And there will be a fire next time, and another after that. Und so wieter. Because that is how it is, the peculiar mild Mediterranean climate with the gusty, hot and dry winds which usually come blasting down the mountains from the desert beyond. Winds which mostly arrive in the fall, but this time in mid-winter. My late father, the professional research biologist who gave the best nature walks ever, told us over and over how the native ecosystem was engineered by nature to burn every twenty-five to thirty years; to burn fast, clearing away and revitalizing dead grass and overgrown chaparral. We lived in near-constant awareness of the danger posed by those fires in that brush which covered the hills where my parents preferred to live – especially in the fall, when the high winds roared over the mountains, straight off the baking-hot desert. A couple of acres at the end of a dirt road was absolute heaven to Mom and Dad. Hell to them was tightly packed suburbia, elbow to elbow with the neighbors.
So we lived in the hills as soon as Mom and Dad could afford a mortgage rather than rent, kept the brush around the various houses trimmed, the garden well-watered, had a mental list of the precious and irreplaceable items to be grabbed and taken with us in case of a sudden fire evacuation. (In the end, in spite of all care and precautions taken, Mom and Dad’s retirement house in northern San Diego County burned in the 2003 fires, destroying any number of inherited family relics.)I have never forgotten the peculiar odor of smoke from a big burn hanging in the air, the odd beige-orange color of the sky, how the smoke from a distant brushfire piles up in sullen beige clouds, and the peculiar deep roaring sound of a fire well under way. One night in the week of Thanksgiving 1975, we watched the Mill fire burning downhill towards Sunland, Tujunga and La Crescenta. Through Dad’s binoculars, we saw a fire tornado sucking flying debris into itself, while a line of advancing flames stretched as far to the east and west as we could see. Fire engine sirens wailed almost constantly, near and far that night, along the streets below us.
The LAFD were able to beat out that massive fire in the Angeles National Forest within three days or so. But that was then … this is now, and half a century later. Managerial competence in governance and administration appears to have departed California, right along with that portion of a middle and working class who despair of ever getting ahead of the game. So many essential blocks have been pulled out of the jenga tower that was California, through political expediency and mismanagement. The infrastructure of lines and hydrants neglected. Reservoirs and dams were not filled with a particularly generous snow-melt and routed where it would be needed when the fires came; instead, precious water was allowed to pour unhindered into the ocean. Fire breaks and roads were not maintained, preventive burns not done, because environmental activists within and outside the state government have made it nearly impossible. Insurance companies, upon seeing the writing on the wall and knowing that catastrophic fires were inevitable, flatly declined to provide coverage to homeowners. The LAFD fired essential personnel for refusing the Covid shot, deferred equipment maintenance, appeared to prioritize celebrating gay and transgender rather than focusing on fire prevention. In the final insult, the LA FD had their budget cut by the mayor’s office. The mayor herself seems to be one of those who revels in the rewards of the office and those ceremonial honors attached but has little appetite or ability for attending to essentials of civic management.
So all those jenga blocks had been pulled out, when the fires started burning after the Santa Ana winds began to blow. It matters very little if those fires were started by any deliberate or random accident, as they always will in California. Anything and everything will spark off a fire: a discarded cigarette butt, a short in a power line or a string of Christmas lights, a steel bulldozer striking a flint rock, sunlight focusing through a piece of broken glass, a campfire not entirely extinguished, a hot catalytic converter on a car parking in long dry grass … accident or arson.
The hills will burn.
This time, they have burned out the wealthy and well-situated. (Again – like the 1961 Bel-Air fire did.) To a large degree, those in Malibu, along the coast, and in the Pacific Palisades generally appear to be people who were perfectly OK with the initial extraction of the jenga blocks which permitted their secure and privileged lives. Until the fires came over the hillside. (The Eaton fire simultaneously burned out whole neighborhoods in Altadena. This didn’t seem to get half the breathless coverage in the mainstream establish media, mostly because it’s a middle-class to working class neighborhood, with many residents who have lived there for generations, and whose small urban single-family cottages will not be as readily replaced.)
Some commenters speculate that the fires this time will lead to a conservative reawakening in California. A nice thought, but I rather doubt it. Even with the various mismanagement of things in California … it’s still very pleasant for those who have a comfortable income, have lived there all their lives and disdain the thought of living anywhere else. The climate is mild year-round, compared to most other places, the range of scenery is glorious, and there still are some cultural advantages. A handful of counties back of the coastal zone and outside of the big cities are still well-managed and sane.
I think it more likely that what will happen as a result of the fires will be a west-coast Curley effect. The electorate will be shaped as the long-time mayor of Boston did, driving out those most inclined to vote against progressive policies. Those who can see the writing on the wall are leaving and will leave with all speed, and perhaps the speed will increase after this disaster. The Californians left behind probably won’t vote for Karen “The Commie” Bass, Governor Brylcreem or their ilk. It’s even more likely that they’ll pull the lever for another even worse Dem next time around and probably one even more incompetent. Whoever the next generation of California politicians and managers will be – it’s a guarantee that their progressive credentials and their chosen pronouns will be perfect. Comment as you wish.
Sad but true, Sgt Mom. Environmentalists have blood on their hands — AGAIN! — but instead of slapping down the Greenies, rich California lawyers will get even richer suing PG&E, while CA politicians will consolidate their positions by blaming President Trump and global warming.
Never forget that the same kind of Political Class which has destroyed California has also run up an unrepayable US National Debt. That is less dramatic than a wildfire, but in the not-too-distant future is likely to be even more destructive.
That 2003 fire in San Diego (it was called the “Cedar Fire”) came to within 10 feet of the back fence of my house in the Scripps Ranch area of San Diego. Fortunately our Home Owners Association had done some major brush clearage around our development several months prior to the fire; most (but not all) of the homes in our development (Crowne Pointe) were spared. My family evacuated the area for three days. I called the home telephone periodically, the answering machine kept working, so I was pretty confident that the house was still standing. Law enforcement checked IDs of people entering the area for two months afterwards to cut down on looting and curiosity seekers. The smell lingered for six months. What a mess.
Reawakening – a near future Sci-Fi author, some years ago, set his story in the US after a major breakdown. One tribe in that story blamed every problem on an evil demon named Plooshun. As a result they had reverted to extremely primitive living. You would almost think he had written it after seeing the California mindset. They do seem to be heading in that direction.
Democrats only win States with no Voter ID. Remember how Florida got red as soon as they got rid of the lady in Dade Country Elections? (I’m dating myself)
“It’s even more likely that they’ll pull the lever for another even worse Dem next time around and probably one even more incompetent. Whoever the next generation of California politicians and managers will be – it’s a guarantee that their progressive credentials and their chosen pronouns will be perfect.”
This.
The Default Setting (TM) for SoCal is “pleasantly liberal;” that’s how they think, how they live, and how they vote. There’s a lot of money in SoCal and up along the coastal strip, from several sources, and that slush fund supports the ability for liberalism to maintain its isolation from reality.
I think you’re right about the “fire refugees,” they will be from the strata who realize, finally, that effective improvement in that political and social environment is impossible, and while many, perhaps most, will stay, a substantial percentage will depart. Not that it will make any difference, except to them.
So much of California is in a Very Pleasant Doom Loop, becoming apparent only when the system undergoes stress, enough stress that a certain level of failure mode can no longer be ignored or hidden. The day-to-day brainless trivialities are dealt with as “just the way things are” but it’s hard to ignore your neighborhood, or that of a friend or family member, becoming smoking rubble, and not a one so affected has yet become engaged with the bureaucracy controlling the permitting process for recovery and rebuilding.
My concern is what the fire refugees will bring with them to their new abodes. They may have realized that SoCal’s Pleasant Liberalism doesn’t work but will not be ready to give up on it entirely because it is such a pleasant way to live, and will try to implement at least parts of it wherever they land.
Which is true everywhere; here in The South we’re facing a large influx of Northeasters who are having difficulty adjusting from the restrictive – and corrosive – cultures of NY, CT, NJ, IL, et al to the freedoms and pace of life here, and the independence it offers. I doubt too many SoCal refugees will make it this far across the continent, but Texas and much of the Mountain and Desert West will have their hands full.
As for California, I’ll watch what happens from 3,000 miles and three time zones away. I very sincerely wish them the best.
Agree with all that has been said; and that’s a poignant sketch by Sgt. Mom of how the Mediterranean climate works. Absent human curation (brush and timber clearance) these periodic burns are inevitable. I suppose you could plot the p(burn) over time as a kind of catastrophic function; but human nature being what it is, and the interval between big burns being (close to?) generational, we don’t seem to learn, or our learning is not embedded in our policies and budgets. See also NOLA levee maintenance: much more fun to spend the money on block parties or trips to Ghana.
It has been an odd story to follow. Like everything that involves NYC or LA it gets magnified. Perhaps more than usual because you can trot out B list celebs for this one. I feel badly for the people involved, but from my occasional visits to LA you could take the increased cost of living there, pay me twice that and I’d still say no thanks.
But is there also a bit of Blue State cognitive (or emotive?) dissonance going on? I mean, they have been so much in the vanguard of reducing carbon emissions, “going green”, welcoming the entire world even if they are homeless in tent cities under freeways. And their reward? Air full of carbon. Nothing green in sight. More people homeless, although the celebs won’t be living in tents but in their other homes.
In 1975, at 12 years old, we lived a few houses South of Apperson on McVine. I remember days and days of that orange-gray sky, the smell, and the ashes floating down like snow. I’m still in So. Cal. (Fallbrook), and I don’t remember a year that I didn’t smell it and have a layer of ash on the car from some local fire. It’s a part of life I am never surprised by. True about the Chaparral burning as process. Many varieties of native plant require the seeds torched in order to germinate. Altadena is startling as I’ve never seen it go so far into a residential area.
Insty often uses a phrase coined by H. L. Mencken for situations like this; “Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” Unfortunately there are two Californias – the woke Left and their victims. There are still a lot of sane, hard working people in the state. Based on anecdotal evidence from driving along both the east and west sides of the Sierras, I’d say they’re a lot more prevalent in the former. I hope they have enough political clout locally to at least slow the pace of decay.
Man you bring back memories of my far too distant youth. I too remember watching the Tujunga fire in ’75 from my family’s rented home on Adam’s Hill. Huge fire, and I seem to remember few neighborhoods threatened, though the encroachment of the suburban sprawl into the forest had not begun in earnest yet.
It has amazed me that people that grew up alongside me in SoCal have completely missed the recurring nature and increasing magnitude of these wildfires. While the empty-headed environmentalist have blamed “global warming/climate change” they seem to be unable to process that the severity increased in direct proportion to the curtailing / cessation of fire mitigation projects.
I long ago despaired that any of my childhood friend’s would note the cognitive dissonance of what Franklin Branworth labeled ““pleasantly liberal” or as I have noted as “liberal-Democrat” but with conservative values on economics, education, and immigration. Like many others I doubt even this tragedy will wake up enough of the sheeple in California.
SGT Mom….
I think you nailed the points quite well
Any environment imposes demands on people and especially the governments to perform. If you want to live in upstate NY, you better know how to drive in the snow, stockpile supplies for a big blizzard, and have a government that understands snow removal – as opposed to say DC where snow removal means Spring.
If you live out West, it’s about fire and water. The joke in Arizona was that the only state agency that worked well was the Dept. of Water Resources, because it had too or else. Fires were never as catastrophic as CA and while there were evacuations over the years in smaller towns, the only town that I can remember that was in real danger of burning was Show Low back in the 90s.
California in its progressive fever dreams has divorced itself from these, and other physical, realities. Victor Davis Hanson has written extensively on the subject; how a water system developed for 20 million people is supposed to serve now 40 million. Back when I was being dragged around AZ by a cute History grad student and spent time in small towns talking to archivists, one showed me pictures of forests back when the first LDS pioneers came in the 1870s; it was so open and clear of brush and regrowth you could drive your wagon through it. Not now. Arizona and other states learned, not CA.
I also think you nailed it with the “Curley Effect” The fires provide an opportunity by discrediting the current regime but without a ready mechanism for channeling that anger into political change it dissipates. It takes organization, the Trump effect where a charismatic man can seize the day is very rare and note it still is a work in progress.
You are right, more than likely this will result in people leaving California instead of trying to change it and the problems will get worse.
“The electorate will be shaped as the long-time mayor of Boston did, driving out those most inclined to vote against progressive policies.” #1) I think Los Angeles already DID that – hence idiot Mayor Karen Bass. (How much more “Curley” can you get than Los Angeles already?) #2) Lotta RICH powerful people are pissed. They might just vote for Rick Caruso as LA Mayor next time. In fact, if there is a recall election Caruso could end up as Mayor of Los Angeles sooner than you think.
I think the easy thing is to be pessimistic. It’s become a national pasttime amongst conservatives – practically gloating about how California is doooomed. Ultimately I think it’s the wrong view. It’s lazy – it absolves people of doing anything because what’s the point? If Trump and DeSantis had taken that view, where would we be today?
I think it’s smart to understand the magnitude of the challenge, but people should not give in to the Black-pill. We need fighters willing to push back. We all got lazy and have learned the hard way that ‘voting harder’ isn’t enough. Time to sharpen our tools and get to work – the midterms are just around the corner. This fight isn’t over by a long shot.
Who’s to say that California can’t come to its senses? The Soviet Union looked unbeatable until it fell apart. Hillary looked unbeatable. The DEMS looked unbeatable until the Biden debate. Brexit seemed impossible. The leftist elites, the legacy media, the universities. etc. are intellectually exhausted and morally bankrupt – and the electorate can see it. They are desperate and so will fight viciously, but the tide is turning – in the USA, in France, in Germany, in the UK, in Canada. Why not California?….Hope springs anew!
Palisades looks worse and worse. First, word is that it may have rekindled from a fireworks caused fire on New Year. Six days isn’t too long to make that implausible. Next, the fire department took 45 minutes to show up after the alarm was called in. Then, while extra resources had been assigned to other districts, the response for the initial attack seems to have been weak at the start and only corrected after it was too late to matter. Finally, the wild fire management team seems to have decided a day with 70MPH winds forecast was a good day to take off.
A question not being asked: Is there any amount of brush clearance, controlled burns, and fire break construction that will make it possible to control a fire that starts on a day with 70MPH dry winds on dry brush? Maybe the best way to manage this is the way we’re supposed to be managing flood plains (but hardly ever do), not locate expensive development there. What Southern California would look like then I don’t know but it would be very different.
What we’re likely to get is government subsidized insurance because what are the odds that the next big fire while any of the pols are still in office when the bill comes due. And before you beatify DeSantis, understand that Florida is in that exact position in terms of hurricanes. It started before he was elected but he hasn’t fixed it either.
Talk about silver linings, it seems “millions” of dollars of Hunter’s “art” has been burned.
MCS:
What we’re likely to get is government subsidized insurance because what are the odds that the next big fire while any of the pols are still in office when the bill comes due. And before you beatify DeSantis, understand that Florida is in that exact position in terms of hurricanes. It started before he was elected but he hasn’t fixed it either.
The FL legislature drove out most of the property insurers in the ’90s, because the insurers had inexplicably raised their rates to cover large numbers of claims that resulted from some major hurricanes. The insurers were supposed to just take it; premium increases by them in response to increased numbers of claims, got denounced by pols of both parties as price gouging. Many of the property insurance companies stopped doing business in Florida. The legislature then created a state insurance company because property coverage was no longer readily available, or was no longer available at premiums as low as the insurance premiums that Floridians formerly paid and now considered to be their right.
Florida’s state insurance company is a giant short put on the resources of Florida taxpayers. A sufficiently severe hurricane could blow out the state’s budget. The legislature noticed this and is trying to cut risk by removing customers from the state insurance company’s rolls. The customers are getting slammed to private insurance companies with names such as “Manatee Insurance Exchange” and (I kid you not) “Slide”. I have no idea how well capitalized these companies are. Perhaps we will find out after the next big storm.
California, from what I have read, is worse than Florida as far as how the state govt treats insurance companies and the insurance market. I wish Californians the best of luck.
If they thought they could get away with it, pols would repeal the law of gravity to make highway bridges cheaper. The laws of economics, no less iron for being less apparent, don’t stand a chance.
I live in Minnesota. Currently, it’s about 35 degrees, which is a pleasant respite in January. The week started out at zero degrees with a -20 windchill. About eight years ago, I finally reached acceptance when it came to winter in Minnesota. It’s the way it is here, and it’s worthless to complain about it. Dress for the weather and do the best you can. Live your life in spite of it. When it blows, stick your chin out and say, “Right here. Let me have it.”
I’m not saying we’re all tough as nails winter warriors. It’s Minnesota. Our governor is Tim Walz, for heaven’s sake. The Twin Cities are filled with AWFLs who vote blue no matter who and Somalians who are happy to defraud the state of millions because we still feel sorry for them escaping from where they were from. We even elected one to the House so she can tell us we’re all doing America wrong.
What I am saying is this: a long time ago, something had happened in New Orleans. Not Katrina, but a different hurricane. My old man and I were talking about it, and he said living in a place where the weather is nice all the time makes people not really serious. He said if you can go to work in flip flops, shorts, and a tank top, you may not be ready for what nature can throw at you.
Cold weather trains you. It lets you know that you have to adapt and think and prepare. The change of seasons is nice, but you’re changing to a season that can potentially kill you if you’re not careful. Car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, it’s cold and dark, you need a plan. You take care of your car, keep supplies in it, jumper cables, dress warm.
I wear cleats after falling on the ice three years back. I broke my arm because I was thinking of an interview and not paying attention. I won’t do that again.
And winter can last from November to May. Three days after the Twins won the Series in 91 we got 21 inches of snow. And what everyone forgets is that three weeks later, after we got everything cleaned up, we got 14 more inches.
I know there are people who are aware of the fire risk in California, but the beautiful weather allows far too many people to lose their awareness of what nature can do. All the money allows people to ignore the growth of government, government that wants to “do something” to justify its existence, while doing essentially nothing to really protect citizens who are distracted by the rest of life from the basic risks of living.
This fire will inevitably recede into people’s memories. The ones who lost everything won’t forget, and probably won’t forgive, either moving out of town or state. But the ones who didn’t lose anything will shrug and go back to what they were doing. A few months of gorgeous weather will make them forget even more, and soon California will return to what it was before the fire.
Not many will think about contingencies. They won’t have to.
“… living in a place where the weather is nice all the time makes people not really serious.”
That is definitely part of the story — but there must be more to it than that. When the Euro colonists (Spaniards) arrived in California, the Indian population was about a quarter of a million people. That is all the land could support. Those Indian immigrants who had walked over the land bridge from Asia had increased in population over thousands of years until California reached its carrying capacity.
Then the first Americans arrived. They were serious. They diverted rivers, built facilities, dammed Hetch Hetchy (a twin of Yosemite), dug the Cal Canal, built world-envied freeway systems, on & on. The gusys who did that lived in that same pleasant climate, but they were still serious and they still managed to prepare for the future. As a result, today California has close to 40 million people — more than an order of magnitude higher than what the first immigrants achieved.
Then came the 1970s, and California transitioned from the End of the Rainbow to the End of the Sewer Pipe. The climate did not change; the people calling the shots did.