January 30, 2025
https://nextdoor.com/p/YKrD6NxyYZ8W?post=381659981
Dario L.
Sierra Vista Park·
For anybody that doesn’t think incompetence and misplaced priorities had a role in how bad the Palisades fire got… listen to the comments of this ex- Palisades resident at the DWP board meeting And nobody is saying that nothing would have happened if there was more water… but it surely would have made a difference in the severity. The comments start at min: 3:48
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RE23fp91PEE
jay chesavage
Lotta angry folks, I understand that. But there’s a technical question and a political question. Let’s mix the two. The angry politician question goes like this: We had two options to reduce the spread of this fire, require wood framed homes to be hardened to withstand 100mph firestorms so they didn’t spread (darn regulations!), or install water infrastructure sufficient to support 100s of fire engines putting fires out on all those houses to prevent spread, each of the hundreds of fire trucks pumping at the rate of 1500 gallons per minute. So why didn’t the politicians install 72″ diameter water mains in the street instead of the 12″ one that works fine when there’s no fire? To support that water delivery infrastructure, why didn’t the politicians install water tanks the size of the ones that serve the entire city – on every block – to provide sufficient water when we have a firestorm fed by 100mph winds? At some point, an adaptation different than more fire trucks, bigger water mains, or full but distant reservoirs is needed. As far as the speakers in the video goes, those are all fine points about DEI, but I don’t think they’re relevant to the bigger picture of combustible homes, 100mph winds, or full or empty reservoirs 10s of miles away and connected to hydrants through a comparative soda straw for the volume of water needed to extinguish a fire igniting new houses and combustible material at a rate of 20 miles an hour in the direction of the 100mph winds. Politicians are always a safe scapegoat when the scope of a problem changes – a 100+ year history of wood frame construction intersecting with the comparatively new phenomenon of intense wind-driven firestorms like these in now-densely populated areas of wood framed housing.
Dario L.
Author
·Sierra Vista Park·
jay You made some valid points but I stand behind my point that a good portion of this disaster is rooted in mismanagement, incompetence and a failure to get priorities straight. Newsom is a good example… he cut state fire fighting and prevention budget, last Nov disbanded an elite all volunteer firefighter team that was part of the state guard (didn’t cost the state a penny unless they were fighting fires)… while right now he’s trying to get through the legislature $25 million to give legal assistance for illegal immigrants. Same with Mayor Bass… fire budget $800 million (cut by $17 million last year)… homeless budget 1.3 Billion… hundred of millions spent to house and feed illegals… 6 less fire stations than in 1960 with double the population (most large cities have 2 firefighters per 1000 residents… LA has 0.9). In 2011 they had a wind storm. Back then they pre deployed lots of firefighters to the risk areas and thus were able to put the fires out quickly… minimal damage happened. … and on and on. These people are the equivalent of corporate CEO’S… with that job comes that the responsibility lies with you
Denise Salles
·Farley·
jay Jesus I’m tired of DEI being tied to the whipping post for just about anything that goes awry.
jay chesavage
·Adobe Meadow·
Dario on the ‘it’s newsom’s fault for cutting the state fire budget’, can only suggest separating political misinformation from fact: https://www.factcheck.org/2025/01/competing-claims-on-california-fire-budget/
Penny Katz
·South of Midtown·
Denise then perhaps DEI committed ought to be accountable for both their benefits AND their harms.
Kuskoor Ram
·Charleston Meadows·
Jay – Santa Ana winds are not recent climate change phenomena and have been around for centuries. https://www.pbssocal.org/shows/lost-la/the-devil-wind-a-brief-history-of-the-santa-anas When you know you are disaster prone why not harden the infrastructure. Rick Caruso makes a good point that maybe the state should’ve buried the electrical lines that have been shown to cause multiple fires in this state esp when wind speeds are high. The absence of water during a fire season is an epic failure of leadership. Yes ! The buck does stop with leaders and look around at the rest of the world. They face disasters of even worse magnitude but hardening happens with lessons learned and good leaders enforce and follow through. Can’t blame climate change here and give the politicians and bureaucrats a free pass . Sorry but rest of the folks and more importantly the victims will not agree with you.
jay chesavage
·Adobe Meadow·
Kuskoor indeed, and I said nothing about climate change, but dense wood framed housing. I grew up in SoCal, in Santa Ana, no less. But if you are saying wildfires near wood frame housing in extraordinary wind conditions just need more water and fire engines to prevent, I’d suggest you compute what that means in quantities of each. The hard truth is that our housing stock is not built to withstand those firestorm conditions, especially in densely populated single family housing areas, nor is our water delivery system capable of delivering capacity to feed hundreds of fire engines to fight a citywide fire spreading at 20mph as the palisades fire did. Fire hardening structures, even in suburban environments is the sensible approach. Won’t get you elected though. So blame politicians for that.
Susan Ferry
·North Whisman
Kuskoor lived where the Santa Ana winds are. Fires jump highways and blocks.
Walter Underwood
·Greendell·
I saw a quote from a wildfire expert about five years ago. He said, “We don’t have a wildfire problem, we have a house ignition problem.”
jay chesavage
·Adobe Meadow
Walter true that. I continued riding my bike in the Santa Cruz mountains after the SCU fires. One of the striking observations was the many streets in the Santa Cruz mountains north of hwy 9 where every second or third house was reduced to a chimney and strikingly white ash from the intensity of the burn, whereas the surrounding ground cover was only blackened or partially burnt. I stopped in a few of those neighborhoods and looked at google street view images to see what used to be there. The houses that were reduced to white ash had wood siding, or cedar shingle roofs, or were close to a neighbor’s house that burned, or below to a blackened tree that had apparently smoldered for a while and dropping burning debris. It was quite striking, and this was not remotely in a dense housing area like Santa Rosa or Pacific palisades.
Judy Gerleman
·Crescent Park·
The proof that a full reservoir would’ve reduced the destruction of homes and businesses in the Palisades is there for all to see. The Palisades Village is intact and unscathed due to the privately contracted water tankers that held the fire back and kept the structures wet. It’s a glaring example of what an ounce of prevention can do, not to mention forest mismanagement. Let’s hope no fireman ever points a hose at a burning building and no water is coming out.
Penny Katz
·South of Midtown·
This is an important video.
David L.
·Old Mountain View·
Dario, I hope you understand that the primary problem with fire hydrants running dry is not a lack of water, it is the size of the water mains feedding the hydrants. A certain size main can only supply a maximum amount of water, depending on the diameter (actually diameter squared) of the main, regardless of how much water is back in the reservoir. If you want more firefighting capacity, you need to increase the size of the water mains in the whole system. This is a very costly and time consuming business, invloving tearing up streets, as has been happening in Mountain View recently. Supplying more water from our area to the LA area won’t fix this problem.
Doug Albrecht
·Sierra Vista Park·
We need aircraft that can fly in 80 Mph winds carrying water.
Doug Albrecht
·Sierra Vista Park
I used to hike near Ortega hwy in the 80s. I wouldn’t dream of putting a house there.
Dave Bruce
·Waverly Park·57m
If there were poor policies in place, lack of planning or mistakes made hopefully we can learn from them to prevent it from ever happening again rather than defending them.
Christy B.
·Madera·
This is so shocking. I want to share this with news reporters.