Watching the damage these fires are causing is heart breaking. I can't imagine being in the middle of it. Hope all of our GRM family in the area are safe, and continue to be so.
Watching the damage these fires are causing is heart breaking. I can't imagine being in the middle of it. Hope all of our GRM family in the area are safe, and continue to be so.
I am in LA right now for work - Hawthorne, actually, and its a whole mess.
Smells like a BBQ outside, hazy and stinky. This morning - south of LAX, ash was falling on my car and everything had a bit of dust on it.
Gotta hope these winds die down soon and these folks can get a handle on it.
Insurance companies gotta be E36 M3ting their pants. This was not a few trailers getting blown over in central Florida. Lots of big money real estate with corresponding big money lawyers.
I watched the sunset fire kick off live. Like, the abc news chopper spotted it and they notified LAFD. unreal how fast it moved down the canyon towards Hollywood Blvd and some serious populated areas. Reminded me of the movie Volcano.
93gsxturbo said:Insurance companies gotta be E36 M3ting their pants. This was not a few trailers getting blown over in central Florida. Lots of big money real estate with corresponding big money lawyers.
Much of California is seeing insurance rates along the lines of what it must cost to insure an old house on a Florida sandbar. My dad's house/barn/motorcycle collection in Nocal costs over $2k/month to insure.
I went to school near the Palisades fire and did construction in that area. Used to see Walter Matthao walk his dogs every day and Lou Ferrigno out for his jogs. Had some lovely times at the Roy Rogers estate and Polo grounds as well as the original Getty Villa and museum. They both may be gone by now. Also had friends burnt out by a similar fire in the Berkeley/Oakland hills. Fire's a mofo for sure. And then there's the earthquakes. LOL.
Starting to smell fire in San Diego. Likely little local ones but 20mph winds at my folks place in northern San Diego and only dropping at night.
Lived through two big ones down here and people are resilient and help each other. Everyone is much better prepared and have good brush clearance around houses.
My sister and BIL evacuated their house in Pasadena late last night. Some of their friends have lost their homes. Scary stuff.
There were some serious wind gusts last night and this morning which added to the whole thing and grounded the much needed air support. I am upwind of all of it, so I didn't even get any smoke (although I smelled a bit of what is likely the Hollywood hills fire tonight). They did kill the power here to try and avoid power line fires, so it may not be until later tomorrow before they turn it on. I have a generator just for that reason (I am in a bit of a wind corridor, but no real fire danger here).
There is some interesting video of a Cal Fire bulldozer pushing some rather high end cars (this is a very pricey area) off a road because the drivers abandoned them in the traffic jam trying to get out.
I will be very surprised if ANY house in those canyons of Malibu (apparently 100 or so beach front housed burnt) will be able to be insured unless it is built as heavily fireproof.
I would be very curious to know how many of the houses lost were the result of embers (there were a LOT flying around) getting into the sofet vents or roof vents. That seems like an entry point that would be relatively easy to cure, especially with the cost of some of these houses!
We have still yet to get any significant winter rain (not uncommon, Feb, March are usually the big rain months), so everything is dry, and the humidity is very low (I heard under 10% in some areas!)
More winds scheduled for next Monday....
I posted this in the hotlinks thread, but this is the heat map for the Palisades fire. There are a LOT of houses in there (they are saying over 1000 at this point)
I can tell you that the previous file in Ventura county did result in some pretty significant car losses, including some significant Corvairs (Yenko's)
Definitely check on your people. My aunt and uncle lost their house last night. They were evacuated and are safe, but it is still nothing short of a tragedy. Playing the Cure, Prayers for Rain couldn't hurt.
One of our top sales guys and his in laws lost their houses.
Its kinda weird for me worrying about people in southern California. All of the people I know are in, or on the borders of Marin County. I go to check on fires and I have to remember to use different sources.
Devastating.
My brother was a starving film industry dude and lived in LA for 25 years but is in OH now. He has been talking to friends this week.
He was told that State Farm canceled a LOT of homeowner policies in that region at the end of 2024. Sure hope those people were able to secure an alternative - but you can probably count on a long battle even if you have coverage. Massive policy hit.
And terrifying.
Some of the footage is unreal. Looks like what Hell would actually be.
Someone filming the fire caught this absolutely perfect drop from a copter
Trying to find a better version, but its perfection
In case it hasn't been mentioned yet, you can keep an eye on the fires with the Watch Duty app.
It's free, and I downloaded it this morning.
The scope of that is amazing. Someone mentioned fire getting through the vents. That's certainly a common route. Building codes have been getting more and more stringent - adding things like fire dampers in foundation vents, and a layer of fire-rated sheet rock between the siding and the sheathing, but there's always a weakness. Often it's doors and windows.
Subsequent to the Oakland Hills fire of 1991 I saw a lot of houses that were "saved" but in fact substantively ruined, as the firefighters would blast water onto the roofs, and the high pressure water would migrate between the shingles and into the building. The structure was intact, but inside it looked like everything had been submerged. Beats the alternative, I guess.
My brother and cousin are both there. My cousin is 3 blocks outside the mandatory evacuation area, and can see the flames from his house.
Prayers for all.
I live in Westlake Village so I'm about 20 miles away from the fires and perpendicular to the wind direction.
Around 10:00 PM on Tuesday, I heard what sounded like strong rain hitting my windows and I wondered if a cyclone or something was pulling water out of my pool.
I live at the top of a steep hill with open land beyond my backyard and it turned out that the wind was so intense that my house was getting sandblasted with dirt.
Here's some pics of the 2018 fire I took...
Pulling water out of the lake
I was working in the Bay Area when my daughter called me at 3:00 AM saying "dad, the cops are kicking us out of our house, when are you getting home".
I set three unofficial land speed records getting from Burbank to my house.
Some guy couldn't decide if he wanted to leave his 911 stock, slightly modified, or go all out with it so he got three of them.
This morning around LAX airport ( about 10 miles south of Pacific Palisades ) the winds have been down but the air is still very smokey , no where near as bad as the first 2 days .
The first 2 days had the worst air I have ever seen , and I have lived in this area all my life.
Hopefully the worst is over in the Palisades and it does not head towards Malibu or North over the hill towards Encino ,
Fingers crossed
(moved from Hotlinks thread)"
loosecannon said:aircooled said:Most of the Palisades have burnt (very expensive area). They are saying 1000's of houses. 100's of beach front Malibu area houses burnt. Pretty crazy! Colored areas are heat areas, so some sort of fire at least. Some areas are clearly totally burnt down.
I'm writing this from memory but I heard a podcast about California's fire problem a couple of years ago. Due to watering ban because of water shortage, Californians are not allowed to water their grass or spray down their houses to keep from burning and they don't allow people to stay and fight the fires (Australia by contrast, trains citizens how to fight fires so they don't have as much property loss). Anyways, a company recently offered to build a desalination plant which would alleviate the water shortage problem and IIRC the whole place would then be sold to the state for $1 after 25 years. But, Californians voted against it because some small marine life might get caught in the intake screens.
Although very true, I would say that watering restriction or availability (as absurd as they are since agriculture uses FAR more than residential) have almost no effect on the fires we see. With the current houses that burnt, very few of them even have lawns to die. There are a few larger properties / houses in there, but those generally just ignore the restrictions and water everything. Realistically, you don't want any vegetation (watered or not) next to your house. If it catches, it can shoot embers up in to the vents etc.
People are generally not restricted from staying with their homes, but the typically just get in the way and are the prime candidates for needing rescue (wasting a lot of resources) and dying.
You could pump huge amounts of water into SoCal and unless you "water" the hills and canyons, it would be unlikely to help the situation (e.g. if it rained year round here, the problem would be much smaller). As far as why it's seemingly so bad now? I think a lot of it has to do with the tendency to build development well into these canyons and hilltops and of course once a fire gets into a development, it cascades quickly. These fires have been happening for all of history of course, there are just more structures to burn now.
The attention to power line causes will certainly help, but I can pretty much guarantee you that some of the fires the sprouted are the result of homeless living in the bushes. There are a LOT of homeless caused fires in LA, but normally don't spread as much, that is the result of the wind.
The other critical aspect here, and with this one, is that the wind gust were so high (generally 50 ish mph, up to 100 in the mountains!) it grounded the air support, which there is a LOT more of now. Having a lot of the gusts and wind happening over night also makes it worse, even though they do now have night capable fire bombers.
It will be very interesting to see what the fire insurance situation will be in pretty much any area in or south of the Santa Monica mountains (where these canyons are). I cannot imagine anyone would sell you insurance unless the house is built to by mostly fire proof (which certainly is possible, it just might not be "pretty").
Looks like they are predicting more Santa Ana winds early next week....
Good point on the homeless.
I've got a couple of friends out there I messaged to check on this morning. The first one is in between the two big fires and sent back a picture of his "time to go" bags. I mentioned I had another good friend in Altadena who evacuated yesterday and he responded with:
"Altadena is gone."
The water issues in that area go back well over a century and are somewhat inevitable when you build a large population center in what is essentially a desert. So while it's not entirely wrong to blame recent policies and those who implemented them, it ignores the larger context. Mix in climate change and ever-increasing population and the building that Aircooled mentioned and this kind of thing starts to look inevitable.
Reuters Article on Homeowners Insurance in California - January 9, 2025.
I think the author and the people interviewed for the article missed a very important point.
Homeowners insurance in California is very inexpensive relative to the home's value because a much larger percent of the value is in the land than almost anywhere else.
Your house in Pacific Palisades may be gone but the land it was on still offers the same amazing weather, views, access to top paying jobs, etc..
Realistically, maybe only 20% of the total value is gone when the house burns down.
For a bit of perspective on the Palisades area that burned (they are saying 50% to 75% of the entire town is gone). Here is a Zillow shot of one of the areas that I am pretty sure is completely flat now. Of note of course is that most of this cost is land cost, but those will still be very expensive to rebuilt! I also should say that it does look like many of the houses there do have yards (urban wise, some would say those aren't real yards), but I still don't think a green yard would help much.
Some of the videos of the ember wind storms are insane. I was just put in Sacramento area for work, meeting with some CalFire guys. There is a lot of help coming down from Washington and Oregon to help with containment and S&R. Over 100 engines were coming through Davis and headed to SoCal from what I heard at dinner last night.
In reply to aircooled :
Those houses are so packed in there that even if the yards where concrete, the fire just jumps from house to house to house in that kind of wind.
I read that the fire departments ran out of water at the fire hydrants and everyone online was bitching about how that could happen. I also saw several photos of burnt up homes and every one showed some interior water line spraying water. Just think of how much water you would loose with every house's 1" main water line discharging water.
You'll need to log in to post.
