by Geoffrey Churchman
I spent most of last night and today watching the various live streams of the destruction caused by the brush fires, not simply for the drama, of which there is plenty as whole neighbourhoods got consumed in flames. These include the Pacific Palisades northwest of Santa Monica where many Hollywood and Sports A-listers live of which about 75% is now destroyed. For an area more like Waikanae, Altadena is in much the same situation — about 3 out of 4 properties destroyed.
In morning light these areas looked like they had been on the receiving end of Blinken bombs.
The air quality both during and after fires requires goggles with lots of ash floating around and the smoke concentration requires face masks, not the useless Fauci ones, but the surgical ones — and even they don’t stop inhaling the smoke fully. People are being told to limit the amount of time spent outside.
There’s nothing new about wildfire in California and they often occur during the summer months. However, these events are in mid-winter, although of course winter in L.A. is like summer in Waikanae. In summer it is usually about 10C hotter.
When Eva and I were there last April, California Governor Newsom was having a press conference in the high mountains, pleased about the density of the snow pack from the previous winter. Did he mention ‘Climate Change’ in that regard? Of course not, in Leftist doctine, climate change is never good.
But of course he, and Joe, have made big mention of it in the last couple of days — none of it has anything to do with his and L.A. mayoral policies, oh no, ‘Climate Change’ is to blame!
California’s governor Gavin Newsom has just seen his future presidential chances go up in flames.
The massive fires burning his state can be linked directly to his lack of action. Trump tried to warn him, but apparently Newsom is like Biden—he is a radical environmentalist who will intentionally sacrifice citizens and their property to the alter of ‘climate change.’ Gavin refused to clean up detritus on forest floors and another major fire was predictable.
It looks like Gavin Newsom has just burned any chance at a presidential run after Trump’s term. He will now be associated with the likes of Trudeau and Biden—all are willing to destroy their own citizens in pursuit of far left, destructive policies.
Meanwhile, our sympathies go out Californians who are enduring the terrible fires—and a terrible governor.
— The GrrrTeam
The cost of the damage so far is put at about $US 57 billion, some of which will be met by the insurance ndustry, but a lot won’t be as not everyone can afford insurance, and that has gotten worse under the Democrat Party. How much help those who have major uninsured losses will get from state and federal government remains to be seen.
Here the lessons are for emergency preparedness and management. Brush fires can become serious if there are high winds, and the winds experienced in L.A. were storm force with lots of downed tree branches or completely downed trees. Glowing embers can get carried for 5 km and a lot of them together will probably start another fire. If they get carried into house eaves, the house can go up and one house fire can spread to a neighbouring one, particularly in those conditions.
We’re fortunate in Waikanae to have a high annual rainfall, about 3 times what L.A. typically gets, but it still gets dry from January through March. We’re also fortunate in having a good volunteer fire brigade. We’re further fortunate in having few Australian gum trees, “petrol on a stick” as it’s called over there.
But we’re not fortunate in having no water storage with a river reservoir because of council obstinacy on the issue. Folks can have their own water storage, however, and we have 2 x 800 litre tanks. Being unchlorinated, we use it on the garden with the expectation that the next rain will refill them.
A final L.A. impact worth mentioning is what it will do to TV and movie production schedules — these are sure to experience delays.
Leftest Progressivism always damages people because it is focused on ideology not people. This is true in all areas of life they dabble in. Often it is not intentional to hurt people but that is always what happens. They in fact indulge in ‘kindness ‘rhetoric to assure others they are caring people.
I understand from what you say Geoffrey that in the case of these fires they deliberately failed to fill water reservoirs in order to cause mayhem and destruction to somehow heighten alarm about so called ‘global warming’?
Geoffrey says — the answer to the second paragraph is probably, but it’s hard to be sure. Did they anticipate fires of this scale? Did they anticpate a Kamala victory instead of a Trump one, the former would endorse the Global Warming narrative, even though these fires happened in modest temperatures?
Our ever so’ factual ‘ TVNZ stated there had been extra dry conditions . They never mentioned the diverting of enormous amounts of river water from up north which usually supplies LA. The water was instead piped into the Pacific Ocean , to somehow save a tiny fish species which was environmentally threatened and of importance to native Americans. Much was made of this virtue signaling in DEI and environmentalism being described as a world first some time ago. This is described in the attached video clip . Trump warned LA of the threat of fires , this diversion would pose , during the elections.
Wee fish are of greater importance than people ! For $80 billion which the fires have cost they could have built a special super aquarium for the wee creatures where native Americans could inspect them !
Hopefully the expensive people of LA , having lost their mansions will work this out and change a little from their progressive trend woke thinking.
From the furious comments by celebs whose homes have been torched, it may just produce a change of thinking among some members of that Party. A good example: https://youtu.be/VGO3DiUtZik?si=wACdPaXjVFD5zYfZ