Agreed, with a caveat. Imho, it’s less location or suppression strategies, than hardening structures to resist ignition beforehand. Even with the amount of engines that were deployed, the hydrants couldn’t keep up. I live in Humboldt County. In the hills, one way in and out is more the rule than the exception. It’s like that all over. The only pathway to true resilience will be to harden our homes, businesses, and communities so that the inevitable fires that do occur burn around them rather than destroy them, as Pyrogeography has opined.
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Of course, that needs to be mated with adequate defensible space. And the 7A codes must not be watered down for any reason. The vast majority of buildings that survived the Camp fire in Paradise were built after they were established. Coincidence? I think not.
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@firekindler yeah that is exactly my point. The media hype is all about how could we have put the fire out rather than like you said how could we have survived with hardening which is all in the private property owners hands.
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Also I feel like the fire chief should have focused on the fire adaptive part and there is no reasonable response force that changes this. The LACoFD chief response addresses reality. He has another town hall where he talks about fire adaptive communities that I need to find.
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That was a great response; thanks. But even he stopped short of promoting the idea that homeowners need to step up and take responsibility for hardening their homes. Many folks want to grumble about taxes, and then whine when there’s no engine in their driveway. One time I called in to a talk show on KQED and said something along those lines. One of the guests got offended and called me out for blaming the public, when it’s the agency’s job to protect them. Totally missed the point. It was just too bad the engineers for that show let you say your initial spewing, but don’t give you a chance to rebut the response, before cutting you off and moving to the next caller.
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With a city population of 3.8 million and assuming 4 people per household, that’s 950,000 dwelling units with MANY of them in some sort of wildland interface. I guess some people think it’s the Fire Departments job regardless of the disaster. How many years have we listened to Lucy from the USGS say not to expect any help from anyone for many days following the big quake. This is a comparable situation happening in fast forward. Fuels management, building design and hardening, improving infrastructure that was designed and built in the 50s, and a crystal ball to see where the ignition would occur is the only way to possibly have a chance against that catastrophic incident. Now how many voters have the finances or stomach to vote for that bill?
Sometimes shit just happens.
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@firekindler i will work on finding the other town hall where he addresses the fire adapted community peice.
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Just can’t keep the Politics out?
I’d certainly prefer that - but we live in exceptional times. I’m not one to bury my head in the sand. It’s relevant, imho. You’re welcome to disagree if you like, with no judgementalism from me. But I stand by my statements and the thoughts and realities that inform them. I do not take those lightly, my friend and colleague.
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That brings up an interesting discussion point.
Hurricane winds begin at 74 MPH. Homeowners do all sorts of stuff to their homes to harden them. The AHJ issues evacuation orders. Shelters are opened, with NGOs in place. The entire AHJ governmental work force has a job and knows it.
Santa Ana winds often hit 74 MPH gusts. How much do we really do to prepare prior to the event? Does the entire government from top to bottom engage prior to the event? Do home or property owners prepare their land? Do we have plans to protect the most vulnerable in our population?
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Was looking for the popcorn emoji…this will get interesting. It is so crazy that she is being called a scapegoat. When you watch that interview that they are mentioning at the 10:05 mark she has the chance to tell the truth but skirts it. In 15 minutes she never once talks about adaptive wildfire communities and defensible space,. the entire time talks about the budget cuts and of course the fatal statement at 12:42.
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AJ the sad truth is she is as guilty as Bass. There are so many things the Chief could have said and done. Bass is always going to blame everyone else because that is the way the political machine works.
This was a mess from the time of the election and appointment of Crowley. This also highlights the true disengagement of LA City in the CA wildland culture. ( my opinion)
And from my crystal ball, I think the cause of this fire (origin) is a big reason all the finger pointing is going on
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@firedog1 what I find interesting is I dont remember or have found with some google searches Bass slamming the fire dept. for their response. The press was hitting her pretty hard about the 1.7% budget reduction and she said it did not change the outcome of this incident. I have to agree with her, the cuts were not to daily staffing. Now if the agency was not allowed to staff up extra for an emergency weather conditions well that would be an issue but the mayor said Crowley was fired for not upstaffing enough. I have yet to see a report on what they upstaffed. Also she was fired for not being involved with an AAR. She was already probably really close for her comments on that interview.
So I am curios your opinion on why Bass is just as guilty. Your a mayor not a fire chief, you appoint and SME to run the various departments. Police, Fire, DWP (if you provide that) Public Works, HR etc. Your job is to provide vision, get them the means to get their jobs done not do their jobs. Your job is to also have these depts. not operating in a silo and collaborate where appropriate. The water thing well we all know would not have made a difference and they did have water at the beginning and the homes burned to the ground definitely were depleting water it was not a good look for Bass for her dept heads not communicating about water capacity. But then again should DWP say hey guess what if 200 homes burn down in this area of the city and we dont shut the water meters off your gonna run out of water. LAFD says no way that happens we are a the best fire dept in the nation. This is all just conjecture/simulation of a possible fictitious discussion.
So the blame game starts, people are blaming budget cuts, Bass/council et al for cutting the fire dept. budget, Bass says no these cuts did not affect this incident and then media shifts to Crowley and they pressed her hard and she just slit her own throat by the things she said which again were not honest. Sure the LAFD should be staffed daily better nobody is arguing that. Sure having more daily would help with surge incidents like this so grandma having an MI is not waiting for a fire engine for 30 minutes to get to her house from across town.
So I hate to go down the who started it thing but it looks like Crowley lobbed the first stone and that first one was a doozy and was not entirely accurate. When you compare the fire chief of la county when he was pressed by the public and then his subsequent town hall meetings he shot straight and actually addressed the root of the problem. Set conditions and reality does not get us enough fire engines period to put the fire out. WUI communities need to adapt or this will happen again.
If I am Crowley and I get asked would this have made a difference I think I answer like, "of course its easy to look at a budget cut and think that changes this catastrophe but the reality is it does not impact this incident in a major way. We need more staffing to meet our daily demand and that can help with response times for our daily business which does not stop when an incident like this occurs and draws a lot of our resources to it. We live in a fire prone community and our citizens need to take defensible space and home hardening seriously that is the only way we have a fighting chance to escape this without serious impact. The water system was not designed for this, although I would like to be notified when a reservoir is offline the reality is when these homes burn they just keep spewing water and until someone gets to the water meter they continue to drain the system. I understand people want to blames someone, something but lets wait until the after action review is done and focus on what we can do right now.
She got sucked into a blame game and lost end of story. It sucks for her but if she truly does not see the reality of fire adapted communities she was missing a major component of her job.
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I agree with everything you are saying. As I have said, this is a political circular firing squad. Crowley clearly did not handle it well at all on any level I can see as a retired observer. I saw the writing on the wall when they separated the press briefings early on and put themselves in a corner doing their own thing. LA City Fire is a monstrous political animal, I personally believe (conjecture only) that the Chief doesnt have ability to hold on the offgoing shift like LAPD can with a tactical alert. Nowhere has the large resource prepositioning plan implemented by OES and CALFIRE been mentioned except by the LA County chief and the statewide CALFIRE PIO on TV. I may be a little off on that statement because I did not see all public comments.
I am in firm belief that the refusals to produce an after action report lie partially on the causation of the fire. I may be proven wrong later, but there may be some serious civil liabilities there. However, an after action could be produced without any cause and origin discussed. The refusal of an AAR by the Chief remains a mystery to me, there must be other factors there somewhere. And to put a cherry on this mess, her deputy chief saying during a public messaging campaign before the fire that if she has to pull a man out of a burning building, it was his fault for putting himself in that situation. Talk about felony stupidy. And Mayor Bass shot any credibility she has in this incident by saying piblicy she did not know it was going to be bad and the fire chief did not tell her. I have to call BS, the mayor herself pushed out several documented notices from her office to the piblic.
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The LAFD for sure had the ability to hold over forces. People get force hired all day everyday there. It can be for someone calling out sick or for upstaffing etc.
As far as mayor leaving the country I am sure if someone said hey when your gone the palisades might burn down she would not have left. She was aware it was going to be really windy and that fire potential was high but she took a gamble as it is with wildfire, cancel international trip and nothing happens etc vs go and risk it hope its not that bad and your vice mayor etc handle biz.
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I guess I didn’t make my point very well. I said I don’t think she had the ability to hold 1000 people on duty without upwards consult. Every fire department force hires people every day. Why would the mayor resort to statements like that? I believe they had some sort of staffing pattern or whatever they call it but we sure don’t know what it was. And why would the mayor divert and say if she was told it would be a bad situation she would have never left? Diversion of blame. Look there is enough incompetence to go around and I can only pray that common sense will rise to the top and some leadership will fill this vast incompetent void.
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Oh yeah the entire platoon? No - but adequate upstaff will definetly come from the AAR. If the fire dept did not adequate upstaff and that is what the mayor is referring to well then thats that. We have no idea. I know what we do in my small org so in way of percentage that would be telling in comparison. What is a normal upstaff for a wind event? Ours is built into the sawti. There is no more this chief does it this way and the other chief has their plan. It is very if this than that.
As to why the mayor did that is because the fire chief said the mayor/city let her down on the news. That to me is pretty evident. Prior to that she defended the agency.
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I believe LAFD had 1880C & an Alpha “upstaffed” that day. Everyone needs to remember CALFIRE had a total of 9 Charlie’s in SoCal from NoOps. I also believe OES had a total of 5 Charlies(including 1880C) along with 5 Alphas. All on preposition. Plus the CSR Staffing Pattern to “cover all”.
Would more Equip help. YES
Would it have made a difference. YES
HOW MUCH IF A DIFFERENCE DEBATABLE UNTIL THE END OF TIME
But as the LAC Chief said, Vegetation Management & Home Hardening is the only thing that would’ve limited the destruction.
Finally, I went to the 2021 LFD PALISADES Fire inside the park. The restrictions placed by SM MRC are everything you can think of and more when it comes to a State Park and environmental restrictions.
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