Image 01 Image 03

Firefighters Making Progress Battling LA’s Palisades and Eaton Mega-Fires

Firefighters Making Progress Battling LA’s Palisades and Eaton Mega-Fires

Meanwhile, it appears 1000 firefighters were not deployed when warnings were given and firefighting funds were diverted to homeless programs.

The Greater Los Angeles area fires continue to burn, though firefighters are making progress at containing the blazes. Most of the smaller ones are fully controlled or extinguished, but the Palisades and Eaton Fires continue to jeopardize the region.

The total number of deaths in the Los Angeles area fires is 25. This includes eight deaths linked to the Palisades fire and 17 deaths associated with the Eaton fire. The Eaton fire has now become the most lethal and destructive wildfire in the history of southern California. Many are still missing, and there are still power outages.

Officials said of the 13 still listed as missing, two bodies had been recovered but not yet positively identified.

More than 55,000 customers were without power on Wednesday in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, according to PowerOutage.us.

Palisades Fire

The Palisades Fire in Los Angeles is burning 23,713 acres, which is 19% contained. The fire continues to pose a significant threat, with firefighters working aggressively to build and strengthen containment lines.

So far, 1280 structures have been destroyed, and 2042 have been damaged. In addition to the eight fatalities, three civilian injuries have been reported.

Mandatory evacuation orders remain in effect for the affected areas as red flag warnings remain in place through Wednesday afternoon, as wind gusts have the potential to hit from 45 to 70 mph.

Los Angeles Fire Department Decided Not to Deploy 1,000 available Firefighters Despite Warnings

As I noted in my previous coverage, the National Weather Service warned about the high winds and dangerous fire conditions ahead of the Palisades Fire.

Los Angeles fire bosses deployed just a fraction of its firefighters and trucks to the deadly Palisades Fire until it was already out of control — sending just five of the 40 available fire engines and holding back 1,000 firefighters, according to a damning new report.

The critical decisions — blasted by experts and ex-fire chiefs as a spate of “missteps” — were made even as extreme warnings were coming in about life-threatening winds that turned the blaze into the most destructive in Los Angeles history.

“You would have had a better chance to get a better result if you deployed those engines,” former LAFD Battalion Chief Rick Crawford told the Los Angeles Times.

“You give yourself the best chance to minimize how big the fire could get. … If you do that, you have the ability to say, ‘I threw everything at it at the outset.’”

If the initial fire response is evaluated, the reasoning for this decision must come to light. Personally, I find it fascinating that the Pacific Palisades area voted for real estate magnate Rick Caruso to be mayor, as opposed to the winner Karen Bass, who was enjoying cocktails in Ghana as the city was incinerated.

The Community Note on this post is key to help understand the political complexities of this region.

Additionally, homeless camps were apparently allowed to proliferate at the expense of the fire budget.

Los Angeles’ budget is in the spotlight as multiple wildfires rage around the city amid revelations that Mayor Karen Bass slashed the fire department’s budget last year while prioritizing spending on the city’s homeless population.

For the 2023-2024 fiscal year, Los Angeles budgeted $837 million for the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), which was roughly 65% the size of the homeless budget of $1.3 billion.

Eaton Fire

The Eaton fire near Altadena and Pasadena in Los Angeles County has burned 14,117 acres and is currently 45% contained. The good news is that firefighters are making steady progress in containment efforts, focusing on mop-up operations and reinforcing containment lines.

The fire has destroyed 4,627 structures and damaged 486 others. Tragically, 17 civilian fatalities have been confirmed.

California Pushes Back Tax Deadline for L.A. County Residents

How big a disaster are the mega-fires? The fact that the state is willing to push back tax collection offers a telling clue.

Taxpayers in L.A. County will have their date to file California tax returns on their 2024 income postponed to Oct. 15. They will also have until that date to make any tax payments that were due on Jan. 7 through Oct. 15.

…The postponement applies to:

  • People whose tax returns and payments are normally due on April 15.
  • Quarterly tax payments that are normally due on Jan. 15, April 15, June 15 and Sept. 15.
  • Businesses whose corporate or pass-through entity tax returns are usually due March 15 and April 15.
  • Pass-through entity elective tax payments usually due on March 15 and June 15.
  • Tax-exempt organization returns usually due May 15.

DONATE

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.

Comments

By ‘making progress’ they mean that the wind has died down and the fires are finally going out on their own.

You can’t ‘battle’ a fire that’s on 20,000 acres. You can only set up breaks to prevent it from spreading further, and wait for it to burn itself out.

And take it from somebody right outside the area. A SIGNIFICANT number of the ‘power outages’ weren’t actual power outages. The power company simply turned it off because California doesn’t allow them to do any kind of actual forest management around the power lines.

My power was out for SIX of the last SEVEN days because they simply turned it off because some bean counter in an office declared the grid ‘high risk’ while houses a block away have had uninterrupted power.

    With lawsuits in the tens of billions likely coming, I imagine the power companies have a big incentive to be turned off altogether. Anyone with money will be sued, no matter how little the involvement.

    ThePrimordialOrderedPair in reply to Olinser. | January 17, 2025 at 4:48 am

    They got it going on both sides. In this video from the first night the power lines are sparking up a furious storm in this guy’s backyard. He said that he called the fire department and they didn’t care (“call us back if there’s a fire”) and he called the power company and they refused to turn the power off.

      Yes. And meanwhile other places with low wind they had the power off for days at a time.

      Because some bean counter in an office declared certain grids ‘high risk’, but nobody was actually evaluating that in real time. The power company grunts just did exactly as told so they couldn’t be blamed for anything either way.

I like how you’re using the app I linked before. My agent will call you for appropriate compensation for my contribution :p

But seriously its a pretty good tool, you can really see just how big an area is covered by these fires, and just how far apart they are. The leftist media has been trying to act like it’s just one big fire they can’t control, instead of multiple different locations, because then they couldn’t plausibly whine about ‘climate change’ causing it.

    JohnSmith100 in reply to Olinser. | January 16, 2025 at 6:35 pm

    Have you considered getting the hell out? Are people reconsidering DEI, and a housecleaning politician wise? Any groundswell for recalls yet?

      Dimsdale in reply to JohnSmith100. | January 17, 2025 at 7:03 am

      They’ve been brainwashed and propagandized since birth, maybe before (while determining their sex in utero!).

      They will resume blaming President Trump on Jan. 20. The “comedians” of late night ae already mocking efforts to put strings on federal monies to address the failed results of Cali communism.

      Olinser in reply to JohnSmith100. | January 17, 2025 at 5:38 pm

      Currently I have a job that I like, and I’m close to my retired parents who aren’t going to move.

      When I retire after my parents are gone, it will NOT be in California.

City has a large portion of its fleet in the repair yard. Budget cuts for mechanics.
https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/1878862411031351524

https://x.com/FilmThePoliceLA/status/1878273030293450797

No debris removal till an inspection is done.

Per Dr. Muntu Davis, who works under skeletor lady of Covid fame, Dr. Ferrer.

https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2025/01/16/la-public-health-fire-debris-removal-inspections-n2406755

And to pile the ultimate tragedy upon all these others:

Hunter Biden artworks worth ‘millions of dollars’ destroyed in LA fires

Wow! I hope they were all well insured!!!!!

ThePrimordialOrderedPair | January 17, 2025 at 4:43 am

Firefighters Making Progress Battling LA’s Palisades and Eaton Mega-Fires

Well … the fires can’t burn forever.

On the bright side, LA now has about 40,000 acres that are fire-proof for the next decade … so they can really gut the fire department and use the windfall to buy more drugs and hotel rooms for homeless junkies and illegals.!

And, even better, LA can still collect property taxes for properties they don’t have to provide any services for … not that they were providing them before, but they don’t even have to pretend to provide services for them! It’s steak dinners and 3 martini lunches for all LA government officials from now on!!

Can we just collectively (pun intended) call them the California Woke Fires now?

Person who first called in the fire on his phone is saying that nobody showed up to the scene for over 30 minutes, and then it was just helicopter fly over. that disappeared. By then the fires had exploded out of control.

Daily Mail has photographs of over 100 fire trucks sitting idle in fenced yard waiting for maintenance, that was delayed due to budget cuts.

    henrybowman in reply to smooth. | January 18, 2025 at 1:07 am

    “nobody showed up to the scene for over 30 minutes, and then it was just helicopter fly over.”
    Shades of Warren v. DC!

It can take 3 years to get permit from the city just to remodel your kitchen during normal times. This is going to be lost decade. Residents will be required to clear their home lots of debris, and allowed to live in RV in their driveway for the next 10 years while they rebuild. The idiocracy of leftist mismanagement, keep voting dem for more of the same.

One thing I had forgotten about that came out of the NSW’s fires in Australia was the role a certain type of tree played in making bad fires even worse!

I had forgotten about the Eucalyptus Tree and how councils had allowed the trees to spread in to residential areas and then prosecuted anyone who dared clear dead fall from these trees and any other trees on their private property.

The problem with Eucalyptus trees is that their leaves are incredibly oily and when they catch fire, because of that oil content, the leaves and deadfall tends to explode and adds fuel to the fire…so when you have large trees in residential areas that people are not allowed to clear you get exactly what happened in NSW and now California..

Then last night there was something on TV that jogged my memory, a resident was talking about the trees exploding and then it turns out Eucalyptus trees are everywhere in California!!

The trees also use fire to help encourage their seed pods to open, hence why they have developed the way they have so that any fire will quite literally explode and help the tree to propagate.

Then of course you have all the other sh1t thrown in on top, budget cuts, DEI policies, deadfall not being removed…it was just a matter of time.

Only real question now is whether Californians will actually learn anything from this?

    henrybowman in reply to mailman. | January 18, 2025 at 1:13 am

    The Blue Mountains west of Sydney are called that precisely because the oil vaporizing from the leaves of all the eucalyptus trees literally hangs blue in the air. The whole forest is crazy flammable. Australians learned early on that their dutiful responses to forest fires in the area ultimately made a bad situation super explosive. Now they wor with the natural rhythm of the forest and extinguish only the blazes that are “not on schedule.” When it IS time, they just leave it to rip.