Wildfire ‘24

[byates1]

[ghosthop]

Oh good. Glad I haven't missed that then.

Weirdest thing though. Wife has family not too far from the area so I wanted to reach out and check on them. Was assuming they might at least be dealing with smoke or something (I was gonna offer for them to stay with us), but evidently they don't really seem to care and just chilling out like nothing's going on. They're retired FWIW. Is that kind of the vibe around town outside of the effected areas? I mean, I know life keeps moving and we all gotta keep on keepin' on, but I was just a bit surprised at the seeming total lack of concern.

LA county is 4750 square miles, bigger than Rhode Island and Delaware by area combined, with 10 million people.

If you were looking to donate to something TGR adjacent the Bike Oven in Pasadena has been doing a ton of work community organizing and Low Life RCC, the local trail crew for Angeles NF, had multiple members affected. Allez LA in Highland Park has also been doing some really nice raffles with free lower 48 shipping. They just gave away a spec’d out 5010.

I’m not hip on the specifics but CalFire and the Anti Recidivism Coalition have a training facility outside of Camarillo that helps to certify and place members of the prisoner fire camps once they are released.

https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/facility-loc...camps/ventura/

[J. Barron DeJong]

Another fun fact about L.A. county is that its economy is bigger than Switzerland’s (measured in GDP). If the county was it’s own country it would just squeeze into the top 20 economies worldwide.

[byates1]

Plus it's overflowing w humble authentic gracious non material people. Just a shining example of harmony and grace on the planet

[J. Barron DeJong]

Plus it's overflowing w humble authentic gracious non material people. Just a shining example of harmony and grace on the planet

Hey, I never said I would ever want to live there. It’s a pretty big, pretty prosperous place is all. But also, because it’s big it’s also pretty diverse.

[byates1]

Certainly lots of hardship down there. Horrible. It will be interesting to see how it shakes out economically.

I may go down there and work. Ppl are already talking about a nationwide call for skilled labor. After ski season of course

[yeahman]

My wife and I spent three weeks this fall traveling and camping in central California. The ag economy, the tech economy, the extent of all of it just blew my mind. To say nothing of the entertainment economy in L.A. and the import/export economy with Mexico. Americans don't even realize how sunk the USA would be without California.

[J. Barron DeJong]

Shit, if we’re talking all of Cali we’re the fifth largest economy in the world, behind the US, China, Germany, and Japan.

A lot going on here.

[Meadow Skipper]

I can’t say I watched every minute, but I never saw that fucker blink. AI?

[teleee]

;[emoji[emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]][emoji640][emoji639]][emoji637][emoji[emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]][emoji640][emoji640]][emoji[emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]][emoji640][emoji639]][emoji637][emoji[emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]][emoji640][emoji640]][emoji[emoji6[emoji640][emoji638]][emoji640][emoji6[emoji640][emoji637]]]]Plus it's overflowing w humble authentic gracious non material people. Just a shining example of harmony and grace on the planet

Yea I’m sure eighteen million people fit your stereotype


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[evdog]

If you were looking to donate to something TGR adjacent the Bike Oven in Pasadena has been doing a ton of work community organizing and Low Life RCC, the local trail crew for Angeles NF, had multiple members affected. Allez LA in Highland Park has also been doing some really nice raffles with free lower 48 shipping. They just gave away a spec’d out 5010.

Lowelifes Respectable Citizens Club and Mount Wilson Bicycling Association are two groups very worthy of support if you're looking to make donations. Both groups had core members who lost houses in the Altadena fire.

MWBA does tons of trail work mostly on the front side of the San Gabriels where the Eaton fire hit. That fire has burned almost the entire front side all the way to the top of Mt Wilson. I've done a bunch of trailwork with the Lowelifes. They primarily work on backcountry trails - both on the backside of Mt Wilson and other areas in the Angeles NF and Sequoia NF. Both groups are bad ass and really get after it.

This link is to MWBA but Matt of Lowelifes is in their list as well. https://linkin.bio/mwbaorg/?fbclid=P...ofAlZVSGYW0E-w

[evdog]

Plus it's overflowing w humble authentic gracious non material people.

Actually this is a great description of most of the people I've met in LA.

You might not fit in with your attitude.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

Jeez byates, that’s kinda offensive, there’s great people everywhere, probably most people are decent. Being divisive and closed minded is no way to go through life.


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[skaredshtles]

Jeez byates, that’s kinda offensive, there’s great people everywhere, probably most people are decent. Being divisive and closed minded is no way to go through life.


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But it's the life he has selected.

[claymond]

There are hundreds of Mexican firefighter/army personnel working alongside their American counterparts. Federal agencies are also helping, although it took weeks for them to really get going. Canadian firefighting planes, for example, arrived much faster than federal planes.

Apparently, the main issue with LA hand crews is because since WWII California relies on inmates who serve their sentences in prison “fire camp” to fill that role. Since the pandemic however, the number of inmates in the state’s penal fire camps has fallen dramatically. There are now only around 1,100 inmate firefighters available. Making the labor shortage worse, California licensing law bans people with criminal records from becoming full-time firefighters:

“I think everybody who … is risking their lives to save others is a hero, and that doesn’t matter whether you’re incarcerated or not,” .. “If that is who you are, that is your character and that is what you demonstrate in the middle of a crisis … the state of California owes you a debt of gratitude.”

https://www.cbs42.com/news/national/...than-30-a-day/

LA County has a lot of handcrews. Both full time FD employee crews and inmate crews. They're very good. LA County and the Forest Service automatically respond with a ton of resources to a huge swath of land if there's a fire report of any kind. Ventura and Orange counties have hand crews as well.

CalFire, whether by design or necessity, has transitioned a lot of their crews from inmates to paid fulltime firefighters.

The feds had ground resources prepositioned down there, in addition to the large year round workforce stationed on the Angeles NF. The Forest Service doesn't own fire aircraft. They're contracted. In most of the country, either exclusively contracted for 4-6 months or call when needed for a fire or prepositioning due to weather or whatever. So those pilots and aircraft are working all over the world during the winter. The one for the forest I work on is at a BC heliski op. I don't know for sure, but I'd imagine that the SoCal Forests have a helicopter year round, and probably brought in some call when needed aircraft if they could get them. Again, that last bit is speculative.

All this to say, I don't think lack of resources was the issue. I wasn't there for these fires, but every time I have been in LA the amount of resources, speed with which they arrive, and coordination between them is impressive.

[byates1]

Jeez byates, that’s kinda offensive, there’s great people everywhere, probably most people are decent. Being divisive and closed minded is no way to go through life.


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Mainly a joke. Obviously LA is the center of the clown world, while also having a ton of different people as well.

You can't deny LA is insane. I do love trolling the easily offended though.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

I’m not offended, it’s offensive to the good people of LA. It’s not the center of “clown world” that would be Las Vegas or South Florida. I’ve spent a fair bit of time in Southern California and it’s the same as everywhere, mostly good people and a few kooks that are vying for attention. It’s not all Hollywood crap.


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[muted reborn]

This couple built an expensive fire-safe house that survived two massive fires and are now thinking, eh, this is too stressful to go through again - we should move. They did everything right but they can't relax and enjoy living there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/19/u...smid=url-share

Crazy story about surving the Woolsey fire, and a bit funny to read about the firefighters when the guy got home.

[MultiVerse]

LA County has a lot of handcrews. Both full time FD employee crews and inmate crews. They're very good. LA County and the Forest Service automatically respond with a ton of resources to a huge swath of land if there's a fire report of any kind. Ventura and Orange counties have hand crews as well.

CalFire, whether by design or necessity, has transitioned a lot of their crews from inmates to paid fulltime firefighters.

The feds had ground resources prepositioned down there, in addition to the large year round workforce stationed on the Angeles NF. The Forest Service doesn't own fire aircraft. They're contracted. In most of the country, either exclusively contracted for 4-6 months or call when needed for a fire or prepositioning due to weather or whatever. So those pilots and aircraft are working all over the world during the winter. The one for the forest I work on is at a BC heliski op. I don't know for sure, but I'd imagine that the SoCal Forests have a helicopter year round, and probably brought in some call when needed aircraft if they could get them. Again, that last bit is speculative.

All this to say, I don't think lack of resources was the issue. I wasn't there for these fires, but every time I have been in LA the amount of resources, speed with which they arrive, and coordination between them is impressive.

A key ‘weakness’ in L.A.’s wildfire strategy went unaddressed for years, Post probe shows

In a memo that has not been previously reported, chief told city fire commissioners that L.A. relied almost entirely on overburdened “hand crews” from other jurisdictions to handle its brush fire emergencies

Two years before wildfires incinerated swaths of Los Angeles, the city’s Fire Chief Kristin M. Crowley identified “one significant area of weakness” in her department’s ability to contain wildfires. L.A. had no specialized wildland unit to respond to daily brush fires and scrape vegetation, dig ditches and do the other labor to ensure blazes did not spread or rekindle, she wrote on Jan. 5, 2023, asking for $7 million to assemble its own squad.

...

Yet as fire swept down from the Santa Monica mountains last week, L.A. still had no professional unit ready to aid in the initial attack, according to a Washington Post review of dozens of city and county records, hours of radio transmissions and L.A. fire commission transcripts, as well as interviews with more than a dozen firefighters and city officials.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weath...dfire-defense/

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

LOL all the hand crews in the world wouldn't have stopped that.

And one again, once it's in neighborhoods, response turns to structure and life protection. Not cutting line.

Fucking NYT and Jeff Besos can get fucked.

[mmmm...pow!]

This gives a good idea of how things went down.
https://l.smartnews.com/p-ificpK1/y54scn
I didn't personally see the Palisades fire, but the Eaton Fire was not really a wildfire. It started as a wildfire, but as soon as it hit the neighborhood it was an urban fire. At that point, that could have been any residential neighborhood in the country - lots of concrete, green lawns, stucco homes with terracotta roofs. Not what most people think of when visualizing WUI. People love to place blame, but unless you had a crystal ball and prepositioned an engine crew at every house, there was no stopping this. Houses that survived had shingles blown off the roof. Trees down everywhere. The fire spotted 2 miles over urban sprawl. It was a freak wind event that coincided with no recent rain and that's all it took. This had nothing to do with climate change (I'm not a denier, and it does contribute to many other fires) and there was plenty of water, but water systems are not built to handle this and I don't know if it would be different anywhere else. People talking about hand crews? 100% irrelevant for this fire.
And this was my first time in LA. Don't know if it was everyone rallying around tough times or what, but I encountered nothing but good people. Hope the recovery isn't too rough. People playing political games over this stuff should kinda expect bad shit to happen to them.

[MultiVerse]

LOL all the hand crews in the world wouldn't have stopped that.

It will take some time to figure what caused these fires but there's some evidence suggesting they were reignitions of previous fires. That's somewhat common. If that turns out to be the case then more local hand crews may well have helped prevent this conflagration.

Regardless, I'm not making that claim myself apart from responding to a general question about L.A. hand crews

[Meadow Skipper]

LOL all the hand crews in the world wouldn't have stopped that.

And one again, once it's in neighborhoods, response turns to structure and life protection. Not cutting line.

Fucking NYT and Jeff Besos can get fucked.

This

[TBS]

^^^Yup. Suburban streets provide way better fire lines than any hand crew could dig.

And those streets didn’t offer much of a break when there’s spotting two miles away.

[Meadow Skipper]

I had gotten some bad news yesterday so I didn’t give this post my attention. That said:

Canadian firefighting planes, for example, arrived much faster than federal planes.

Fed retardant planes are contracted, not owned by the govt. When the contract is up at the end of the usual fire season they get stored or sent to other countries by the private contractors. Unlike feds the state of California does own its retardant ships.

Apparently, the main issue with LA hand crews is because since WWII California relies on inmates who serve their sentences in prison “fire camp” to fill that role.

The ‘main issue’ with LA hand crews is that they would have been completely ineffective and unusable in >60 mph winds in housing developments like Pacific Palisades and Altadena. Period.

California licensing law bans people with criminal records from becoming full-time firefighters:

^This is wrong. After they’ve served their time people that worked on CalFire convict crews can be hired by the state as regular firefighter. That is a fairly recent change.
https://precinctreporter.com/2022/09...minal-records/