371–380 of 691 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some harrowing before and after photos from a Maxar instrument via LA Times (may be pay walled): https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-08/shocking... This shows Altadena, just east of JPL, and Malibu (separate fires, of course).
This is a horrific satellite picture of Altadena: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/06-closer-s...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was a wealthy area built within canyons and other natural areas. Controlled burns are possible in some areas but I can't imagine it would have been possible there.
I’m not sure precisely where the fires started, but the neighborhoods in the Palisades are impenetrable hillsides with roads and houses are intervals. They’re about as densely developed as practical given the geography. A controlled burn would be unimaginable there.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding what was actually cut, do the cuts include the firefighting equipment sent to Ukraine? Sounds like that was mostly hoses and extra PPE, not major force-multiplier systems needed for this type of fire: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/vital-la-firefighting... And why is there apparently no water in the fire hydrants? Something about the reservoir not being refilled appropriately?
> why is there apparently no water in the fire hydrants? They emptied the tanks fighting the fire. From the article in the GP comment: The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in a Wednesday press conference refuted claims, including those made by Caruso, that water tanks in Pacific Palisades weren’t fully filled ahead of the fire. Departmental officials said the three tanks in the area were filled to capacity w…
It’s grown quite far actually. We have family who had to evacuate in the Hollywood Hills.
Los Angeles Fire Department funding was cut by over $23M only a few months ago. The fires are currently being fought by a skeleton crew of remaining fire fighters and volunteers. Can't say if that funding would have prevented it, but cutting it definitely has not helped. Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/08/los-angeles-fires-m... Edit: Changing a word, "gutted" -> "cut"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the police budget is 2B. The fire budget is ~800M. Pretty significant by itself. You keep throwing around this 23M number like a 3% change would make a material impact on 3 fast-spreading huge fires in worst-case-scenario conditions. What do you think the budget would need to be to handle this? In a scenario that goes deep, such as how water pressure is low because of how much demand is coming from so many hydrant…
"You keep throwing around this 23M number like a 3% change would make a material impact on 3 fast-spreading huge fires in worst-case-scenario conditions." Take 23M and tell me how many firefighters that'd hire, plus equipment to support them. then tell me if that equipment would've been sufficient to at least contain the fires instead of having the damage we have now. Protip as a former Memphis FD Volunteer: Every da…
> The budget reduction, approved last year by Mayor Karen Bass, was mostly absorbed by leaving many administrative jobs unfilled, but that left about $7 million that was cut from its overtime budget that was used for training, fire prevention, and other key functions
(see up thread peer comment for source)
Further, with a constrained revenue and something like 63% of the entiire state budget going to Police and Fire it appears that the California Fire budget lost out a little to the California Police budget.
There's the arena for fighting this out, a good old badge on badge bar fight over $$$'s.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>very little that can be done in these situations I don't agree with that. People can choose to not live there. There is an entire country to live in and we keep crowding in what seem to the worst places to live and then act surprised when it goes badly. Climate change is going to make some places uninhabitable, that's why we tried to prevent it, but no one cares.
> … we keep crowding in what seem to the worst places to live … Malibu? Pacific Palisades? These are among the most pleasant places in the world to live. People are not going to stop wanting to live there — this isn’t a lost cause like a low-lying area exposed to floods. We have to find ways to mitigate the very real fire risk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone tweeted $23 million .. your linked article (thank you for source) follows that with: City budget documents show the department’s more than $800 million budget decreased by around $17 million compared to the previous budget cycle. Which makes the cuts less than %2.12 "Gutted" as a descripter seems extreme and the details that matter are whether these reductions simply trimmed fat, or denied something essential…
The problem with that though is that the overall budget includes big ticket items like pensions and overtime. And cuts often directly are from live services. So even though it’s 2% of the overall budget, the cut could still be significant to the availability of firefighters and crucial things like response times.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which other fat targets should local governments cut? Please be specific and quantitative.
Great question, lets take a look at the 2024-2025 budget sheet for LA City: https://cao.lacity.gov/budget/summary/2024-25%20Budget%20Sum... (This PDF is great, props to whoever made it for making it so easy and accessible for normal people to read.) If you look at the pie chart on Page 11, you will see that by far the largest slice of the pie is the police budget. It's 45% of LA County's entire budget, totalling almo…
That's like arguing that since Los Angeles public school's budget is $18.8 billion[1], yet scores are still poor[2], we should cut the public school budget.
[1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-06-26/lausd-ap... [2] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-10-11/lausd-ma...