfect storm' for catastrophic fires, NASA researcher says

Three main water tanks near the Palisades, each holding about 1 million gallons, were filled in preparation of the fire because of dangerous weather. The tanks were all depleted by 3 a.m. on Jan. 8, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power CEO and Chief Engineer Janisse Quiñones said during a Jan. 8 press conference. Although water continued to flow to the affected areas, demand for water rose faster than the system could deliver it.

repairs when the fires broke out which may have slowed the water pressure issues had it been operable, the Los Angeles Times reported Jan 10.

Other social media users claimed slow construction of California's reservoir led to the hydrants running dry. But local infrastructure failures, not regional water storage, caused the hydrant problems, so it's wrong to blame them on these projects' construction timeline.

"In 2014, Californians overwhelmingly voted to spend billions on water storage and reservoirs," the conservative account Libs of Tiktok posted Jan. 8. "Gavin Newsom still hasn't built it. Now no water is coming out of the fire hydrants."

California voters approved a 2014 ballot measure to spend $2.7 billion on water storage projects — and, to date, none have been completed. Only one of those projects is a new reservoir, based in the Sacramento Valley about 450 miles from Los Angeles. It's set to begin operating in 2033.


Fact-checking misinformation about the Los Angeles wildfires and California water policy | PBS News https://search.app/4ib8YTU6qPJtaeaU9

So much more at the link
TLDR: Reservoirs near Palisades fire were filled in preparation of the fire danger. LA has plenty of water in storage. Some of the problems have to do with moving water uphill etc

Specifically corrects some of the claims made by the frequently misleading LibsOfTikTok account.

There efforts from LA and CA are definitely not perfect and there legitimate criticisms to be made. But many of those being made are false and/or misleading.

 

i dont think anyone on this site posts seriously.

 

I just know that if Trump buys Greenland I'm moving to Greenland for the dog sledding

 

Well, I just dropped in to look at the last 3 pages of this thread and I'm reminded why I quit D&D. The stupid is too much.

As an example, every engine, tender, aircraft, dozer, masticator, and other critical piece of equipment on a fire always get inspected before being allowed on the fireline. On engines and shot crew buggies, you are looking for stuff like tires that might burst, fluids that might leak, aging brakes, and axles that might crack--if you're in a group and you have one way out as the fire starts to push you to your safety zones, you don't want the lead rig to have a mechanical failure while everyone else is stuck behind them. Or even have an issue just driving from camp to the fire. If a rig goes down, you don't have it. Better to have an inspection beforehand that identifies problems then have something go wrong when you are planning on that apparatus to do a critical task at a critical time.

On engines, you want to make sure the pump works, the gauges work, and the tanks have the required baffles. You want to make sure the hose connections all fit. You want every engine to have a current first aid kit, working regular and emergency lights, a spare tire, wheel chocks, back-up alarm, radios, and the proper complement of hoses, portable pumps, and fittings. You want to certify that it is indeed the type of engine ordered and, say, not a Type 6 when you ordered a Type 4. You want to make sure that every crew member is qualified for the job. There's a bunch more, including coming and going weed washes of the underside to lessen the chances of spreading invasive species from one assignment to the other.

Everything we inspect for is the result of some previous bad outcome we are trying to prevent today.

In this case, someone heard the word "inspection" and immediately thought of DMV emissions inspections. No, this is not like that. At all.

Also, while we may initially need to react to save lives, as a responder, you want to get out of the reactive mode as soon as you can. A good response is a deliberate one which is why no matter what is happening, we always make time to plan. That's the only way to get ahead of the incident. If you only react you will get overwhelmed quickly and be ineffective. The evening planning meeting to develop the strategies and tactics for the next day is sacrosanct.

Finally, we have a saying: When it comes to fire information, you're either an asset or an ass.

If you simplify complex problems, you're an ass.
If you ignore complexity, you're an ass.
If you overestimate your understanding of complex processes and problems, you're an ass.
If you make broad assumptions about a complex subject, you're an ass.
If you look at a complex problem as an either/or and define one of them to favor you politically, you're an ass.
If you ignore nuance and multi-faceted problems, you're an ass.

Don't be an ass.

(And no, I will not be responding here--this is one of my occasional drop-ins and I will not make a habit of it.)

 

I know you aren't responding, but I am glad you addressed these issues. Your input is appreciated. I hope all of firefighters are safe and especially any that you knew during your service.

I saw some an interesting piece about how the need to handle the air traffic of when the helicopters fly in and coordinating that with when planes fly in.

I feel like there is so much going on that we don't know about when it comes to coordinating these operations. But I do appreciate learning more about them during these incidents.

 

Lol. Shall we go back through and find all the posters - and I believe you are one of them - that complained about me not posting seriously on this site and being the ultimate troll?

 

link will work for everyone

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/bad-pol...f?st=1h8WNN&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Bad Policy Served as Kindling for California’s Wildfires
Bad forest and water management, misplaced priorities and price controls all played a role.
By Tom McClintock
Jan. 12, 2025 at 12:28 pm ET

When Juan Cabrillo dropped anchor in what is now Los Angeles’s San Pedro Bay in the autumn of 1542, he promptly named it the Bay of Smokes. Annual wildfires fanned by Santa Ana winds are nothing new in Southern California. This is how nature gardens. She doesn’t care whose lives are destroyed, whose homes are burned, or how long it takes to reclaim the scarred land.

We mortals do. Throughout most of the 20th century, we took measures to minimize the frequency and severity of wildfires. We created land-management agencies to do some of the gardening ourselves. We removed excess timber, creating resilient, fire-resistant forests, thriving mountain economies and a lucrative source of public revenue. We leased public lands to sheep and cattle ranchers whose stock kept brush from building up. We established competent infrastructure to stop fires from getting out of control. We cut firebreaks into the soil to contain flames.

Prior to 1800, California lost an average of around 4.5 million acres to fires every year. As we introduced scientific land-management and fire-suppression measures, by the end of the 20th century that average dropped to around 250,000 acres.

But in 2020 California suffered a single-year loss of 4.3 million acres to wildfires. Between 2019 and 2023, an average of more than 1.5 million acres burned each year. What happened?

The left blames a changing climate. But that doesn’t explain California’s long history with massive wildfires, or why fires became less threatening throughout most of the 20th century.

We can find a more likely culprit in the states’ recent extreme environmental and social policies.

Environmental studies required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970 now cost millions of dollars and take an average of 5.3 years for forest-thinning projects in California to get approved. Often the cost amounts to more than the value of the timber itself. The amount of timber harvested from public lands has declined around 75% since the 1980s, with a concomitant increase in forest acreage destroyed by wildfire.

Sheep and cattle grazing on public lands, once common in Southern California, has largely been regulated out of use by bureaucratic restrictions and fees designed to discourage the practice. Wilderness restrictions make brush suppression more difficult throughout much of the state.

Environmental leftists promised that laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act, the Wilderness Act and the Endangered Species Act would protect and improve the environment. Fifty years later we’re entitled to ask: How’s it going? Between 2012 and 2021, we lost a quarter of California’s forestland to wildfires. A UCLA study estimated that California’s 2020 fires released twice as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as had been prevented by the previous 18 years of primarily government-enforced restrictions.

Resource policy also changed radically. The visionary water projects of the 20th century gave way to increasingly restrictive conservation edicts while leftist officials neglected the region’s basic water infrastructure. Authorities forced utilities to spend billions on wind and solar projects, money that could have otherwise funded such desperate priorities as fireproofing power lines. As a result, one of the states most heavily invested in wind power has to shut down its power lines on windy days. As a consequence of these follies, hydrants failed, and many overextended firefighters reported having no choice but to surrender to the blaze.

Despite sky-high taxes and government spending, Los Angeles’s woke officials still can’t spare proper funding for its Fire Department. Under Mayor Karen Bass, the city cut its already underfunded budget by more than $17 million last year. Meanwhile, the city spends almost twice as much as the fire department’s budget on homelessness projects. These projects are strained by the state’s illegal-migrant problem, which is fueled in part by Los Angeles’s designating itself a sanctuary city. Local officials seem more concerned with social justice than putting out real fires.

State-imposed price controls on fire-insurance premiums have destroyed that industry too. Premiums assign a dollar value to the risk of living in an area. As the risk increases, so do the premiums. But not in California, where regulators have limited companies’ ability to set market premiums. These price controls do what they always do: distort the price signals consumers need to make rational decisions and create shortages of whatever is being controlled. Fire insurers can no longer charge sufficient premiums to cover their risk, leaving them with no choice but to exit the market.

Fire is a condition of nature, but how we deal with it is a choice. The tragedy in Southern California is the result of decades of self-destructive policies made by foolish politicians. We can change the policies that got us into this mess by throwing out the politicians who made them. Let’s hope we do so before the next big fire.

Mr. McClintock, a Republican, represents California’s Fifth Congressional District.

Appeared in the January 13, 2025, print edition as 'Bad Policy Served as Kindling for California’s Wildfires'.
​

 

"misinformation" = true information that is inconvenient to leftists, hence they want to censor it