Massive Palisades and Eaton wildfire devastate portions of Los Angeles.

 

Firefighters battling the Palisades fire. AP. 

The massive Palisades and Eaton wildfires have devastated portions of Los Angeles. AP. Five people have died and more than 1000 structures have been destroyed in the wildfires. The fires were fueled by hurricane force Santa Anna winds and dry conditions, in a rare January firestorm. Firefighters were hampered by the conditions and lack of power and water, but it was unlikely they would have been able to stop the storms. The Palisades fire alone is now the most destructive in the history of Los Angeles, and it was joined by the Eaton fire and now another fire in the Hollywood Hills. The Pacific Palisades neighborhood was devastated. 

Fox News has live updates for the disaster. 

My Comment:

The videos and pictures from this disaster are insane. Los Angeles really did turn into a hellscape yesterday and today and it's hard to even believe or comprehend the level of devastation. The fact that only five people have died so far is quite amazing given the amount of destruction and how fast these firestorms moved. 

And it's not like Los Angeles is out of the woods yet. The storms are continuing and are not contained and now the Hollywood Hills are burning as well. Thankfully the extreme wind that fueled these storms are no longer present for the moment. And it looks like Los Angeles proper will be safe from these fires, if not from all the smoke the fires produced. 

Some of the victims of the storm are celebrities, including Mark Hamill, Mandy Moore and James Woods. Woods has been a good source of information, surprisingly enough. He lost his house and he also said that the insurance companies canceled the policies of the folks in his neighborhood, probably because this disaster was pretty predictable. 

I think that California has a lot of blame for this disaster, especially at the leadership level. This is not going to go well for California governor Gavin Newsom or LA Mayor Karen Bass. Bass is getting slammed for not even being in the country during the disaster, she was in Ghana, of all places, when this storm started and she hasn't been covering herself in glory since she has come back. 

In some ways these kinds of storms are not preventable. California has a long history of wildfires and given the Santa Anna winds and dry conditions, fires were pretty inevitable. There are things you can't really stop and these storms are probably one of them. 

But there were also a lot of things that could have been done a lot better than they were. California's fire management system is horrible and they have let far too much brush and debris pile up and that leads to massive fires. Gavin Newsom has also blocked efforts to refill the states reservoir's, which may be a reason why fire hydrants didn't work during the worst of the fire. Even worse, there are reports that the city's surplus fire equipment was sent to Ukraine, of all places, instead of being stockpiled for this eventuality. 

Given how bad these storms were I don't know how much these things affected the storm. But you would have to think things might not have gotten this bad had the leadership of California been at all competent. I'd also add that since California is a de facto one party state, so the Democrats own this disaster. I would hope that this would lead to some change in the state, but I just don't believe that is even possible at this point...