A large, fast-moving and growing brush fire broke out Tuesday afternoon in Pacific Palisades, prompting mandatory evacuations affecting tens of thousands of people and highway closures, including people who abandoned their vehicles to flee on foot.
More than 13,000 buildings and 26,000 people are in the evacuation zone, which has been labeled “under immediate threat,” according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
As of 3:25 p.m., nearly 1,300 acres had burned, according to Cal Fire.
Full article HERE from Fox News.
As of 8pm last night, it was up to 3000 acres and 0% contained. Here was the ‘overview’ from CalFire.
The Pacific Coast Highway was closed, Malibu and a number of ‘high end’ housing areas are also under evacuation orders, and apparently a number of people ‘panicked’ and left their cars sitting in the middle of the road in the Palisades area, preventing fire vehicles from getting through… Sigh…
And if this goes further south and gets into Santa Monica, hoo boy… THAT will be ugly!
The winds are supposed to pick up overnight, so who knows what tomorrow will bring?
And they don’t know ‘what’ started the fire yet, and are pulling assets in as fast as they can to fight this fire, including the National Guard. Oh, and Xiden et al have already okayed $$$ to ‘help’ fight the fire.
Funny how that happens when the movers and shakers are threatened…
But this is also endemic of the issues in CA with the lack of cutting trees, undergrowth, etc. which just gives these fires more fuel and the canyons up there make it hard to damned near impossible to fight from the ground, leading to lots of water bomber use in VERY dangerous situations (trying to get down into the canyons with aircraft other than helicopters is problematic with the turbulence, tightness of the canyons, etc.
I feel sorry for those folks, and I pray for the firefighters and others putting their lives on the line out there.
I think this is going to drive even more insurers out of California when the huge claims from this one start coming in. What this may also do is force CA to do their own fire insurance statewide, which is going to be expensive for both the poor homeowners and the state, as inevitably, more of these fires are going to happen.
Back in the early 60s our family lived in Woodland Hills, not too far from Malibu, et al, Sad to see the happen to a lovely area. Today you couldn’t pay me enough to live in the LA area.
The leftists cackled with delight when the hurricane hit conservative areas of North Carolina, saying it was justified retribution – or some such nonsense. I suppose they will blame these fires on Trump’s environmental policies.
Hey Old NFO,
When I read about this earlier this morning, the first thing I thought of was “damm crappy forest management strikes again”, the enviromental Nazi’s sued to keep controlled burns and brush and deadwood from being handled properly and you get “voila” uncontrolled wildfires every year and how many million acres burned and homes destroyed. WHat is the definition of insanity again? Sorry for the rant. And you are correct, the state is already having problems with insurers wanting to bail because of the high number of claims already present. Soon it will have to be a “government insurance” and of course there will be taxes involved and “fees” and it will be “income based” and “equity based”, tell me I am wrong…Or am I being cynical….
Huh. I guess mudslide season is a little late this year.
Oof. That’s close to population centers. I saw a headline for fires in CA this morning and shrugged. *So what else is new?*
I would imagine that there are some crazy air currents in the canyons with fires pulling in their own air to feed them. Prayers for the pilots safety.
LAFD’s fire zone map:
https://lafd.org/fire-prevention/brush/fire-zone/fire-zone-map
James Woods put some heartbreaking posts on X where it looks like he’s lost his home with no insurance on it because the insurance company cancelled his policy a while back (along with a lot of other people’s too.)
https://xcancel.com/RealJamesWoods
Los Angeles Times (I know, I know…) reports that firefighting efforts are being hampered by a lack of water at the fire hydrants:
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-08/lack-of-water-from-hydrants-in-palisades-fire-is-hampering-firefighters-caruso-says
We had a California type wildfire nearly a decade ago in my county. There aren’t words to describe how bad it is. They need our prayers. Poor forest management by the Feds was a culprit in ours, and I suspect state and local policy will be a contributing factor out there.
Vast portions of California are populated…areas that should never have been allowed to be built as it is virtually impossible to protect structures in these areas. In some areas even evacuation is problematic. But as I often state…we are a clever species, not an intelligent one.
Found a nice image of a P3 Orion fitted out for firefighting here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_firefighting#/media/File:Fox-firebase-aero_union-N920AU-070904-02-24.jpg
We’re now living in AZ and several years ago some Cali folks imported “globe camomile” for landscaping (https://janemming.com/2020/04/30/a-new-invasive-weed-in-arizona-globe-chamomile-aka-stinknet-oncosiphon-piluliferum/) and this stuff grows fast in spring then dessicates rapidly, making the mountains around Phoenix and Tucson a tinderbox by July – just in time for monsoon lightning strikes. If you have a house with any bit of land around it you *MUST* stay on top of this sh_t. Local press (as in those nice community mini-papers that are about 40% real estate and contractor ads) interviewed a local firefighting pilot and he said it reminded him of those nip-n-tuck missions up the canyons in Afghanistan.
These guys a real pros – we saw them do some VERY skilled low-level turns over subdivisions tucked right up next to the ridges. But two summers ago east of Tucson had over 610,000 acres burning.
Prayers for all the evacuees.
According to a California, and conservative, friend who lives in Culver City, CA, the reason why there is no water for hydrants, is that the state, county, and city governments did not refill the reservoirs after the droughts from previous years.
No water in the reservoirs equal no water in the fire hydrants.
All -Thanks for the comments, and yes, water is an issue. Pacific Palisades relies on ‘tanks’ for water for their system. They ran out…
Guy- Yep, AU20 has been retired, along with most of the P-3 drivers that flew them!
Not that off-topic, a neighbor of mine texted me last night. Farmers Insurance is canceling his homeowner’s insurance on his nearby mountain home. He asked who insures me. I said, USAA. It’s impacting Arizona indirectly.
Perhaps this will quiet the controlled burn debate in the area for a year or two.
On the bright side, LAFD has a Lesbian Chief!
LL- Personally, I think that is the ‘tip’ of the cancellation iceberg that is getting ready to hit.
Bob- Nah, the econazis will blame ‘something’ else.
Stretch- Sigh…
“…a number of people ‘panicked’ and left their cars sitting in the middle of the road in the Palisades area, preventing fire vehicles from getting through… Sigh…”
A recollection from my time in NJ about 45 years ago: If you were stupid enough to block the roadway with your vehicle, any emergency vehicle had the right to push you out of their way, and any damage that occurred to the pusher would be charged to the blocker.
In rural Oregon, for 2023 our fire insurance went up 40%. I got a heads-up letter last July, and buried in the details was the fact that most manufactured homes would no longer have any coverage. (Unless they had a full, continuous foundation. Concrete block foundations do not count.)
I switched my homeowners to American Modern (they specialize in manufactured home insurance) and to make the point, changed the auto insurance to Progressive. The old insurance was Country, which now seems more interested in selling financial service products than actual insurance.
(I got the new policy statement along with the bill. They pretty much hid the fact about the loss of house coverage; the product they switched it to was like renter’s insurance. ‘Sides, the new policy is actually affordable and comparable to the 2022 rates we had.)
Protip: If you live in fire country, watch your insurance like a hawk.