Tuesday 10.30am struck by the beginning of pure hell on fire. The Pacific Palisades neighborhood began burning around 4 and a half square miles. Whipped up with Santa anna fierce winds a fireball of hell ravaging everything in its sights!
Palisades neighbors began a mass panic trying to escape rapid wind driven wildfire. Embers flying in multiple direction trapping many thus causing a roadblock of fleeing drivers of their cars. This alone blocking the road to emergency vehicles a bulldozer was called in to bull doze the cars from the road. A scene made for the movies like Terminator 2, but it was not a movie but REAL life!
The cost of lives and animals lost priceless. The million dollars homes and those living in cabins or airstreams. Lives ripped apart at what cost?
For reports that Mayor Los Angeles Karen Bass recently cut the funding to fire departments of $17.6 million a few months ago. You do not cut budgets you always increase them. Today’s world as this editor has always said. “We are in the what if business” referencing in the fire service. “Always prepare for the unexpected”.
At least some cities and counties get it right like Miami Dade and Broward County for example in S Florida or even City of New York fire department with big budgets Then there are some like the city of Detroit that has learned over the years you can’t cut the budget as fire trucks and fire houses needed to be maintained and replaced along with increase of firefighters. Even smaller cities like Hermosa Beach made cutbacks years ago by placing the last fire chief Peter Lamb in a no-win situation. This caused the takeover by Los Angeles County to take over the city’s one fire station with a fraction of firefighters and single engine 101 to cover the city!
You don’t cut back fire service or EMS.
It pains to say and no offence to the Ukraine but the U.S spent millions to better train them. Giving equipment and millions of dollars that cities like Los Angeles and Los Angeles County needed.
Later in the day January 7, 2025, another wildfire sparked up in the hills of Altadena rolling towards Pasadena. Causing destruction by fire of homes and lives being shattered by the unthinkable. This fire now called the Eaton Fire
There were warnings of dangerous winds before all these fires began so why the late supply of water? Why so late when even ranchers try to escape with their horses and animals. Why do you ask are they in this hell of fire? Well cutbacks are not the way to protect all lives and property!
Editorial Fire and Aviation TV 01/08/24