I have not heard of this. Is it the fire at Roung Mountain by Channel Islands University?

AH! YES! It's at Laguna Road and Lewis Road. Danger principally to the University (evacuated) because it is close to the sea.

Yes, that is the one - just popped up this morning! Sounds as if it is not near you - very glad!

Jackie

Moses, our responses to Jeri were both posted at the same time - thank you for your lovely sentiments. I hope the cold spells all over the eastern 2/3rds of the country have not affected you very much.

Yes, permanent changes definitely need to be made - here in No Cal the various local governments have been doing "controlled burns" and shrub grubbing, etc. on public land for a decade at least, but evidently they do not do that in LA, and they get WAY less rain than we do, so the native vegetation there is short bushes all over the hills which are full of resin (which is how they survive that climate), and they explode in fires and then burn like torches for a long time. Add that to a political climate where the Fire Depts have been starved for resources for years, and the "environmentalists" have been able to prevent controlled burns (because they create unhealthy smoke!), and you could call this a man-made disaster.

I don't think there has been as large a US fire over areas which are so dense with houses since the famous San Francisco fire of 1906. SFPD has a nifty piece of equipment which allowed them to put out fires in SF after the Loma Prieta EQ of 1989, when the old story "there is no water in the fire hydrants!" happened because of all of the water pipes broken by the EQ. It is basically a mobile fire hydrant(s) thingy, which they connected to their fire boat (basically an enormous floating water pump) in SF Bay by splicing lots of fire hoses together. Then they went into local sports bars, (I have seen a clip of this happening on TV - one firefighter opened the door and asked for volunteers, and dead silence resulted, broken only by the sound of everyone's beers being put down on the tables, after which all of the "able bodied men" stood up and followed him out of the bar, without saying anything. They needed a lot of volunteers, as the Bay where the fire boat was was at 8-9 blocks away, and the fire hose was so heavy they needed a person every 4-5 feet of it to carry it. I am hoping some of the people in LA will get this info from the SFPD, who of course has rigs down there helping. The photos of all of those mansions burning up in Malibu, sitting right on the beach, with the entire Pacific Ocean right there, made me really mad. Of course, this is not something you can jury-rig at the last moment during a fire - it would need pre-planning, which was evidently not on the politicians priority list.

Jackie

Yes, but Jackie, I understand there are long term consequences of using saltwater to put out fires? The soil becomes too salty for new plant growth to emerge and then we have barren hillsides which means terrible mudslides long after the fire is put out. Granted, mudslides are going to happen if the fire has burned back the vegetation, but it normally regrows within one season. If the land is salty, this condition will continue for a long time. Maybe using ocean water isn’t so simple.

Do Opuntia species burn easily? The juicy pads they grow would seem to be fire resistant to me. Anybody know?

Moses

judiejunebug - yes, I also presume that ocean water is not good for soil, at least until the rain has a chance to wash it out. In the example from 1989 in San Francisco I gave above, they had a completely out of control, pressurized natural gas fed (b/c of the EQ the pipes had broken) fire over about a square block of SF which was inside of a large area packed with wood frame buildings right next to each other, and they were concerned (ie, certain) that the fire would spread. In a dense city which burned to the ground 83 years before, no one thought it was a bad idea to put the fire out, any way they could. (The memory/culture of SF includes the trauma of the 1906 Great Earthquake and Fire, even after the last survivors were gone. When they realized that there was no way to fight the fire with water, and the fire kept spreading, they used dynamite to blow up buildings to create fire breaks, as the City burned for 3 days). The one square block area that was burning in 1989 was re-built, and I never heard anything negative about it.

I think that the fire in Pacific Palisades and Malibu, which burned every single thing inside of an area 23,000 acres large, did a lot of damage to the soil, the environment, and the health of thousands and perhaps millions of people's lungs, along with killing about 10 people. It is necessary to compare the downsides of whatever the options are, not just look at the downsides of one option only.

Interestingly (to me), the fire boat which pumped the water up hill to put the fire out in SF in 1989 was the one remaining fire boat which the SFFD owned, and the genius SF County Board of Supervisors (SF is a city and a county inside the same identical borders) had already voted to sell it. After the fire, of course, it was credited with saving the entire Marina neighborhood of SF, at a minimum, and the City bought 2 more fire boats (whose usual job is to fight fires on ships in the harbor).

Jackie

Jackie, I want a fire boat! If our local authorities had more brains than the average squirrel, maybe they could find a way to get one (or two.Or three..)
Many of us live in LA because we love the environment. Near-wilderness hiking only minutes away, grand vistas, everything from beach to deserts,and when the mountaintops are snowy and we’re picking oranges down below — it doesn’t get any better. However — we have to balance what the planet needs and what we humans need. Need, I said, not want. Those homes on the beach in Malibu just maybe should never have been built — of course those with the means want to live there (I would too) but that’s a want, not a need.

We need to secure hard-earned property, of course. But government can’t be the answer. People are installing their own hydrants, on their premises. They’re hiring private fire security firms. They

They’re building (or rebuilding) with fire-retardant materials. They’re keeping up on brush clearance. There will always be idiots, of course, but these fires were so serious and so prolonged I think we may yet see a paradigm shift in the way LA sees fire.

I certainly hope so.

I hope so too, sylviaww.

I had another thought (of course) about all of those homes and restaurants which burned up in Malibu between PCH and the beach. If they had the kind of emergency mobile fire hydrant thing I mentioned above, and a fire boat, or even a large barge with a huge water pump on it right in the ocean beyond where the waves break, they could have put out those fires with water from the ocean. All of those buildings were built on or above beach sand, and rocks, which I don't think would have been harmed by having ocean water sprayed on it.

Jackie

The smelt can be saved with their fresh river water needs, while at the same time have all S. CA reservoirs and water towers filed to capacity for all fire emergencies, home, industry, and farming needs, if they are filled with desalination water, which technology is actually old now. The question is, Is there a consensus to proceed to a smart solution?

Moses

Moses, prickly pear cacti and agave plants are among the plants they suggest folks can grow around their houses in fire zones, because the theory is they just kinda cook in response to a fire, they don't usually burn. Some other succulents, like aloes, are also suggested.