I am extremely upset and angry !

All the top politicians of California and Los Angeles should be in jail.

Is this the first time major forest fire happened? Have anyone learned what needs to be done to deal with these kind of disasters?

• From what I have seen, the thousands of brave fire fighters are not equipped with the proper apparatus to control this kind of fire. What they have is just useful for small residential fires.
• Proper forest fire personal protective apparatus so fire fighters can get close to fire safely to put them out:

https://www.bmefire.com/personal-protective-equipment/

• Why are fire hydrants running dry and some helicopters had to use sea water which can do long-term environmental damages?

I am very moved to see so many people helping each other cooking free food, giving whatever they can..

I think the most important thing for you residents of California is not be distracted by propagandas and vote them out of office and put them in jail.

Just IMHO

dcarch

Thank-you, Olychick. There's a lot of armchair quarterbacking and a lot of angry blame going around. The only things that can really be prepared for are what have happened before. It's hard enough getting people to accept obvious reality, without trying to convince them of a coming apocalypse. Nothing like the intensity of the wind has been seen here. The climatologists and meteorlologists warned and preparations were made, but they weren't enough, and what actually happened boggled the imagination. Nothing would have been enough. Everyone involved knew how to prepare for fire in 60 mile an hour wind. Not for an ember cast up to five miles away. And if no fires had caught? If we'd brought in thousands of firefighters with trucks and equipment ahead of time and nothing happened? And paid them with what? And would they come again, after we'd cried wolf?

This is where what aerial drops could be made were useless because the water blows away, and the aircraft can't fly safely above 50 mph wind. In California, we're very accustomed to aircraft dumping reservoir water, phos-chek (fire retardant that's good for land) mixed with water, swimming pool water and ocean water. Superscoopers are heroes. But they can only wait until the air will hold them aloft—and pray that some idiot with a drone doesn't take them down. The firefighters know their jobs and do excellent work. But they can't hold back the extremity of weather we as a society created, especially when they can't even stand up in the hurricane force dry wind.

As to the water, with the warnings of what was coming, water was advanced to the kinds of areas that might burn. And there were some snafus, like when one utility did a safety shutdown of aerial electricity delivery, which left another scrambling to send generators for the water pumps that make it flow uphill. Like the houses which had fire sorinklers to suppress normal house fires before they could take down whole neighborhoods, but when burned by wildfire, came apart and had open flow of water sucking the storage tanks dry. Like the reservoir (one only out of many) which was closed for repairs, because this is our wet season. Etc., etc., etc. But the biggest issue was that we just don't have enough water to combat so many, so intense, fires all at once, and those fires are more than hand crews can control, and require the aerial drops, from any water source available, or to burn themselves out. Water trucks were making constant runs to the firelines, which helped them hold it back until the aircraft could fly. They were nothing less than heroic, and for all that did burn, it would have been so much worse without them. Never before have I heard them ask people outside of the fire areas to conserve water for the firefight. When you hear ”unprecedented” applied to the wind, believe it. Exponentially worse than anything before, following something like eight months of no appreciable rain when even in dry years we usually have a few inches.

California was created to burn. We're used to that. But, we're not used to not being able to fight back.

Blame and recrimination are unnecessary. Inevitable, but useless. Going forward, I hope we have the societal will to build in fire control and suppression, There's only more of this to come, barring some cataclysm that stops global warming—and be clear, this the kind of change the scientists predicted, though the specifics weren't clear until seen. There were individuals trying to put out the flying embers with garden hoses. For some, that worked, but dangerously. We should have trainings for those who will stay and play firefighter, rather than just telling them to leave. And make sure they have better resources installed. There were two guys profiled on the news who did. One was a plumber with a 60,000 gallon pool, who had a pump and a couple of what looked like 4” lines that reached eather side of his house, to soak it down, and scuba equipment staged beside the pool, so when the fire came, he could wait it out at the bottom of the pool. The other had bought a ready made pump and line set and a pool a third of the size, which he used to soak down his house, and maybe a neighbor's (can't remember exactly) before he left. Soaking makes it harder for embers to catch. Current codes require concrete, pools with large line pumps, fire shutters, etc. Current laws require brush clearance in a certain perimeter. That doesn't help the embers flying up to five miles, when normal wind will carry it up to one. The clearance helps when the fire itself marches up to your house. Packs of goats are often hired and are very efficient at it.

There are potentials for more such ”crowd sourcing” to help out more. But make no mistake—fire burns uphill, but the extreme, never before seen wind, pushed it downhill, and the flats, with no open land at all, burned just as surely.

In the West, we are used to wildfire. SoCal has fought many wildland/urban fires. They are equipped and ready. In numbers. There were close to 8,000 firefighters and others on the fire early on, and more came as fast as they could, from WA OR TX Mexico everywhere. Hundreds of engines, dozens of aircraft. These are the only fires burning in the West now, they had all the personnel and all the equipment.

But Nature wins when She wants to.

SoCal is crazy dry now. This is the rainy season, but there hasn’t been any meaningful rain since last spring. Normally the Santa Anas blow over damp winter hills, not tinder dry hills. And normally not at 100 mph.

So the fire started in the morning, quickly blew down the hill into the neighborhoods, and was flying toward the ocean by afternoon. Literally flying - burning material goes airborne and the wind carries it over any fire line and into the houses and vegetation a mile downwind, so the fire is moving in leaps and bounds.

What I heard, and it makes sense, is there is not much organized firefighting going on in those early chaotic conditions. Firefighters are trying to get people out and save lives. Roads jammed, people running as their cars burn, elderly people trapped in their houses, families, injured people. Lives come first. It is amazing to me that more people didn’t die. Meanwhile the planes and helicopters were grounded, a second huge fire is blowing up, the winds are howling.

20,000 firefighters couldn’t have stopped it.

Fire has burned these mountains and foothills for millennia. The plants are even evolved for it. Every ten or twenty years, there are huge fires in this area. Even when I lived there, a bunch of my partners lost their homes in a huge fire just to the north of Palisades. This one had just the right conditions to do what it did.

Palisades and Altadena will be rebuilt. Homeowners’ insurance covers fire, so while people have lost everything, most of them will be able to recover. Current codes require a lot of fire resistance. In thirty or forty years, these fires will be forgotten and the fuel/vegetation will be thick, and this will happen again.

In the meantime, my back-of-envelope says that homeowners insurance premiums are likely to double for everyone in CA, and go up 3-4X in highest risk areas.

The politicians in L.A. and California did not cause this fire, and firefighters have all called it an impossible fire. It is important to listen to facts, such as Pilllg and John and listed instead of ranting from people who have no idea what they are talking about, and that includes our idiot president-elect. Some people are going to try to make this a political issue without taking into consideration any responsibility. The best course forward is to support increased infrastructure and make sure that it is paid for. It is also important to make sure that FEMA funds for this type of disaster are made available without tying the money to political agendas that have nothing to do with the environment.

Dealing with the increased costs of insurance is going to be a huge issue, and could slow down the rebuilding of certain areas.

“…homeowners insurance premiums are likely to double for everyone in CA, and go up 3-4X in highest risk areas.”

I think we can count on it.

I am not as certain the insurance premiums will just increase. A more likely scenario is more widespread cancellations of policies with no insurers willing to write fire insurance policies at all. Apparently, this recently happened to a large number of homeowners in these communities. Their policies were cancelled. If their homes were paid for and no mortgage company involved, it’s possible some hadn’t gotten around to finding new insurance-if any is even available.

I’ve been looking into this, because it is relevant to my work.

Quick summary:

CA very recently changed insurance rules.

1. Insurers are now required to cover houses in high risk areas, in proportion to their overall market share in the state.

2. They are allowed to price using climate models and to include the cost of reinsurance, which is intended to allow premiums to increase and more accurately reflect risk.

The 2nd largest insurer in the state (Farmers), which had stopped writing new policies, announced it will return to writing new policies and that the fires don’t change that decision.

The fires will increase pressure on CA insurance commissioner to permit higher premiums to prevent collapse of insurance market, and on insurers to charge higher premiums because this kind of loss is company-threatening.

More immediately, the FAIR plan, which is the last-resort insurer in CA, saw its insured coverage jump in 2024 as insurers were pulling out of the state. In Palisades, FAIR coverage went up 84% in 2024 as State Farm (#1 insurer in state) non-renewed 70% of its policies in the neighborhood.

I estimate FAIR has suffered $10BN loss in these fires - that’s a ballpark number only, some banks estimate higher. FAIR has only about $350 MM of reserves and $2.3BN of reinsurance. State law allows FAIR to assess all (homeowners) policies in the state to cover this kind of loss, and CA ins commr recently announced he will allow insurers to pass on the assessments to policyholders after $0.5BN per insurer.

So, it seems inevitable to me that around $7-8BN (or more) will get assessed and much of that will be charged to policyholders. And unless FAIR or the state can borrow enough to spread it out over multiple years, that money has to get collected this year because claims have to be paid.

Total homeowners’ premiums per year in CA is about $15BN. So the probable assessment is not small.

Wow, such great information. Thanks for taking the time to write the details. I am reminded of when I started driving a million years ago. My mom was a widow who didn’t drive, so there was no family auto insurance to which to add me. No insurance company would touch a teenaged new driver, but our state had an ’assigned risk’ pool where all the companies were required to take turn insuring the high risk drivers to spread the potential losses among all the insurers, It was expensive, but at least made insurance available to those of us the insurers would have otherwise denied policies to.

So sorry to hear of these terrible fires. The sheer amount of devastation is mind blowing.

Our fires in Australia while very destructive of wild life and vegetation tend to be away from populated areas. Of course houses are lost but not in the numbers we are hearing about from these fires in California. Upon saying this however, we did have fires in 2009 called Black Saturday, which were fiercely wind driven like yours and sadly 200 people died and 2000 homes were lost.

When fires are raging in Australia friends and relatives ring and ask if we are alright and would there be any chance the fires could reach us at our home in the city. To this I have always replied that this could never happen. . Now seeing the complete destruction of some of your suburban areas where it’s hard to comprehend that wild fire could take hold, makes me think never say never.

I do understand the uniqueness of this area with the canyons, hills and valleys as I have been there several times, and of course, it was that dreadful wind that fanned the flames like a gigantic bellows.

Neely, I remember that unbelieveable massive wildfire. That looked very scary! When we visited Australia, I learned a lot about how fire shaped the land there. In California, it's more about the ancient climate cycle, but similar outcome regarding the flora being adapted to, and even requiring fire. Before the extremes of climate change, it was just something we lived with, like earthquakes.

Update: Be careful what you hear about water. There's a lot of made up garbage being yammered about. Because of that, I'd like to correct what I said above. The empty reservoir has been closed for some time for repairs involving water quality issues, not the seasonal repair I'd initially heard. After two very wet years, there was ample water storage. Any failures were the result of massive demand for wild-firefighting water from a municipal water system that wasn't designed for it., especially when no water-dropping aircraft could fly. The water pressure in hydrants works when a couple are opened for a regular fire, not whan they're all opened. Or something like that. There are investigations for more definitive answers, and, I hope, plans for adapting them in the future. But the speculation in all sorts of media might make a good novel, but have nothing to fo with reality.

I also remember fires in Australia and seeing images of them from space, which made it seem that much more dramatic.

With our political system, there is no way to improve infrastructure in a short time, for instance, we can't even make highspeed train system work.

We need new ideas.

For many years I always wonder, if we can detect enemy firing rocks from thousand miles away, why can we detect fires the moment they start and put them out in minutes?

Finally that technology is now being studied using satellites.

I would think the following can also be considered in conjunction with satellites:

China has software with simple desktop computers to control each 10,000 drones (x,y,z GPS within fractions of an inch) doing drone shows instead of regular firework shows. Imagine every fire fighter can be monitored to be in effective locations safely.

Google Map should map out all wooded terrains for safe paths for fire fighters to enter and exit.

Etc.

I am concerned because I have close relatives in LA and other California cities.

dcarch

John, in the shipping business, there are re-insurance companies.

What about for houses, business buildings?

dcarch

The second hit of wind didn’t happen in our part of the San Gabriel Valley…so far. The sky’s blue and clear making it that much harder to imagine the devastation not far at all from the east side of the Eaton fire.

" John, in the shipping business, there are re-insurance companies.

What about for houses, business buildings?"

Yes, there is reinsurance for property coverage, from the venerable Lloyds of London syndicate to many companies (Swiss Re, Munich Re, Arch, etc). Unlike primary insurance (State Farm, Allstate, etc), reinsurance is not regulated by the states; the CA ins commr can't limit a reinsurer's premium increase or compel it to provide coverage. Thus reinsurance premium prices reflect the true/rising risk more closely than regulated primary premiums and, as you'd expect, are rising fast. The reinsurance industry went through a period of losing (a lot) of money, and is thus rapidly "repricing risk".

All (primary) insurers use reinsurance to limit their risk, and one of the recent CA insurance reforms was that insurers will now be allowed to pass their reinsurance cost on in their premiums. Another reason why homeowners' premiums will increase.

The other issue with reinsurance is the amount of capital that the industry has to invest in risk.

The reinsurance industry moves in cycles: sometimes there is too much capital chasing too little risk, reinsurers have to choose between losing business and cutting price/underpricing risk, that is a "soft" insurance market. Then the risks manifest (huge hurricanes, huge wildfires, etc), the less disciplined reinsurers lose huge amounts of money, capital leaves the industry, and then there is too little capital for too much risk, and the cycle flips to a "hard" insurance market in which prices rise. We have been in a hard market for a few years and I think it may get harder.

By the way, all of this is just my opinion, I'm not some infallible oracle of insurance. I'm just someone who researches and invests in insurance company stocks, when they look attractive.

" We need new ideas. "

NOAA uses satellites, both geostationary and polar orbit, to watch for fires starting. Link: NOAA Satellites Monitor Wildfires | NESDIS I don't know how well funded NOAA's efforts are or will be.

These fires can spread very rapidly. I don't have a detailed timeline of the Palisades fire but I think from when it was first reported to when it was 200 acres may have been an hour?

In a perfect world, there'd be water-dropping aircraft and helicopters ready (pre-flighted, fueled, loaded, pilots in seats) 24/7. I don't know how feasible that is, and anyway the wind was too high for the fire-fighting planes to fly.

Thanks John.

It would be a bigger mess if insurance companies declare bankruptcy at this point.

dcarch

"---- In a perfect world, there'd be water-dropping aircraft and helicopters ready (pre-flighted, fueled, loaded, pilots in seats) 24/7. I don't know how feasible that is, and anyway the wind was too high for the fire-fighting planes to fly. ----"

Absolutely feasible for 24/7 readiness.

Consider the alternatives: $200 billion damages? 100,000 people not working productivity lost? 24 life lost (so far this time)?

dcarch

They still couldn't have flown because of the wind!

" They still couldn't have flown because of the wind! "

That's not the concept, ideally it works this way:

Low orbit geostationary satellites orbit the Earth in a geosynchronous orbit, let's say right over California. These satellites will be keeping an eye (high resolution infrared sensing) 24/7 . The AI software can tell when a hot spot is detected, if that is someone BBQing or an electric fire is starting. An alarm will be send to control center and a preloaded aircraft will rush to the location in 15 minutes to 1/2 an hour to put out the fire. At this point the fire has not become a major infernal yet and there may or may not be wind. In any case they will be using helicopters which are batter than Airbus AS350 b3 class, which can deal with high winds.

Detecting hot spots from space is old technology.

dcarch

Is the tech truly there? Because the satellite using fire mapping guy declared the fires out when they weren't even halfway contained, because he couldn't see hot spots, but according to what I'd seen on the news that day, bot hand crews and aircraft were busily cooling hotspots all that day. The fires were still burning, just below the level of greatest immediate danger. The wind can turn a single buring plant into a disaster very quickly. If it could be made to work reliably enough, that kind of system would be awesome.

Heat sensing technology has really extensively been used by the military for many many years. You know, the heat from a tiny mice can trigger my cheap trail cam in my garden to snap a picture in total darkness from 35 feet away..

The system to detect fire from space is not much of a money making idea, may be until now. More than one investor is thinking about it:

"-------- Pershing Square Capital Management CEO Bill Ackman recently pitched a business venture designed to put out wildfires early using tech from SpaceX and Anduril Industries. "Putting out fires before they spread does not seem like a serious technological challenge in a world with @SpaceX, @xai and @anduriltech," Ackman wrote in an X post on Sunday. "So @elonmusk and @PalmerLuckey, why don’t we start a company that uses satellites, AI, and drone technology to put out fires before they spread?"----"

dcarch

" The AI software can tell when a hot spot is detected, if that is someone BBQing or an electric fire is starting. An alarm will be send to control center and a preloaded aircraft will rush to the location in 15 minutes to 1/2 an hour to put out the fire."

So every time someone BBQ's or lights a gas firepit, the aircraft will deploy and put out the fire?

No thanks.

"---- No thanks---"

Sorry, I was trying to be brief, I had already said, " The AI software can tell when a hot spot is detected, if that is someone BBQing or an electric fire is starting. "

To explain a little more clearly , the situation for the first fire to start is complex, but all are no more than high school physics, very easy for AI to tell:

For instance electric fire:

Typical power transmission wire in wooded area can be up to 60,000 vac. At that voltage, sparks can jump an air space for about 1 ½”. When the power line falls to the ground and the ground is completely dry, no fire can happen, however, if a tree branch (wind blown?) falls between a hot wire and a neutral wire, the branch will heat up quickly and carbonize. Carbon is a good conductor and the branch will be on fire. When that happens, air would be ionized permitting fire to continue without the branch from electric corona and plasma effects. At this point hopefully the power company will send a signal to the satellite AI software and shut off power (blackout) at the same time.

I apologize to drag this topic out, but it is too important to ignore.

For all you unlucky friends and the lucky ones, purely my opinion, I have not seen information about this:

The intensity and destructions by the fire in occupied areas is mostly due to plastic furniture, plastic clothing , plastic carpet, plastic towels, plastic blankets, plastic kitchen containers utensils, ----- Check out IKEA catalog, what do they sell that is not plastic? The evidence is right in front of your eyes, check out the videos, all smoke coming out the burning house are pure black. And you can also see helicopters dumping water on the roof is a waste of resources, the roof is not on fire, the fire is inside the house. When your unlucky friends start rebuilding, it’s important not to buy plastic items.

Have a nice day, and state safe.

dcarch

It's not that simple. Wood and cotton burn really well too, but yes, one of the things the fire captains were saying is before you bug out, pull in your garden furniture. I didn't quite get it until you brought up plastic. Most of mine is metal, glass and stone. Something else that was brought up was securing propane tanks, which can turn into bombs, but is it safe to bring threm away? Where, then, dos one put them?

This is how useless to use a helicopter to put out house fires. BTW, particle board furniture is plastic +wood. covered with plastic cushions.

2"x4" wood are always protected by SheetRocks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWroYGQKj60

But it makes officials look good that they are doing something.

dcarch

Define normal. I had a dr. appt. made six months ago It seemed okay to go. There's a lot of visible moisture (a certain kind of haze) in the air today, though there's still smoke. The air didn't seem any worse than inside my house, but I remembered to put the car on recirculate. Big structure--no parking spaces! Found one on the second go round, or I'd have gone home. There was no street parking and even double parked (wide streets where those partked at the curb can get around them, but still way illegal and rage-y people will attack. The traffic was nightmarish. I had another errand I was going to do, but didn't want to fight the traffic.

Mind you this is normal. This extra traffic is what it's like after a big rainstorm. The sun comes out and all the cars get going.

Another sign of normalcy? Big televised freeway chase, CHP trying to catch a pair of do-badder motorcyclists. ETA: Now on the streets, joined by about a dozen more, including a couple of quads, many doing wheelies, including the quads. Does this happen anywhere else? I was filling out my farm order. That done, I can go turn this off...

“Big televised freeway chase, CHP trying to catch a pair of do-badder motorcyclists.“

Definitely normal here! Not so normal were the Chinook helicopters we saw yesterday coming and going…likely for the Eaton fire.

I talked to my insurance agent today, we’re going to review our homeowners’ coverage . . .

https://recovery.lacounty.gov/palisades-fire/

https://recovery.lacounty.gov/eaton-fire/

Interactive mapping of the results of physical, on-ground inspection of houses in the affected areas. Inspection is about 1/2 to 2/3 complete. You can click through on any address to see details.

John, I was looking at the Eaton link yesterday. Heartbreaking photos! Sierra Madre, off to the right, is where I grew up.

I lived in the north part of Glendale, at the border with Montrose, and spent a lot of time in that area up against the Angeles Crest, spent a lot of time up in the Angeles Crest fishing, hiking, target shooting, camping.

SWMBO and I helped start a volunteer group that wore Forest Service uniforms and carried FS radios, hiked the streams picking up trash and line, educating people about fishing regulations. Looks like it is still around https://frvc.org/ We spent so much time hiking those mountains, and were pretty darn fit too.

I really like that area and it is really sad what has happened.

It will be rebuilt and in a generation it’ll be like nothing happened. Remember the Oakland Hills fire in 1991 (?): 3,300 homes destroyed, dozens killed, today a fading memory and the hills are full of lovely houses and mature vegetation, ready for the next fire.

John, I do remember that fire. I had to look up the details. Sounds like the firefighters thought they had it under control, but it was re-ignited the next day fed by wind.

I just posted this on one of the other threads. I saw a video about the house in CA that survived and the design/build techniques used. I can't find that video, but this one explains it, tho it starts out in CO, the CA house is mentioned in here, too. I heard the architect being interviewed and he also mentioned the danger of parking your car near your home because the plastics are so flammable (and probably the gas tank). So even if you have defensible perimeter, if your car is too close, it can cause your house to catch fire. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/la-fires-passive-house-rebuilt/

https://www.fire.ca.gov/osfm/what-we-do/community-wildfire-preparedness-and-mitigation/building-in-the-wildland

https://www.hcd.ca.gov/building-standards/state-housing-law/wildland-urban-interface/docs/2010-part-2-cbc-ch7a.pdf

California has ”Chapter 7A” building requirements for new houses in high wildfire risk areas. Fire-resistant materials, vents, etc. Enacted 2008.

Palisades and Altadena were, I think, fairly sure, not considered high wildfire risk - but people can choose more fire resistance, even if it isn’t required.

I wouldn’t have thought about the car thing!

The neighborhoos were also at least 100 years old. Not all the houses were that old, of course, but many were more easily burned.

A lot of history was lost. Some MCM and Craftsman House Facebook groups I follow are starting to post pictures of the architecturally significant, historic, and just plain lovely houses that are gone.

Thanks for those links, John. Here's what my doctor's office looks like now:

It used to be a three story red brick building.

The fires are still burning and we're due for super high winds in the passes. One can only hope there aren't more fires, though just now, the world is still here helping, thank goodness.

And now the Laguna fire in Ventura County, although it appears they have a hold on it. ”Laguna” was confusing since I immediately thought of Laguna Beach in Orange County.

Yeah. They rescinded the evacuation order for the college. Same as the Sepulveda fire which had some of the same people in danger of the Palisades fire under evacuation warnings again. And the Hughes fire in Castaic. And... The wind. And the coming rain to undermine the hills. Sign. Thank goodness for all the fire crews who have poured in to help, and the aircraft which can still fly.

“Thank goodness for all the fire crews who have poured in to help, and the aircraft which can still fly.”

Agree!🙏🏻

We’ve continued to have Red Flag warnings here (San Gabriel Valley) since the Palisades and Altadena fires. I go to bed wondering when I’ll wake up to the wind howling. However, it’s continued to be calm.

My son's family lives in Altadena. They moved into their house two years ago. Their house survived, but being surrounded by so many that burned, the area and their house is contaminated, and they don't know when it would be safe to move back in. With kids, it's just not safe.

They are expecting a new baby in less than two months. They will bring that new baby home to a crummy, over priced rental that hasn't been maintained in decades. It's a nightmare.

Linnea, I’m so sorry. I grew up not far from Altadena and know it well. Is your son’s family in the northwest section of Altadena? That upper part (above Woodbury and west of Lake Ave.) seems to have suffered the most damage. Over priced is right!

Wow, Linnea, that is something they’ll laugh about eventually but is absolutely not funny now!

Unfortunately, it will probably take months (several?) to test and haul off the contaminated soil from the houses that burned, and your son will want to have the soil on his property tested and if necessary removed. He will also want to have the interior of the house thoroughly cleaned, including ducting, draperies, etc. The primary contaminant of concern being, of course, lead.

He should press his home insurance company to pay for a hazardous waste remediation service and their apartment rental; the insurer is lucky they aren’t paying to rebuild the house and replace all contents! Not even policy will cover everything, though.

Here is a sad article about the architecturally important houses lost. https://www.wsj.com/style/design/architecturally-important-homes-lost-in-la-fires-what-happens-next-b0498e1f?st=3qd7Gj&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

There are plenty more. A friend said the Greene and Greene house he restored in Altadena is gone, etc.

Thanks for your thoughts, everyone. I need to stop doomscrolling for fire news.

Something weird has happened for me on Houzz: I can't seem to post in the cooking forum. I can add to an existing thread, or answer, but not originate a new post. I was trying to post on the Cooking forum 2 days ago, asking for pecan recipes. But in the section where you can select up to 3 topics: it's like "Cooking" does not exist, just "cookware". If I type it into the top box, only Cookware shows up. If I scroll down to the list of topics, it's not there either.

Has anyone experienced this? I'm using my desktop computer. Windows, Chrome browser.

I can't post using my phone, either, but that's been true for years - any topic. I can read a reply, but not post. But to be completely shut out of posting on a forum on my desktop is new.

Sadly LL this has been going on for a couple of months for some of us. I did contact Houzz but they gave a nonsensical reply about that there isn’t a Cooking topic. I thought it was only on Iphones but as you say your desktop is new. Perhaps if you contact them, another complaint might mean they start to believe us.

So it's not just me, then.