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California: Five Fires in Los Angeles Leaves Five Dead, Thousands of Homes Burned

California: Five Fires in Los Angeles Leaves Five Dead, Thousands of Homes Burned

Hydrants are starting to “stabilize.”

***I will update this blog with information…

Five Fires

Five fires continue to ravage Los Angeles, leaving five people dead and thousands of homes destroyed:

  • Palisades Fire: Area between Malibu and Santa Monica, spanning across 17,200 acres.
  • Eaton Fire: The Altadena neighborhood, burning across 10,600 acres.
  • Hurst Fire and the Lidia Fire: San Fernando Valley across 855 and 348 acres.
  • Sunset Fire: Hollywood Hills across 43 acres.

Hydrants “Stabilizing”

Thank God:

“It was a challenge early. No reports overnight of any issues with water (and) water pressure,” Jim Hudson of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection told CNN’s John Berman. “We’ve worked around some mitigations for that, and the water system is starting to stabilize.”

Three million-gallon storage tanks in the Palisades area that service the fire hydrants had been proactively filled before the fires broke out, but it wasn’t enough to cover the “extreme demand,” Los Angeles Fire Department spokesperson Erik Scott said Wednesday.

“However, water availability was impacted at higher elevations, which affected some fire hydrants due to limited replenishment of water tanks in those areas. The extreme demand caused a slower refill rate for these tanks which created a challenge for our firefighting effort,” he wrote on X.

Sunset Fire

Late Wednesday night, a new fire broke out in Hollywood Hills.

It quickly gained steam and blew up. The Los Angeles Times reported it “appeared to be burning south toward Hollywood Boulevard.”

Authorities named it the Sunset Fire.

Officials immediately ordered an evacuation of the area. According to one post, LAFD told people to grab nothing and leave immediately.

The Hills houses the famous Hollywood sign and the Griffith Observatory.

Fire Hydrants

A fire captain once again confirmed the fire hydrants have “little to none” water in them.

David Muir

Jack Osbourne, son of Ozzy Osbourne, noticed ABC’s David Muir had clothes pins on his jacket.

“Nice Jacket Bro,” wrote Jack. “Glad you look nice and svelte with those clothes line pegs, while our city burns to the ground.”

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Comments

Maybe they could smother it with marshmallows.

Ty Mary. Prayers for them all, and their pets.

I hope that all the good people here that may be in that area are safe.


     
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    AF_Chief_Master_Sgt in reply to amwick. | January 9, 2025 at 7:30 am

    I concur with your sentiments. These unfortunate residents are battling fires, and the incompetence of those who are in charge.

      It’s a two-front war.


       
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      JackinSilverSpring in reply to AF_Chief_Master_Sgt. | January 9, 2025 at 8:05 am

      They’re suffering from the incompetence of the people for whom they voted. They are wallowing in a misery of their own making.


         
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        PODKen in reply to JackinSilverSpring. | January 9, 2025 at 11:29 am

        Every time … there it is. Something bad happens to the people of CA and there’s always some fool here that decries … they deserved it because of how they voted.


           
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          CommoChief in reply to PODKen. | January 9, 2025 at 1:27 pm

          ‘Deserve’? No. Expect? Yeah, expect is very fair. Everyone has lots of choices even when they pretend not to. They simply choose one priority or set of priorities over another.

          Everyone also ‘votes’ with their choice to remain in a fire prone, semi-arid location, subject to drought and periods of high winds governed by uncaring leaders who fail to make/allow simple mitigation measures of brush/ladder fuel clearance, refuse to fund water collection/storage to adequate levels and chronically underfund basic services like emergency services personnel/equipment in favor of wokiesta nonsense.

          No one ‘deserves’ to have their homes wrecked by fire, flood, hurricane, tornado or other catastrophe….but if you choose to remain in an area with those risks then sooner or later one will impact your little slice of the earth on a long enough timeline. To expect otherwise is to foolishly disregard reality.


 
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AF_Chief_Master_Sgt | January 9, 2025 at 7:29 am

Let’s all take a moment and blame State Farm for the carnage. They were horrible for canceling so many insurance policies in that area, leaving the residents without hope to rebuild once this is over. /s

Let’s take a moment to celebrate diversity and equity in California! A mayor doing the state’s business in Africa after she saved the county millions of dollars in wasteful spending on personnel and equipment, the governor making sure the residents have evacuation plans and his support, the President who wanted to tell everyone how he almost lost his Corvette in a fire (and how he can relate), the state’s emergency management and fire department for firing people who refused to protect the community by refusing the COVID “vaccine’” and many others who contributed to the success of putting out these fires so quickly.


 
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CountMontyC | January 9, 2025 at 7:36 am

May they receive the same level of assistance from FEMA as North Carolina received.


 
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rhhardin | January 9, 2025 at 7:58 am

It’s like flood insurance, it’s basically uninsurable. All the policies go bad at once, where insurance works by distributing risk over a large base that doesn’t all go bad at once. The lucky ones pay for the unlucky ones and everybody stays in business.

Government flood insurance is a transfer of wealth to the original owner by raising the value of the property, but that’s just part of the cost to subsequent owners. Without insurance you just don’t build expensive stuff there.

Southern California is ecologically a desert so somewhat dry.


     
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    rhhardin in reply to rhhardin. | January 9, 2025 at 8:01 am

    YouTube is offering me live commentary on the fires, with fire pics and inane commentary. I was wondering about transferring the commentary to the traditional Christmas Yule Log videos.


     
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    GWB in reply to rhhardin. | January 9, 2025 at 8:02 am

    And the gov’t sets the rates. And doesn’t allow them to raise them to correspond to the risk.
    I wouldn’t stay in that market, either.


     
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    TargaGTS in reply to rhhardin. | January 9, 2025 at 8:26 am

    Born & raised (mostly) in Southern California. While there is a large part of the state that is a desert, that doesn’t begin until Joshua Tree(ish). What’s burning right now is considered a ‘Mediterranean Climate’ area, essentially the same climate as southern Spain, Italy & Greece….which also have to manage forest fires, particularly Spain & Greece. Coastal California below Camp Pendleton is considered Semi-Arid. Deserts don’t have forest fires because the any trees there are sparse. There’s little combustible material, if any at all.

    Having said all that, you’re exactly correct about flood insurance. People inland are subsidizing coastal homeowners, particularly those right on the sea/surf boundary. It’s a transfer of wealth from the have-nots to the haves.

James Woods knew when his house was on fire – because the house still had power, and the alarm system was sending his cell phone notifications that the smoke detectors were going off.


 
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rhhardin | January 9, 2025 at 8:02 am

Scott Adams says he built his (N Cal) house as fireproof, namely nothing flammable that an ember might fall on.


 
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ThePrimordialOrderedPair | January 9, 2025 at 8:10 am

Wasn’t the Hollywood sign in severe danger of burning down a handful of years ago with another “wildfire”. I think that one was assumed to be arson, though I can’t really recall and I might even be misremembering this whole thing.


 
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MarkSmith | January 9, 2025 at 8:50 am

Arson seems to be in play. Are they terrorist?

https://x.com/hubermanlab/status/1877236580676493784


 
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The Gentle Grizzly | January 9, 2025 at 9:33 am

I guess my childhood home will go or is gone. 5631 Green Oak Dr.

I wonder when their property tax is due.

In North Carolina, property owners were told that their taxes were due the other day, no matter if the dwelling was still standing or not.


     
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    The Gentle Grizzly in reply to Neo. | January 9, 2025 at 9:38 am

    The State will not be denied.


     
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    TargaGTS in reply to Neo. | January 9, 2025 at 10:19 am

    My wife & I were wondering about that as well. I guess property taxes get assessed even if there are no ‘improvements’ on the property left standing. That….blows. Also, there’s going to be an income tax reckoning looming on the near horizon. Many of these homeowners are some of the highest net-worth/income earners in the state. With no place to live, how many will move out of state…taking that tax base with them? Then there’s the loss of sales tax revenue as well. There are a lot of businesses – high-end retail & restaurants – that were paying sales taxes on Monday that won’t be paying sales tax next Monday, nor any for the foreseeable future. This is an economy calamity in addition to a human calamity.


     
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    AF_Chief_Master_Sgt in reply to Neo. | January 9, 2025 at 10:36 am

    Death and taxes


 
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TargaGTS | January 9, 2025 at 10:11 am

This video of LAPD using bags (maybe purses?) to gather water drops to try and extinguish an ember fire is the perfect example of the abject mismanagement of California. It’s something no one would believe absent the video existing.

https://x.com/UpdateNews724/status/1877363807409901941


 
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alaskabob | January 9, 2025 at 12:53 pm

Look on the bright side (if a Dem poli)… the decreased number of homes and businesses means the fire dept budget can be cut even more.

The Great L.A. Fire. Clearing brush and such is so anti-environmental for the Left where Nature must be free to grow. Fire mitigation is not high on the Greens list.

notes:

HotAir’s article on the collapse of the insurance industry in CA is spot on. Their numbers of who is using the FAIR plan were eye-opening.

Few know what happens when the insurance funds are bankrupt- they basically go and hit up every insurer to make up the difference. It is against the law for an insurance agent to tell you that when selling a policy (go take the training to be an insurance producer if you don’t believe me).

So you are probably witnessing the collapse of the insurance industry in CA.

I know from insiders that legal teams are already looking to use mass events like this as reasons to exclude areas, or to pull out. If the industry collapses and they use the insurer of last resort method- no major player will remain in CA.

While some of the wealthier have the ability to self insure for property damage, it’s not an option for those w/ mortgages. California’s collapse is getting more likely.

If I end up in Florida- my plan is to by modest house and self insure as the hazard premiums are ridiculous.

Also- don’t think our enemies haven’t noticed how weak our wildfire response is?

1 guy and some time released propellants and the entire west coast is in toast next august. add some booby traps and it gets really bad.


     
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    CommoChief in reply to Andy. | January 9, 2025 at 1:38 pm

    Good point. One guy is a little optimistic. A few dozen teams dispatched to several Western States during drought conditions though? Gather up some homeless tweakers pay them to do it, drop.them off with the means? Timed at peak fire.season with scarce resources already stretched thin? Some more serious folks acting as snipers v personnel and saboteurs of fire equipment? Very scary possibility.


     
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    TargaGTS in reply to Andy. | January 9, 2025 at 1:44 pm

    During WWII, the Japanese actually tried this using fire balloons launched from Japan, carried by the Tradewinds all the way to the west coast of North America. I think they launched almost 10K of these bombs (I don’t think I can use their name without triggering content moderation). The firebombs created very little damage. But, these were devices that didn’t benefit from any kind of guidance system. It might be different today with technology what it is.

Newsom approved the destruction of four water reservoirs to protect the smelt or some other fish. As a result, all the record-breaking rainfall from last spring ran into the ocean.

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