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

Did the article mention the Granite Mountain Hotshots and the legal exposure their deaths created for the city of Prescott? After that, a number of cities around the west dropped their wildland crews because the elected officials and city lawyers were afraid. I don't know that this was part of the rationale for the LA decision, but I bet someone at least thought about it.

It's also not unusual to rely on other departments and agencies. That's why everyone has mutual aid.

Even if LA had a hand crew, it would not have made a difference in the early stages of this fire unless they were on scene within the first two minutes.

This does support the case for a full-time professional federal wildland firefighting force instead of hiring seasonals from April-September. I doubt we could put 5 Hot Shot crews in the field tomorrow, and that's drawing nationally.

 

I feel like I should write a rebuttal to this, but it's so bad, I don't know where to start.

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lgjpp7jh7n2m

 

Water doesn't put out large fires. Here's the fire triangle:


On a big fire, you can't take away oxygen because, you know, we have an atmosphere on this planet. When it's windy, you get more oxygen and it drives the fire faster, even downhill.

On a big fire, you can't just squirt water on it. The difference between campfire/housefire and 100 acres or 1000 houses is huge.

The only thing to do on a large fire in heavy fuels is to break up the fuel bed. On wildland fires, we do this by digging line and burning out fuel from that line towards the main fire so that when it arrives, there is little fuel left for it to consume. That's it. That's the tactic we've used since forever. Aircraft can help cool and slow a flame front, giving firefighters time to build line and burnout, but nothing happens without addressing the fuel continuity.

For wind-driven fires, there's not much to do except either wait for the winds to stop or back off to a point where you can safely do a burnout into the wind, which is tough to do and not fun at all because you're constantly worried about a spot fire behind you trapping firefighters between it and the larger fire. When the fuel is houses, you're probably waiting until the winds die down enough for you to make a stand at a street or a drainage. The only other option is to bulldoze a fire line through a neighborhood (which we are not going to do). If we did, can you imagine the conspiracies that would bring forth?

Anyway, the guy lacks even a basic understanding of fire behavior, strategy, and tactics. Like with everything else remotely complex or technical, he blabbers something stupid and a whole host of meme agents and sycophants run to say: Ackshually, he's right because of this parsed word here and this offered in bad faith reason here--so he's like, a genius.

Pretty much everything he has said about fires and disasters since he came down the escalator is stupid. Flat. Out. Stupid. That shouldn't be a partisan observation. Yet it apparently is, which gives me little hope that we will navigate future challenges and disasters with any sense of community or purpose.

Also, you'd be a fool to do your own cleanup or mess around in ruins after household fires. Stop and think about everything in your house, from insulation to cleaning chemicals. You want to wade around in that? No, you don't. Add to it houses built before we knew the dangers of asbestos and you're sucking up a lot of it just walking around. In every fire I've experienced where there large numbers of houses burned, it takes months and months to get everything cleaned up. You can't just put this stuff on the curb and have the garbage truck come by--you must have a place for it to go and way for it to get there.

This isn't our first fire. We have experience and expertise at this kind of thing. Unfortunately, the ones with the loudest megaphones do not.

 

People who live here know this, it's amazing people outside of CA thought it was all made up. A lot of the snow used to drain into Tulare Lake (largest freshwater lake west of the MS River) before it was drained in the late 1800s for fertile farmland. That lake reforms in years of heavy rain.

 

Please read what @rimrocker is posting
You too @AroundTheWorld

Dont just live in your bubble, come out and talk.

 

What rimrocker is saying is accurate to a very large degree when fighting large fires in the middle of nowhere.. However, you absolutely have to have water to fight fires, regardless of size, in a populated area. Source- my uncle who has done this his entire life.

Firefighters fighting these fires are using water for all kinds of reasons from keeping cool, to stopping flare ups, other houses from burning, etc. To say you don’t need any water to put out fires in these locations is asinine.

 

With water, we've actually done the math.

For a moderate intensity brushfire with 8-foot flame lengths, it takes 264,000 gallons of water per acre to suppress. Obviously, a more aggressive fire in larger fuels with greater flame lengths, be it trees or houses, would take substantially more. The average top-end flow from a fire hydrant is 1,500 gallons a minute. So, at either extreme, you either need about 180 working hydrants per acre for our moderate brushfire, or you need to spend 3 hours pulling from that one hydrant to cover the whole acre. If the former, that is a minimum of 540 firefighters plus rigs per acre to get the fire out in a minute. If the latter, you are behind the curve as the fire doesn't stop moving just because you're working one part of it. Reduce the number of hydrants and you add time.

For reference, think of an acre as a football field with the endzones. Also, an acre foot of water (amount needed to cover one acre in one foot of water) is 326,000 gallons.

That's why breaking up the fuel is often the only option on large fires.

You can't think of large fires (100+ acres) the same way you do about campfires or even single house fires. It is completely different.

Now, of course, you will make use of water where you can to cool down what you can. For example, more than once we have "tricked" the snowmaking systems at ski resorts into believing it is below freezing and OK to turn on. You also use hydrants when the fuel is houses. But, in that case (assuming the spread is from winds and ember wash rather than no-wind radiant heat), you must do it strategically in support of a fuel break somewhere (most likely a road). All those things @davidio840 mentioned fit here.

Finally, there is no more middle of nowhere unless we're talking Alaska. Every large fire in the lower 48 impacts some community in some way. Every fire has values at risk, including homes, businesses, energy infrastructure, roads, communications sites, scout/church camps, and a bunch of other stuff--like observatories on top of mountains.

 

I don't know much about firefighting or wildfire abatement but I'd rather read this than dumbass tweets simplifying a tragedy to feel smug and crass about their own tribal identity.

Not giving the governments a pass either but there's a time and place in light of people losing their lives and homes.

 

If you actually dive into this issue - it's not really an ecological one (although that is part of it), but rather a complete ****ing necessity one.

If you don't let some water (and it's not the majority) flow out into the ocean, the ocean water will flow in and inundate the delta with salt water. No big deal right? Except the DELTA is the source for all the water that gets pumped out to cities and agriculture (and to southern cali) so if you diverted more, you'd inundate the whole system with salt water effectively doing a significant amount of damage and destroying crop land.

 

Cynics would say that the leftists are getting their desired outcome.

• Illegal immigrants who were brought in by the leftists were caught by residents with fire accelerants, then set free again by the leftists in charge
• Luxury houses in a very Jewish neighborhood burned down
• The communist mayor plans to replace those with socialist-style housing

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisc...dered-northern-california-water-release-dumb/


After the tragic wildfires in Southern California, President Trump often attributed the disaster to what he said was a lack of water being sent from the northern part of the state, and vowed to fix the problem.

On Friday, he posted an announcement showing a photo of a flowing river, calling it the "beautiful water flow that I just opened in California."

By executive order, he directed the Army Corps of Engineers to open the floodgates at two dams on reservoirs in Tulare County.

In a statement from Washington D.C., the Corps wrote, "Consistent with the Executive Order...the US Army Corps of Engineers is releasing water from Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Lake Success to ensure California has water available to respond to the wildfires."

But there are a few problems with that.

"Apparently, Mr. Trump felt that that was going to help Southern California," said water strategist Barry Nelson. "Number one, those rivers aren't connected to Southern California. That water will not get to Southern California. Number two, that's water that the Corps was holding for farmers to irrigate with next summer. Releasing it now, when it's raining doesn't do anybody good, except it creates the very real risk of potential flooding."

"The agriculture community looks at it and says, 'What is going on here?' That is water that was being held in storage for farmers to grow stuff next summer," said Nelson. "Releasing water now only does one thing: puts people at risk from flooding."

Nelson is concerned that this waste of billions of gallons of water will be an indication of the kind of resource management the country can expect for the next four years.

"California has the most complex plumbing system on the planet," he said. "It's not a simple thing to operate. And if you think it's simple, and order people to make what look like simple decisions to you, you wind up making really dumb decisions."

In his announcement, President Trump said more than five billion gallons of water would be released within three days of opening up the dams. Nelson said he believes that people within the Army Corps of Engineers must know that releasing water now is pointless. But as a branch of the U.S. military, he thinks they were simply following orders from their Commander in Chief.

"What's interesting here is that this experience with this just dumb release of water -- that didn't benefit anybody and threatened public safety -- shows that expertise actually matters when you're running big complicated systems," said Nelson. "We'll see if anyone in Washington D.C. is listening to that lesson."

 

While true, apparently they weren't running these big complicated systems well. I find it interesting that a guy that was at the heart of the failure is acting like the smartest man in the room. You dont think the Army Corps of Engineers advised Trump? Also do they have water now? Are the fires out?

This is awesome a cynic would say. LMAO

 

Central California farmers raise concerns after Trump orders dam water release

"It's literally, physically impossible to get the water out of Lake Kaweah or Terminus Dam to LA."

Water scientist Peter Gleick disputes the president's notion the water can be used to help fight the Southern California wildfires.

"Some of that water is going to flow downstream. Its going to flow into the Tulare basin. There is, of course, no way to get it to Los Angeles. Those are disconnected," Gleick said.

Farmers say the sudden release made it difficult to try to move the water into basins for future use.

South Valley farmers weren't happy to see the outward flow. That stored water represents their spring and summer supply and irrigating crops isn't their priority right now.

"There's enough snow above Lake Kaweah to, essentially if it all melted off, fill it halfway full. So the idea to release any was questionable," Zack Stuller with the Tulare County Farm Bureau said.

Zack Stuller says farmers usually get a 10 day to two-week heads up when water will become available.

"But the fact to release that much that quick where we can't use it was bizarre," Stuller said.

"This is the time of year when we're trying to store water in our reservoirs for the very hot dry summer that looks like it's coming," Gleick said.

https://abc30.com/post/central-cali...erns-trump-orders-dam-water-release/15862080/

 

Man Finds Heartfelt Note in Mailbox From Firefighters Who Saved His Home During Palisades Fire

Good News NetworkFeb 9, 2025

Following the California wildfire last month, a Pacific Palisades resident anxiously awaited an opportunity to return to his home and examine the damage after the January fire that devastated his neighborhood.

Tony Nesburn’s home overlooking the ocean held priceless memories of his wife, Cristina Kenney, who had sadly passed away a year ago.

The belongings she left behind carry deep sentimental meaning for Tony—and he prayed they were saved from the fires. Soon, his whole family felt overwhelming relief when they learned that Tony and Crissie’s house was miraculously saved.

Upon returning home January 24, Tony discovered a heartfelt letter left in the mailbox by four heroic firefighters explaining how they saved his home.

“We are so sorry for the devastation your neighborhood has endured. It is truly heartbreaking, and we can only imagine the toll it has taken on everyone affected.

“When we returned a few days later it brought us great relief to see that we were able to save your house. The house to the right of you was completely on fire and burning the fence, about to catch your house on fire.

“We stopped the fire from burning through your side door and kept the fire from your deck and roof.

“Since then, our amazing team has found solace on your deck, gazing out at the beautiful Pacific Ocean. It has offered a moment of calm amidst the chaos.

“The pink ribbon, if it is still there, means the house was a save—and it gave us pride to hang it!

“We want you to know that you and your neighbors are in our thoughts as you rebuild and recover.”

With love and support,
With love and support,
El Segundo Fire Dept. Engine 31 “C” Platoon
Levi, Steve, Matt and Jason

Spoiler

Continued...