Los Angeles Palisades Fire

[C C]

Ya gotta love the internet!

https://x.com/OV_Matter/status/1877978503611646114

A rather foreboding mode of expression, since independent AI-generated cinema arising everywhere ("domestic studio in a basement"), is the doom looming on the horizon for many West Coast entertainment careers.

Palisades Fire (2025)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_Fire_(2025)

EXCERPT: Numerous celebrities lost homes in the fire, including Jeff Bridges, Adam Brody, Michael Connelly, Denise Crosby, Billy Crystal, Cary Elwes, Max Emerson, Anna Faris, Mel Gibson, John Goodman, Jennifer Grey, Paris Hilton, Anthony Hopkins, Ricki Lake, Larry LaLonde, Eugene Levy, Cameron Mathison, Leighton Meester, Heidi Montag, Rosie O'Donnell, Spencer Pratt, JJ Redick, Melissa Rivers, Candy Spelling, Miles Teller, Milo Ventimiglia and Diane Warren.

On NBC News Daily, actor and Pacific Palisades resident Steve Guttenberg related his experiences trying to get to his house. He advised that the public should be mindful to leave vehicle keys with the vehicles in emergencies so that they may be more easily moved. Citizens in the area, including himself, have been volunteering their time in helping first responders. He said that "this is the time for us to remember that we're part of a community" and that people "have to help each other and be kind to each other. If you see somebody who needs help, help them. Ask them what they need."

[...] The Los Angeles Rams' playoff game against the Minnesota Vikings was to be hosted at SoFi Stadium on Monday, January 13 at 8:00 p.m. ET, but the wildcard playoff match up was moved to State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

President Joe Biden arrived in Los Angeles the evening of January 6 ahead of a planned event in Thermal to establish two new national monuments and for the birth of his great-grandson. He entered his limousine, but due to the fire and ongoing wind event, the motorcade never departed, and he returned to his hotel. The dedication ceremony was rescheduled for the following week at the White House.

California FAIR plan: "Between 2023 and 2024, the number of homes in the ZIP code affected by the Palisades fire covered by the FAIR Plan almost doubled. As of January 8, 2025, the plan has around 6 billion dollars of exposure within Pacific Palisades. The plan could have over 24 billion in total loses from the January 2025 Southern California wildfires."

[Magical Realist]

[Image: VFfVwxW.jpeg]

[C C]

Fire chief Kirsten Crowley was let go for publicly speaking out about what she considered a poorly funded and understaffed fire department. So that's yet another oddity about Mayor Bass -- she fired the gay leader of the LAFD, is against defunding the police, owns guns, and (like several actor celebrities) once praised the Church of Scientology. But despite that -- she's still DP kosher, in that she supported Kamala Harris for president. No independent in disguise, here.
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LA Mayor Karen Bass FIRES fire chief Kristin Crowley after lashing out
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/la-may...r-BB1rfWGZ

EXCERPT: Hours earlier, Chief Crowley delivered a scathing indictment of the Mayor Bass's administration, exposing a crisis of funding, staffing, and readiness that she says left her department ill-equipped to face the catastrophe.

In an extraordinary public airing of grievances, Crowley acknowledged to a reporter with KTTV that the city, and by extension, Mayor Bass, failed its residents during the wildfires. When pushed several times if the city had failed, Crowley's response was unflinching: 'Yes.'

The stark admission sent shockwaves through the city, as Crowley detailed the dire state of her department. Years of budget cuts, she said, had left the LAFD grappling with crippling staffing shortages, outdated equipment, and insufficient resource - issues she claimed had been repeatedly brought to the city's attention.

'Since day one, we've identified huge gaps in regard to our service delivery and our ability of our firefighters' boots on the ground to do their jobs,' Crowley said. 'This is my third budget as we're going into 2025-2026, and what I can tell you is we are still understaffed, we're still under-resourced, and we're still underfunded.'

Crowley painted a grim picture of the department's daily operations, revealing that firefighters are handling more than 1,500 calls and transporting 650 patients every day under normal conditions. The wildfires have only exacerbated these challenges.

'We are screaming to be properly funded to make sure that our firefighters can do their jobs so that we can serve the community,' Crowley said. 'This isn't a new problem. It's been a problem for years. And it's time for it to be fixed.'

Crowley's criticism extends beyond the immediate crisis, pointing to a systemic failure to scale the fire department's capabilities alongside the city's explosive growth. 'We know we need 62 new fire stations. We need to double the size of our firefighters,' she said. 'The growth of this city since 1960 has doubled, and we have less fire stations.'
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LA’s fire chief is at the center of a public spat with City Hall as wildfires rage
https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-f...e572e119a4

EXCERPST: Kristin Crowley was elevated to Los Angeles fire chief in 2022 at a time of turmoil in a department consumed by complaints of rampant hazing, harassment and discrimination among its 3,400-member ranks. As a career firefighter, she was portrayed by the then-mayor as a stabilizing force. Three years later, the mood between Crowley and City Hall has changed.

[...] Crowley publicly criticized the city Friday for budget cuts that she said have made it harder for firefighters to do their jobs at a time when they are seeing more calls. She also cast blame on the city for water running out Tuesday when about 20% of the hydrants tapped to fight the Palisades fire went dry.

[...] This followed several days of Crowley getting swept into the national political fray over diversity, equity and inclusion policies that conservatives believe have gone too far in American institutions. Crowley, who is openly gay and the city’s first female fire chief, has made diversifying the overwhelmingly male department a priority.

[...] There’s no evidence that Crowley’s efforts to diversify the department have hampered the fight. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is in charge of providing water for the hydrants, and its leaders have said they were overwhelmed by the intense demand on a municipal system not designed to fight wildfires, particularly as firefighting aircraft was grounded. Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered an investigation into what happened, and Crowley herself added to the criticism.

“When a firefighter comes up to a hydrant, we expect there’s going to be water,” she said during a local news interview.

[...] Two years later, she was facing budget cuts that she warned could hamper the department’s ability to respond to emergencies, including wildfires. She highlighted the elimination of civilian positions and $7 million in overtime pay.

The reduction in overtime has limited the department’s ability to prepare and train for “large scale emergencies,” such as wildfires and earthquakes, Crowley said, and programs like air operations. The department has also lost mechanics, leading to delays in repairing the vehicle fleet, she said.

[Magical Realist]

"As Los Angeles firefighters battle ongoing blazes, prominent rightwing figures are spreading bigoted criticism of the response and lies about who is to blame, including that the fire is raging because of diversity within the fire department.

The misinformation echoes the claims that plagued the North Carolina hurricane response. Both disasters led to outrage, which partisan actors seized upon to advance their political goals, muddying the already confusing information ecosystem that accompanies a fast-moving news event.

In what has become a common theme, rightwing media and commentary have said that diversity within the Los Angeles fire department is to blame for the devastation.

“Meet Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley,” the X account Libs of TikTok, known for spreading anti-LBGTQ+ rhetoric, posted. “She boasts about being the first female and LGBTQ fire chief in the LA Fire Department. Promoting a culture of DEI is her priority. Does this make you feel safer?” In another tweet, the same account, which has nearly 4 million followers, wrote: “DEI will get people k*lled. DEI must DIE.”

Much of the misinformation also includes claims of mismanagement by the LA mayor, Karen Bass, and the California governor, Gavin Newsom.


The spread of rumors, misinformation and lies can hinder the ability of emergency responders to do their jobs and confuses residents who need accurate, up-to-date information to make choices to keep themselves safe. It also makes it more difficult for people to assess whether accountability is needed for their public officials when lies are commingled with valid criticisms.

False claims of federal disaster relief funds being diverted to migrants have also resurfaced. Criticism of environmental practices, like allegedly protecting fish over people or limiting prescribed burns have been elevated. Unrelated donations to Ukraine became a scapegoat. Donald Trump Jr, the president’s oldest son, intimated that donations the Los Angeles fire department sent to Ukraine in 2022 somehow were related to the response.

People from varying points on the political spectrum, including the Los Angeles Times publisher, Patrick Soon-Shiong, have claimed the fire department’s budget saw big cuts – it did not, Politico notes.

Deflections of the role climate crisis plays in increasing natural disasters have received millions of views.

The Libs of TikTok account laid out a variety of rightwing criticisms in one post on X. “Don’t you hate it when climate change appoints a DEI hire to run the fire dept, gives away fire equipment to Ukraine, stops critical controlled burns, defunds the fire dept, refuses to build more water reservoirs and store water, cancels fire insurance, mismanages forests and brush, and fires firefighters for refusing an experimental vaccine?”

Elon Musk, the owner of X and a frequent spreader of misinformation, claimed: “They prioritized DEI over saving lives and homes.” In a response to Libs of TikTok, he wrote: “Wild theory: maybe, just maybe, the root cause wasn’t climate change?”

Andy Biggs, a Republican congressman from Arizona, told Newsmax that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) diverted money to migrants instead of natural disasters – a claim that was debunked repeatedly during the aftermath of the North Carolina hurricane.

Alex Jones, the man behind Infowars and a prolific spreader of lies, has gone even further, posting erroneously that Joe Biden had grounded firefighting plans and that the fires were being spread “by design” as part of a “globalist plot to wage economic warfare”. Musk responded in a now-deleted tweet with a simple one-word: “True”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...geles-fire

[C C]

[...] The Libs of TikTok account laid out a variety of rightwing criticisms in one post on X. “Don’t you hate it when climate change appoints a DEI hire to run the fire dept [...] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...geles-fire

Unjust assessment of Crowley, since she seems to have been keenly aware of how the fire department was underfunded, understaffed, and under-resourced by the higher-ups. Unless she made up all the stuff that got her fired, to deflect unwarranted blame falling on the overall DEI hirings. Which wouldn't make sense or add up (would imply that she secretly had little faith in the latter herself).

[Magical Realist]

Washington
CNN
—
"Another natural disaster, another series of false claims from President-elect Donald Trump.

For years, Trump has littered his statements on California wildfires and other disasters with inaccurate assertions. He did it again on Wednesday as wildfires raged in Los Angeles County.

Here is a fact check:


FEMA funding
Trump claimed on social media Wednesday that President Joe Biden is leaving him “NO MONEY IN FEMA.”

Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Though FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund was depleted last year by a series of major disasters, Biden signed a bill in December that replenished the fund. “The current balance of the Disaster Relief Fund is approximately $27 billion,” FEMA told CNN in an email on Wednesday. That sum may well prove inadequate to meet the needs created by every disaster that ends up happening this year, but it’s not “no money.”

The December bill approved $29 billion in new money for the Disaster Relief Fund – Biden had asked Congress for $40 billion – plus billions more in other new disaster-related funding.

“Thanks to Congress’s recent passage of a disaster supplemental, FEMA has the funding and resources needed to respond to the needs of California,” the agency said in the Wednesday email.

Trump made similar false claims about FEMA being out of money in the wake of Hurricane Helene in the fall.

Newsom and a ‘water restoration declaration’
Trump blamed Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom for the wildfire crisis – claiming in a social media post that Newsom “refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.”

Facts First: This is false. Newsom has never refused to sign a “water restoration declaration.” In fact, there is no such document, as Newsom’s office said on social media on Wednesday and experts on California water policy confirmed.

“There was no ‘water restoration declaration’ for him to sign,” Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow in the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California think tank, said in a Wednesday interview.

“There was never a ‘water restoration declaration’ in California that the Governor refused to sign,” Brent Haddad, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a Wednesday email.

In 2020, Newsom did mount a legal challenge to a Trump plan to deliver more water from Northern California to farmers in the state’s Central Valley agricultural hub, saying he was seeking “to protect highly imperiled fish species close to extinction” in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in the north. Trump’s presidential transition team said Thursday that this is what Trump was referring to. But contrary to Trump’s assertion, this federal initiative was not a declaration for Newsom to “sign” or not – and critically, as we’ll explain in the fact-check item below, experts say there is no connection between this long-running policy battle and the current fires.

California water policy
In the same social media post, Trump continued that Newsom refused to sign the supposed declaration because the governor “wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California.”

Trump continued: “Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes.”

Facts First: These Trump claims include exaggerations, inaccuracies and an overarching false narrative. Most notably, experts on California water policy said Wednesday that there is no basis for linking the existence of the Southern California fires or challenges in the firefighting effort to the water that is kept in the north of the state to protect the smelt and other species and ecosystems. Southern California does not have a shortage of water for fighting the fires.

Mount said Trump’s claims in the social media post don’t make “any sense” and that “none of it is true.” He said the debate related to water in the northern Delta “has nothing to do with the fires in Southern California. There’s nothing.”

It’s entirely possible we will learn that state or local leaders made policy or planning failures that impeded the firefighting effort in Los Angeles County. But there is no apparent link to the particular question Trump has repeatedly invoked and was discussing again in this social media post – which is about how much water should be sent from the north to Central Valley farms that are separated from the Los Angeles area by a mountain range.


Whatever the merits or flaws of Newsom’s position on the protection of the smelt in the northern Delta, all but three of the state’s major reservoirs were filled at or above their historical averages as of Thursday morning. While it is true there were some dry hydrants in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles amid the extreme water demand of the firefighting effort, that significant problem was related to local logistical factors affected by the area’s mountainous geography – and possibly to the fact that a smaller reservoir located in the Pacific Palisades was closed for repairs, an issue Newsom ordered Friday to be independently investigated – not the absence of water in the Los Angeles region as a whole.

“At no time was water scarcity in general an issue. Rather, there were local shortages of water during the firefight, principally due to infrastructure constraints. But Southern California has plenty of water in storage right now, so this was not a limiting factor,” Mount said.

The fire crisis was caused by a combination of exceptionally high winds and the exceptionally dry state of the hilly brushland in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which has had minuscule rain for months. Trump’s proposals to send more water to Central Valley agricultural properties would not have shielded Los Angeles brushland that is not irrigated.

Haddad said that Trump’s comments were so “stupid” that they should be ignored rather than discussed in detail. “There is no connection between environmental protection in northern California and low-flow fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades.”

Other Trump inaccuracies
There are various other factual problems with Trump’s claims in the post.

Trump’s vague claim that there are “not firefighting planes” is untrue. Firefighting aircraft were back in operation over Los Angeles County on Wednesday, armed with water, after being temporarily grounded starting Tuesday night because of high winds.

The claim that there is “no water for fire hydrants” is an overstatement. Hydrants in other parts of Los Angeles County did have water even as the Pacific Palisades hydrants went dry.

Advocates of preserving the Delta smelt want more water, not “less,” for the Delta area where the species lives. And contrary to Trump’s suggestion, Newsom hasn’t stopped water from flowing into the state entirely."

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/politics/...index.html

[Zinjanthropos]

Lot of wealthy people’s homes up in smoke. Do they pay their fair share of taxes in LA, enough to improve fire fighting services that would protect their large investments better?

[Magical Realist]

Lot of wealthy people’s homes up in smoke. Do they pay their fair share of taxes in LA, enough to improve fire fighting services that would protect their large investments better?

Los Angeles County has multiple taxes that support the Los Angeles County Fire Department, including a special tax on property and a parcel tax:

Special tax
A tax on property that funds emergency medical services and fire suppression. The tax is billed on the annual property tax bill and is adjusted annually by 2% or the CPI, whichever is less. For the 2024–2025 fiscal year, the tax rate for a single-family home is $76.68.

Parcel tax
A tax on property that funds the Los Angeles County Fire Department. The tax is levied at a rate of $0.06 per square foot on certain parcel improvements, such as adding onto a home. The tax is expected to raise $152 million annually. Low-income seniors are exempt from the tax.

[Syne]

They pay some of the highest taxes in the country, but when more of that money is going to DEI training and the homeless, there's just not enough left to do the practical, responsible things.

[Zinjanthropos]

High taxes and second rate fire fighting resources sounds like funds aren’t being distributed wisely. Insurance rates must be sky high or non existent considering earthquakes, tsunamis & droughts. Why don’t they use ocean water to fight fire?