Curious how much the water tenders had impact vs construction, fuel and other building separation. I need to find the address and drop it in ATAK and lay the maxar imagery on it. Stand by.
3 Likes
Well found out google updated their imagery and the maxar imagery actually captured the water tenders. They were in the thick of the structure to structure fight for sure.
Maxar - looks like water tenders to me.
3 Likes
Holy smokes, is the Carusos place?
3 Likes
Afirm.
He paid and saved over $100 million in shops and over 20,000 sqf of space. Across the street is the remains of grocery store and the shell of a Chase Bank.
You canāt process what you see, even when you spend days driving in and out of the area.
4 Likes
That was 350 million for the U.S.Forestry Service,whoever they are.
1 Like
2 Likes
The PBS āWeatheredā special on the LA fires is out, today. I think they did a good job covering the bases on the difference between wildland fires and urban conflagrations, the limits of our abilities to stop wind-driven fires, and the importance of structure hardening. Itās really beautifully produced, too. https://youtu.be/PiX9t_wovEY?si=109D_BcjhxiX_n6t
4 Likes
It was a very well done documentary. Personally, I would like to have seen a bit more substance around several key areas which were either missing or glossed over.
1.) Ember cast is being used as the sole contributor to the Urban Conflagration fires. It is certainly a key contributor but it is not the only factor. In these large wind driven fires, the radiant and convected heat columns are horizontal not vertical which would be the more common condition. That superheated is put in front of even the ember cast to pretreat everything in front of the main flame front.
2.) Defensible space was not touched on at all.
3.) Hybrid attack strategies have to be utilized in these types of fire fights. Returning to bump and run along with the golden 3 min on any given structure has to be priority in the fire service M&Pās. A fire of that magnitude is going to be 4 block past you before you have large attack lines deployed and 8 more blocks past you before you can tear it all down and get back in the fight. A house in that scenario is not going to produce ember cast significant enough to warrant being hard tied to a hydrant and large attack lines. Get out in front of it and disrupt the energy.
Truth be told, this documentary took the NFPA HIZ Assessment training modules and applied it straight to the Palisades and Eaton Fires. Those are good principles but they are not the complete answer to how to combat these. Research and studies need to factor in to their analysis the radiant and convected heat columns to have a much more robust and accurate assessment of what is really happening
11 Likes
Iām particularly disappointed that Chief Maronne and others want to blame this entire thing on changing weather patterns as opposed to taking into account the human aspect. Iām not one to say that isnāt a factor, but since the early 1900s we changed the way we interact with the landscape. Keith makes a great point that defensible space wasnāt even mentioned. These contract counties in particular have historically failed at meeting vegetation management expectations and do little to no in-person LE100 inspections despite the state funding them to do exactly these tasks. Just like the citizens want to point a finger at the fire department instead of considering where and how they built their homes, the fire department wants to deflect and point the blame somewhere else. It seems to me everyone needs to start owning their responsibilities.
13 Likes
Well said and 100% accurate
5 Likes
Thanks for saying this. Every time I start my Cub Cadet or mix some 2 stroke gas I feel like Iām being punished and creating a natural disaster somewhere else
4 Likes
I agree wholeheartedly. I do think you could make a case that thereās a decent chance that climate change played a role in LA being that bone dry in January. But thatās about where it ends. As Pyrogeography has said so aptly, we need to harden our homes, businesses, and communities so that the inevitable fires that do occur burn around them rather than destroy them.
6 Likes
Completely agree. It was strange that they grabbed ahold of a local brigade volunteer as the primary expert. I applaud LA County for starting this community based program, but focusing on this volunteer and making it sound like going to someoneās house to help them do clearance inspections and give advice is somehow a new concept and ignores the fire department ( LA City and County) responsibility for enforcement
And yes I do realize the producer had full control of the presentation and a message to deliver
4 Likes
As a reminder to everyone The Palisades Fire was over $240+ million and 80% within the city of LA (LRA Jurisdiction).
Yes it is almost surrounded by LA County SRA and also the Santa Monica Mountain & Topanga State Park.
But as been mentioned ad nauseum, proper clearance, home hardening, and vegetation management would have prevented the extent of this disaster, not climate change.
9 Likes
If you look at the NIST studies it is very clear that ember production is the key contributor to structure loss in the urban interface. That was proven in their studies and I can support that anecdotally from what I have experienced. That is the basis of the new āZone 0āā¦ embers landing in bark, mulch and flammable vegetation are igniting flammable siding and burning homes down. Trees dropping leaves or needles on the roof are being ignited and leaves a needles being blown into the sides of homes, alcoves are igniting flammable debris, siding and burning the homes down. On the Eaton Jute door mats were burning homes down. It is the debris, left over fence boards on the ground next to the house, a dog house, a tarp or cheap vinyl car port that are burning houses down. The zone 0 is critical with 30 feet of defensible space and 70 feet of reduced fuel beyond the 30 feet that is critical.
As far as house to house spreadā¦ that is a function of convection and radiation but only in a direct sense. The preheating aspect only applies to light flashy one hour fuels. Fuels have a time lag for drying and any radiant heat that would preheat it anything beyond grass and pine needles would immediately ignite everything. Rememberā¦ your skin burns at 140 degreesā¦ so you could not even be present if the temps were anywhere near that and we often are in those areas while this occurring. You could almost argue that in many of the these fires we have a lot of smoke shading downwind and a cooling effect.
For tactics. Bump and run only works in a dispersed setting where the fire works its way into the community slowly or where defensible space is really good. Where the water supply is a compromised or there are simply more homes than resources tactical engagement by the STL is what makes the difference. The STL needs to push the engines to the homes and get in front often the engines and keep them moving to the homes that can be saved. As the wins rack upā¦ they need to circle back to keep from losing the homes from embers from the burning homes( tactical patrol). Once the water system goes down each trike team needs to pick a home or business and defend it from the structures on either side as they burn down. This takes timeā¦ This worked on Valley, Clayton, Camp, North, In Ojai and Eaton.
To be honest in every major WUI fire I have been in , we used every type of tactic.You have to toggle quickly from one tactic to the next to be successful.
People have to face the facts that it is really hard to do anything in 30 mph windsā¦ driveā¦ seeā¦walkā¦and fight a fire. Double it and we are now approaching hurricane force. I saw homes in La Canada ( a lot) who had significant damage just from the wind. Roofs were ripped off, solar panels ripped off. That explains a lot about how those fires unfolded. To even think that there would be any sort of success in those conditions is crazy. Once we add immediate rescue and evacuations firefighting takes a back seat we lose the ability to get any type of anchor point.
Tough decisions have to be made about protecting infrastructure, historical and culturally important buildings and businesses so that the remainder of the community can survive.
With regard to climateā¦taking the change in climate out of the conversation is like parking an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff that people keep falling off of to treat them. You can cut/burn all the grass and trees you want they will grow back. Our climate is changing dramatically and that has had a critical effect on the fuels and their availability and volatility. I understand that many of you want to argue the points, but I would ask you do some independent research on the climate. In that I mean read a book or take a class. The book āThe west without water ā is a good start. Two climate scientists do a great job at explaining the process of pale-climatic science and take the reader through mud core samples from the Santa Barbara coast where shells of clams that are primarily made of carbon from 10ās of thousands of years can be traced. Those added to shells from shell mounds in the Bay Area and tree stump samples from Nevada and the Sierra paint a clear picture of droughts and floods. What is not there is the meteoritic rise in Co2 until the 1800ās. From that point we can see the changes in precipitation variability and the relationship to large fires in the pollen and ash trapped in sediments in lakes and the Bay.
Once we put roots down and put our homes on permanent foundations we were at odds with Mother Nature.
12 Likes
The biggest eye opener to me regarding flammables next to homes were the trash service supplied trash cans thats lids blew open, embers in, big plastic trash can on fire right next to house. Like thats the sort of stuff nobody is arming people with. Again home hardening, attention to landscape for resiliency so we can give suppression a fighting chance.
9 Likes
I am working on the Eaton Fire clean up. The Altadena area had many problems for firefighters to deal with. There are very few fire hydrants and not great pressure. The water system is very old, I was told much of the water lines are way under sized. There are 3 different water districts in the burn area and many hydrants were and still are out of service.
The homes were packed into what I would call a haphazard arrangement. It would appear the lots were split and resplit to maximize housing. That created small alleyways not wide enough for engine access where 6 to 8 homes were built. For the most part these homes were built in the 1920 to 1950s. Many were wood sided and some lucky ones that are still standing have cedar shake exterior walls and roofs.
Most of the streets are very narrow with most homes having very large trees that burned into the crowns and many which were toppled by the wind. It wood appear to me that there were very few places to make a stand once the homes and trees were ablaze pushed by the wind. The amount of heat and embers coupled with very little water would limit where you could make a stand.
The area of homes burned runs along the mountains for roughly 3 miles and it burned into town in some places about 2 miles. Many homes were lost in areas where no other properties burned, embers found a fuel source and torched the homes. It is a very sad situation.
One thing I know, fingers can be pointed in many directions but I donāt think politicians will allow the problems that cause this catastrophe to see daylight.
8 Likes
@Flames56: https://kymkemp.com/2025/03/26/mendocino-county-residents-train-to-assess-wildfire-risks-in-new-cal-fire-program/
1 Like
Two weeks ago, a friend of mine was working with a faith-based volunteer work group in the Palisades fire area. They were helping residents sift through the ashes to find any high value (financial or sentimental) items like rings or items the residents really wanted as keepsakes. A couple of the volunteers had questions about what they observed going on. I have my ideas but am wondering if there is an official explanation.
In front of each house in the areas they were working, workers had dug down to the gas line connection to each house, sealed it, and then two different cement trucks followed. One poured one type (mixture) of cement, then another one followed and poured in a different type (or mixture). They could see where the work had been completed in other areas where it had subsequently been paved over. One of the cement truck drivers confirmed that they had sealed the gas lines. Has anyone heard of the official explanation or that that these lots had been converted to all electric now?
2 Likes
They cap the line at the main usually. This is so there is no chance of equipment hitting a above ground meter unprotected.
I think the two cement trucks were putting a sand slurry around the pipes and covered with cement slurry.
3 Likes