California fires again!

The basic plot is overdevelopment and mismanagement. Climate change is the magic mantra politicians use to deflect attention away from said basic plot.

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Pretty much.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/californias-impenetrable-environmental-bureaucracy-left-l-a-hills-primed-to-burn/?bypass_key=L0NYZGVtdjdoeENLS1dHVXJZemQvdz09OjpTMjV1UTJNeU9VTXpNWFZQTldWNlJWTlZhRkJJVVQwOQ%3D%3D

But Ring and others say the biggest problem that has allowed the fires to do as much damage as they have is tied to a lack of land management in the L.A. Basin. He blames the problem on state and local government bureaucracies, lawmakers in the pocket of environmentalist and renewable energy lobbyists, and legal challenges from activist groups that can grind the ability of landowners to manage their property to a halt.

Environmental groups, including the California Chaparral Institute, the Sierra Club, and the California Center for Biological Diversity, have aggressively fought against thinning and burning that state’s chaparral landscape. In a 2020 letter to lawmakers, they argued that “adding even more fire to native chaparral shrublands” is not an acceptable policy.

“They make it virtually impossible to do controlled burns of any kind. They make it virtually impossible to do mechanical thinning. And they make it very difficult and in many cases impossible to even have grazing on your property,” Ring said.

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Chaparral is difficult… dry, burns easily, easily gets out of control , and comes back quickly with a burn. There ARE controlled burns in California all the time (my old neighbor in California is a firefighter that’s involved in them all the time) and it’s not terribly unusual for one for get out of control. The largest wildfire in NM was just a few years ago due to an intended controlled burn. There’s no easy answers to managing land to control fires in dry landscapes that still manages to grow a decent amount of plant material.

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Now I know where you got this strange and idiotic comment from.

Living in Taitung far away from the US and calling fish stupid cos they need water to live in :ok_hand::+1: just because some dumb politician said it, who also happens to know nothing about the ‘the stupid fish’ or LA or wildfires and lives 1000s of kms from there, and by extension rubbishing efforts to protect the natural environment (which is very likely one of the reasons you live where you do) really takes the biscuit though.

Trump more recently blamed the Democratic-controlled state of withholding water from northern parts of the state to southern California as part of environmental efforts to help protect a small fish – the Delta smelt – and blamed environmentalists for hampering the state’s fire response.

But fish being stupid because they need water to live in…that sure is a good one I’ll give ya that.:partying_face:

Trump has a pocketful of molehills he holds up close to the camera to appear as mountains. It’s a Miyagi irrusion.

LA Mayor Karen Bass FIRES fire chief Kristin Crowley after lashing out

It’s ok. She was white. She was also right, so double whammy.

A month before fires, L.A. fire chief warned budget cuts were hampering emergency response - CBS News

This guy lived in the same house in the Palisades all his life.

As he said ‘We live in California and California is a desert. Fires are just natural here’.

He saved his house and his neighbours but he took a tremendous risk doing so, which I felt the interviewer didn’t really delve into.

But I would say he was well aware of what was involved and rolled the dice because he is old and would find it very difficult to start again. It’s a grim choice to make. Personally I would have noped out of there.

Anybody know what causes the houses to combust so quickly ? Is it the very high heat ? The wood construction which then just needs a spark (the embers) for them to light up like a torch ?

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It’s just dry, dry, dry and dense, dense, dense. The houses in socal generally have cement tile roofs and stucco exteriors, so aren’t exactly torches waiting to combust. People also are dumb and don’t follow recommendations to keep debris / vegetation clear of the perimeter of the house, so that does light up like a torch with an ember, giving the structure time to ignite. Conditions like the Santa Anas winds literally fan the flames, and also help them jump roads and freeways and light other areas.

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Yeah, pretty much just a combination of those things, right?

When the big storm Sandy hit here some years back a whole neighborhood of wood houses burnt down in the middle of a flood.

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My understanding is some home insulation is highly flammable as well.

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Newsom Cracks Down as Looters Exploit LA Evacuations, ‘It has turned into the wild wild west here’

Eat the rich. They don’t pay their fair share. Right? Hasn’t that been the message?

KTLA interviewed Los Angeles resident Allison Agsten, who described the chaos unfolding in her neighborhood as she prepared to evacuate with her family. “It was wild. We started seeing all these cars pull up, doors open, and men running up our street, going to the doors of some houses. We weren’t sure what was going on. I thought, ‘Are these people here to help my neighbors? I hope so.’ I left, and then my husband spoke to the police and said, ‘These guys don’t live here. Get them out.'”

Seems she’s not fired after all…maybe.

That IS the real news. lol

The communication is a bit better than the Mayor of Katrina, but not by much.

Getting rid of the fire chief in the middle of a massive emergency wouldn’t look good unless there was gross incompetence.

I watched the fox interview with Crowley and she came across as competent. The reporter kept trying to get her to express her feels, which was unnecessary, in my opinion.

Agree, it’s unnecessary. Worse, it’s counterproductive for the goal of allowing LAFD to do its job.

It’s also counterpoint to Dem media’s attempts to report on (i.e., sow) fractures in Trump’s coalition. Fox News obviously trying to sow division in California on this. Two wrongs don’t make a right, though.

Wish it could stop, alas. The media herds on both sides are in the wrong.

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Crazy how every single event gets so politicized in the US.

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Vaccines? Politicized.

Climate change as “hoax”? Politicized.

People in the US (and indeed elsewhere around the world) are being played. I guess those years and years of underfunding and attacking public education are paying off.

Guy

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Its certainly tiring.

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