LA has No Water

Yep.  But not just 'your best friend'; but 'you'.

Like Twain said: "It is a recession when your friend loses his job; but a depression when you lose your job".

You are correct.  The insurers have been put in a bad spot as well.  You see that in other places, like Florida.

They are in the business of making money, not losing money.

So, now you have more and more people moving to these areas, that are hurricane-prone, and building more expensive places to insure.  Then you couple that with the cyclical nature of hurricanes.  Then what happens when they hit Florida for a few years.

Then you have CA, where there are already so many folks concentrated in that area.  Then the real estate prices have shot up.

Then folks expect there insurance rates to stay the same.

Insurers are put in a very bad spot as well.  Then they almost 'force' other customers, in say Montana (or any less disaster-prone place), to almost subsidize the disaster-prone places.  Or, they simply have to withdraw from the bad states in order to make a profit.

A real mess in a lot of ways.

Very correct 

First off, i'd like to give thanks to my brother Uniman for breaking down the chain of events that lead to this fire in post #31, some of which he reiterated in post #49. I don't think Uniman nor Raiders get the credit they deserve for their contributions to these forums.

There is a lot to umpack, and a lot of misunderstanding as it relates to California and wildfires. First, people seem to think that wildfires are preventable disasters, unlike earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. They are not. There are steps mitigating steps that can be taken to lessen the severity of wildires but this can be said about any natural disaster. Hurricane Katrina wasn't so destructive to New Orleans simply because of the strength of the storm. It was destructive because it made landfall in a city much of which is at or below sea level, essentially build in a bowl between the bend of a major river, it's accompanying delta marshlands, and a HUGE lake. A city with an aging and inadequate levy and pump system.  It was a powder keg. So to is California.

First if all, many people can't comprehend the vastness of California. While not as big as Texas, it dwarfs eastern states. And frankly, there are far to many people living in California. More than a tenth, something like 12% of the population lives in California. I'll while there may be space, there is no water.

California is perpetually in drought. I'm over 50. I learned about drought in kindergarten. It is a daily reality for most Californians. Drought has been a way of life for at least the four decades I have been on this earth. And while there are wet years, while there are some regions are extremely wet and lush, Northern Cali specifically, the water scarcity defines the state. This is no where more apparent than the Los Angeles basin...

Much, most, of California would be defined as semi-arid. The areas east of the mountains are in a rain shadow and are literally desert but the valley that runs from Redding to Bakersfield, the eastern Bay Area, and the Los Angeles and San Diego basins are all dry and hot. The lack of rain is essentially turning these regions desert-like. And these are the regions where almost all Californians live. The vegetation in these areas is what's referred to as chaparral. Lots of grasslands/scrublands. This stuff is highly adapted to drought meaning when measurable rain does come, these plants explode. The shortlived rains stop, the plants dry out. And as someone who has owned property in California, let me tell you, it's a vicious cycle. You clear it, you get a day of rain, it explodes again, you don't get another day of rain for two months. You're constantly chasing it. While management is absolutely necessary, I ask all of you to look at a map of California. Again, it's massive. Hindsight is always 20/20. It's easy to look at a these massive wildires and ask, "Why wasn't the area manage?" but there's no amount of money and man power that could really manage such a thing. You're constantly chasing it. You do the best you can. These fires pop off everywhere, even in northern California which gets much more rain. Again, it's hard dor many to fathom how vast the stare is, how treacherous and rugged much of the terrain is, and the sheer volume of grasses, shrubbery, and trees. So where is the water? Where does it come from and where is it used? Well...

California has an extensive reservoir system. I hear/see people saying things like, "Why hasn't Gavin built more reservoirs." I believe they think reservoirs are like giant indoor swimming pools. Just a building full of water. Sure, by definition, that would be a reserve of water but when you hear about California reservoirs, you're talking about an impoundment of a river or stream in a valley creating a man-made lake. We're all sporting men. We're all familiar with Vegas. Lake Mead is a reservoir. It's an created by the impoundment of the Colorado River by the Hoover Dam. If any of you have ever seen images of Lake Mead when it's low, if any of you remember the stories of bodies turning up, old mobsters from the 70's and 80's, when the lake was really low a few years ago, just remember that Lake Mead is the Colorado. LA gets at least half of it's water from this same river. As do two of the other largest metro areas in the western US, Las Vegas and Phoenix. The thing about reservoirs is they still rely on rain and snowpack. California has had a couple of wet years recently. This one definitely has not been. A couple days before this all popped off, i'm sitting at the dinner table. My wife says, "They're saying Santa Anas are supposed to come on strong in the next few days." I say, "Well shit. They haven't been getting much rain back home. I wonder how they've faired down there this season." (Back home meaning the Bay Area. We're from the Bay but live in Oregon. I still have a place in the Bay because i'm constantly there for work/business.) She says, "I don't think they've gotten much rain either." The last thing I said was, "Oh, fuck!" The rest is history.

Uniman already broke down how this fire started. Frankly, under these conditions, anything can start these things. Powerlines, cigarette butts, lightning strikes, you name it. A few years ago, there was a particularly bad fire started by a pyrotechnic gender reveal. Frankly,  there are two many people living amongst this perpetuall dry vegetation, and simply not enough water. And on the subject of water...

@StumpTownStu

 I'm over 50

I would correct this obvious typo as soon as possible.  
No one should age ten years in less than one year. 

Otherwise, good assessment 

Too late to correct but yes, i'm 42.

I knew somewhere a while ago you said you were now over 40.  I knew it wasn't 10 years ago.

@StumpTownStu

 I know you read.  It may not be your type of reading.  But if you have not read The Big Burn by Timothy Egan -- it is well worth it.  

It is about the great fire in Idaho early in the 1900s. 

It details how Roosevelt established the US Forest Service -- but got huge pushback from the timber industry and Congress.  He appointed Gifford Pinchot as its head. Then when Taft got in office, he kind of swerved away from supporting it and Pinchot.  But Pinchot was a very interesting guy in his own right.

The book details a lot of interesting things that went into 'fighting' these fires that turned into a monster fire.

One of the tidbits was the invention of the Pulaski -- the double-sided axe -- they still fight fires with today.  He was sort of a hero during that fire.  But one sad part was that, even though he is credited with the invention and they have one on display in the Smithsonian -- I do not believe he was ever awarded a patent for it.

But it was a very interesting read and you can tell the guy did a lot of research on it.  The fire was a watermark of sorts on the way fires are fought now and forests are managed.

So where does the water go? As I said before, California is this large chunk of the country, physically, with large populations centered in semi-arid to arid pockets. The state is perpetually under drougut conditions. And even when historic precip averages are met/surpassed, it's usually in the form of a few huge storms as opposed to sustained wet seasons. There always some precipitation though. As I said before, the reservoir system is extensive. Where does all the water go? Swimming pools and bermuda grass?

Sidenote: Some years back, 7 or 8, with California under it's ever present drought, they started a water conservation campaign. Again, such things have been a part of life in California for at least my forur decades on the planet. So they're running slogans like, "If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." Basically asking people to not flush unless it's poop. Asked people to let their lawns die. Not wash their cars. (Think of the personal expense of replanting a lawn or getting a sun baked dirt car repainted) I said fuck them, always flushed twice, and took 30 minute showers though at this point, I had technically moved and was only down there part of the time. So they crunched the numbers and realized the northern Californians had done really well, the bunch if hippies that they are (not me, obviously). SoCal somehow used MORE water! So when you see the perfectly manicured lawns in southern Cal, both in the LA basin and the Inland Empire which is literally desert, when you see the swimming pools, when you see a golf course, just remember these words. Perpetual drought. When you see a celebrity crying and blaming Gavin just remember, they are part of the problem.

That's not fair though. The lawns, the swimming pools, are literally a drop in the bucket. You want to know where the majority of Cali's water goes? I'm sure most of you know. Agriculture. Next is industrial processes like mining and petroleum refinement, etc. The largest consumer of water in California is almond trees. And that's by a large margin. And where does almost all of those almonds end up? China. California isn't even feeding American anymore, it's feeding the Middle East and China. So, as with much of what's devastating in this country, Covid, the god damn fentanyl crisis, blame China. Fuck China.

@Raiders22

 We love Timothy Egan! My wife especially. We have it around here. I'll have to find it. Some books aren't on shelves. There are just too many.

The Worst Hard Time had deep meaning for her, and by proxy me. Her grandmother was a dust bowl okie as a child.

About 20 yrs ago in mid-Michigan I was driving North on a rural road. It was a late March warmup with high SW winds. An old farmer came driving down his driveway and pulled out right in front me. WTF is his hurry? Following behind him another 1/2 mile I saw his problem. He used the SW winds to burn his ditchline. Get done faster with some wind. Problem was that ditchline met up to a yard with an old unpainted barn with cedar shake roof. The yard had tall 10" dead grass and was starting to burn. Pulled in behind the old guy and asked if he had any shovels, rakes, etc. Nothing, the barn was empty except for a semi flatbed trailer with an empty water tank on it. Found a 2x8 to try to carve a trench and bat down the burning grass. No way. In just a few minutes it reached a wooden shed in front of the barn and then the barn. It went up so fast I almost didn't get my car out of there parked about 75' upwind just due to the heat. The fire dept showed up when it was fully engulfed.

You don't realize how fast fire can move in a strong wind.

I feel for those folks in LA!

I watched the very evil and the very dangerous Dems during the Pete Hegseth confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense. Needless to say. It was a total sheet show put on by the very classless Left. If that was an indication for The City of Angels to arise from the ashes with far left liberal ideology inside all government buildings. The tax paying citizens in and around LA have no chance! The City of Angels will go down in history as the only city in modern times that did not allocate water to stop a fire! The City of Angels still burns as I hit the keyboard!

@sundance

 CNN's Scott Jennings said Hegseth "kicked their asses" and Jennings asked why dems send the dumbest to these hearings. 

Back to the wildfires; In 2019, the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) set out to replace aging wooden power poles - some nearly a century old - with fire-resistant steel poles and widen fire-access lanes in the wildfire-prone Topanga State Park. The $2 million project was designed to bolster fire safety after the area was deemed an "elevated fire risk."

Instead they were shutdown and fined $1.9 million for killing a few endangered shrubs while widening fire lanes for fire safety. 

That entire area now in ashes including the remaining endangered shrubs. And you wonder why they don't perform any preventative maintenance by clearing brush. IDIOTS!!

https://smmtf.org/endangered-plants-bulldozed-ladwp-fined/

Do You Guys Realize all the Californians Wanting to Relocate??? Arizona,  Texas,  Florida,  Neveda,  Idaho,  Colorado..wherever they Can Find a Roof over their Head....And Gruesome Newsome desperate attempts for them NOT to sell their Coveted properties FOR pennies on the Dollar..

CALIFORNIA and their Tax Base is DONE...Sad BUT true..Who can Blame them????

Trump and Congress need to create a "LA FIRE CAUSE/RESPONSE COMMISSION".

Send federal rightwing investigators. Have televised hearings. Then hire a movie producer to film the commission's findings and show it on primetime tv.

Call it worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

Afterwards they can destroy any files that didn't fit their narative. 

Fire Union Chief on CNN.....

https://x.com/_samuel_72/status/1879517506651443569

Some Cali perspective....

https://thespectator.com/topic/slow-death-california-dream-gavin-newsom/

What do they want? Do they want politicians doing rain dances? California's issues with water are simply put, that it just doesn't rain. And even in years when rain averages are met, it's usually tied to a couple of huge storms as opposed to a sustained rainy season. You won't find a person who hates Gavin Newsom more than me. You won't find a bigger critic of state policy. The fact is though, many of this states problems are extremely nuanced. The author of this article compares road upkeep in California with that of New Hampshire. That tells you everything you need to know right there.

I know, understand your point.  Especially on Californians knowing the nuances of the issues better than anyone else.  

The water issue is a pretty clear and easily defined issue. It's just not there. It's like the dust bowl. Part of the the dust bowl was due to overworking the soil but aside from that, the rains just stopped. California is perpetually locked in drought. Southern California is rapidly going from a semi-arid environment to full on desert. And a large portion of SoCal, the Inland Empire, etc, is literal desert. Southern California gets half to most, depending on the year, from the Colorado River. We're all gamblers here. If you have ever been to Vegas and saw Lake Mead while it was bone dry, Lake Mead is the Colorado river. It's a stretched thin resource shared by three of the most heavily populated metro regions in the country. Let that sink in. California has a huge and extensive reservoir system but the reservoirs still rely on rain and snow pack. Couple that with the fact that the majority of California water goes to large scale agricultural operations, and you find yourself with shortages. Almonds consume the majority of California's water. Pistachios after that. And we aren't talking about feeding Americans. This stuff goes to China. Saudis own massive water rights in Cali, growing the crops here that they can't grow there because of, you guessed it, lack of water. These are the issues.

Again, i'm not defending California politicians. I have nothing but disdain for Gavin Newsom. My issue is, based on the things I have read online, people beleive.wildfires are preventable disasters, unlike a hurricane, a tornado, and earth quake. They aren't. Can toy take mitigating actions? Of course, but that is true of any natural disaster. We never look at the damage from an earthquake and ask if the buildings were properly retrofitted. We never look at the damage from a hurrican and ask if proper levee systems were in place. Proper drainage. Yet we look at fires with criticism. The fact is there are too many people in the state, and the environment is becoming increasingly inhospitable.

Good insight here.....I figured you'd know better than anyone here.  Lived in Vegas for 8 years so very familiar with Lake Mead and the Valley's own water issues 

I would like to address this.

First of all what have I seen or what do I see? 

---Post #64, LA Power and Water set out to replace combustible power poles and widen fire lanes in 2019. They were shutdowned and fined $1.9 million for doing so. Well, that explains why nobody removed any brush this last season and probably back to 2019! Any chance of performing preventable measures crushed.

---Insurance companies do a risk assesstment and determine they need to raise rates to match the risks. Why those dirty money grubbers, NO says California! And the smart insurance companies pulled out. Instead of realizing there were risks and what California could do to minimize those risks, keep insurance companies there, keep rates lower, prevent heavy losses, they apparently did nothing but watched them leave.

---The letter former and active LAFD Chief Officers sent. The group wrote that the lack of experience, arrogance and inability to manage and lead the department contributed to its failings in dealing with the Palisades fire. The group blames Crowley for ignoring preventative systems and mechanisms previously put into place to deal with the current wildfires. 

The group said Crowley did nothing to put mechanisms in place that dealt with a large exodus of experienced fire service professionals. The letter states that more than 125 senior-level chief officers have retired in the last year. The letter states that many of those who left the department were veterans of wildfires who would have been beneficial in dealing with the current fires burning around Los Angeles County.

The Fire Commission meetings during your tenure are the running joke of your staff and your department. Items deemed important by you and your commission such as your schedule, parades, mural painting procedures, and other sundry items not even remotely related to wildfire preparation and or emergency operations are discussed with gusto; yet meeting after meeting, nothing of substance is discussed or accomplished.  Have seen things like this in my career, nothing getting done!

So did this catastophie just sneak on them? Hell no. 

So IF I was a resident of LA what would I want? 

1. A bi-yearly hazard assestment plan put into action. Not a bunch of meetings. Basically looking at what and how much burnable material is there? Chances of fire occuring. Daily risk reporting which I guess is being done now.

2. A fire watch system. With today's technology shouldn't hard to do. Things like cameras/sensors on high ground poles, human fire watches, etc.

3. An emergency stand-by team ready to respond at moments notice. Catching and fighting these fires in their infancy, before they get out of hand. 

One of the biggest problems I saw in my career was an employer where only the top offical could declare an emergency and only in an emergency declared could you respond that would cause overtime. Had a huge rain, flood warnings issued, miles upstream roads wiped out and it's coming, yet I could not respond before it hit my area because the emergency hadn't happened yet. How stupid! That was in Nevada. Am sure Cali has the same mindset.

No excuses, the risks were recognized, espeicially by insurance companies. Heavy winds and dried brush overgrown from abundant rains should have caused a "Devcon1" alert.

Stu would know more about this but there were some 200+ LAFD put on leave or fired for not getting the covid jab.  Can't find any articles about if those jobs were replaced by new firefighters who had the covid jab.  But I recently read an article      lapublicpress.org/2025/01/lafd-budget-fires-cut-money-los-angeles/

that says with the $17 million budget cuts the LAPD was forced to slash 58 vacant positions, later in the article states that a review from 2018-2020 showed LAFD is only half staffed than what is needed, that's before the covid jab requirement.  Less firehouses now than in the 1960's and as of now the fleet is only 78% operational.

Maybe the state is just too damn big, if CA is on the east coast its most of PA, half of WV, all of NJ,DE,MD,VA,NC,SC,GA and half of Alabama.  California would benefit North and South like the Dakotas.  San Fran/Oakland and Sac in the North and LA/SD in the South.  

Saw a report that said average large city has 2.5 fire fighters per 1000 residents and LA has 1 per thousand. 

You would think insurance companies leaving would be a big slap, wakeup call. But no, it's used to promote climate change.