Is this accurate? There are a lot of disasters to choose from, WTC, various hurricanes and earthquakes. From my swivel chair this seems relatively smaller than those.
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I’m going to go out in a limb and say that, 117 million gallons in storage vertically above the Palisades area, in a gravitational supplied system, would’ve helped. As quoted in many articles, the former director or employees of DWP stated it wouldn’t have lasted as well. Agree, maybe would’ve ran out at sometime during the extended attack. I’m also going to say that wildfires keep biting Janisse Quiñones in the ankle.
I do mean not to associate my views and opinions on infrastructure, with topography, alignment, weather and umm, HISTORY as Zeke and Tim Chavez pointed out last night on his stream that contributed to this disaster.
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Really rough idea
Say 8000 residential units destroyed
Avg on low side is a million dollars each
That’s low side numbers
Not including commercial loss, employment, infrastructure
Rebuilding costs
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I’ll toss my .02 in as a 30year + retired civil servant & lifelong So Cal resident. Two points:
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These fires, especially Palisades & Eaton were driven by an unusual Santa Ana pattern. The normal windflow for SA winds bypasses the Basin, and sticks to the Mtns in the I-5 corridor, Ventura County & San Fernando & Santa Clarita valleys, and areas of OC. To the folks in the basin, all the Santa Anas normally do is make it unusually warm with very calm air. Every once in a while, everything aligns to cause the winds to hit the San Gabriel Valleys, LA Basin, etc like we saw here. These folks were totally unprepared for the Red Flag warnings, because they’ve never experienced this in recent times. BUT THEY WERE WARNED.
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As far as the Chief & Mayor go…look, most of us are/were Civil Servants, right? I was taught about CYA as a young man when I started my career in local govt. That’s all that’s happening here. The Chief is getting ROASTED and she’s trying to save her job - so deflecting blame at the mayor is the only thing she’s got right now. Does it make her courageous? What was the impact of the budget cuts? I don’t know, but she’s trying to save her skin, so she blames Bass. Bass, I have no comment about. But here’s 2 things to consider: 1) Why go abroad during Santa Ana season? Especially when 2-3 days before NOAA issued dire forecasts about this upcoming wind event? How dumb are you? 2) WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND DE-WATERS A RESERVOIR DURING SANTA ANA SEASON?? This is the single, dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. This should be done after March, when the ocean breeze inflow is dominant and offshore winds go away until the following October. DWP is on the hook for that one. And if you listened to the Palisades fire stream that first night, you heard that the crews up there lost water pressure by 10pm…NOT 3am that the media is telling you.
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The big news out of todays news conference is the LA Board of supervisors has banned the use of gas powered blowers during this emergency cause it could create a hazardous dust situation
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, The potential of some gardener creating a miniscule amount of dust during this wind event is now eliminated. Great job sups. I guess there was nothing else pressing on their agenda. 
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When you buy a Big Gulp and put one straw in it. The big gulp last a long time. Now put ten straws in that Big Gulp and see how long it lasts.
So you have 100 fire engines that pump 500 gallons per minute. If my math is correct that 50,000 gl a minute. In a 24 hour period there are 1440 minutes. So 50,000 X 1440=72,000,000gl. That’s a lot of water. I realize there could be less water being used or more water being used, but you get my point.
Anyone of us that has pumped a good size fire knows you start adding engines to the water supply you better be at the head of the system. I would imagine the resources at scene were taxing the hydrant system pretty damn hard in the first 24 hours.
If you couldn’t pick these fires up within minutes if not seconds with these winds, look at what happens. A lot of factors to this. Response times, Fuel Bed, Fuel moisture, Structures become a fuel source, Accessibilty etc, etc, etc.
To me everything was in alignment for the perfect Fire Storm.
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Huh, no mention of Battery powered Blowers imagine that!
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Anyone here recall the fire siege of 2003 and the Blue Ribbon Commission report (under Gov Schwarzenegger) issued in 2004?I would hope that there will be a comprehensive report issued after this and further (and more importantly), that it is promptly acted upon and supported.
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Excellent analogy. Hoping someone on camera gets around to making this point. No municipal water system in the world can supply enough GPM for 5000 simultaneous structure fires. HOWEVER, I still believe in the theory of the starfish… Something akin to “You can’t throw them all back in the ocean - you can’t save all of them in the world, but for each one you save, you’ve changed their entire world” The overall toll of this event would still have been disastrous, but it would have been a little less so. It doesn’t look like much of a difference, unless you are that one guy whose house got saved. We all probably got into this business because we believed that saving just one at a time makes it worthwhile.
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I’d say I don’t believe it, but that Mayor spends taxpayer funds traveling (with an entourage?), spending money on social projects and cutting funding from LAFD in the millions, causing firings and inability to keep trucks running. Blaming this on the Fire Chief is abominable. The politician mayor needs to step down and put somebody in the job who knows what they’re doing. Fire Chiefs come through the fire department and have essential experience.
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Ya
Cant fix stupid comes to mind with that move
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The 1970 fire seige brought us FIRESCOPE and ICS. Bel Air '61 and Panorama '80 changed California building codes and practically eliminated wood shake roofs. Tunnel changed minds about the importance of Statewide Mutual Aid. Esperanza changed philiosophy on structure defense. Camp and Tubbs changed the way we look at evacuation planning, and powerline hardening. Hopefully every disaster becomes a learning experience, I’m looking forward to seeing what else we can improve.
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The Dixie fire melted the underground pipes of the Greenville water supply. Having water uphill meant nothing. That people evacuated with their sprinklers running also didn’t help, leading up to the loss of the distro piping.
These events have implications we are not facing, while we blame whomever we can, whether or not they could have done anything more than they did. I agree that what I have heard of and from Bass via the media does not strike me as indicative of someone who understands enough of what’s going on to manage any of it well.
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