Trump blames Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom for deadly wildfires

My s-i-l evacuated her home on Sunday afternoon. Her house is in Brentwood, 3 or 4 blocks west of Sunset Blvd. She and her daughter and her 2 young children are staying in a hotel on Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills until it is safe to return to their homes My niece owns a home adjacent to the Getty Museum where the grounds were burned but her house is okay so far. Brentwood has turned off the power and gas to their neighborhoods.

She said the smoke is terrible and I know it must be near intolerable for her. She has pulmonary fibrosis and was widowed this past September. Niece's husband commutes to his job in Tampa and is there now. My s-i-l has a condo in Palm Beach and will likely go there if it gets worse, but she doesn't want to leave her family yet. Her son and his wife and infant son live in Malibu but are staying with relatives in Montecito.

 

wait, so if you read it on the internet you're saying it isn't necessarily true?

 

Homeless meth smokers start a lot of fires around LA.

Smoking meth will fry your brain. I cooked a meal for a homeless guy at my friend's business last November. It was about 10 pm. He says mind if I smoke? I said go ahead. I knew it would be meth. 30 minutes later he was thinking 3 cops down the street were going to break into the business. Then he wanted to know if I talked to them. "You better not have had anything to do with this.": I look over and he has a long blade in his hand. My chef's knife. I was a little scared because I knew he did 23 years for killing someone in a Jacksonville, FL bar about 30 years ago. Anyway this guy was paranoid, not processing well and quite delusional. These types set a lot of fires around LA according to someone I know from Studio City.

 

the dry hydrants have absolutely nothing to do with the volume of water in the reservoir. quit parroting that misinformation. your cup can be full but if your straw is skinny you can't drink much. the pipes are the problem, like they are in most places int he country, and the buildings are the problem just like the ones that Ian and others took out. not built to new codes. no different than ones lost across florida to floods and winds. simply amazing the bs people will not only believe but parrot as some sort of gospel truth or divine wisdom because their cult leader said it

 

Do you understand the difference between an “excuse” and “reality?”

I’m pretty sure that even if the CA government produced a magic force field around LA that you’d find a reason to bitch about response.

I wish you all understood the sheer magnitude of responding to natural and man made disasters. When half your state is literal kindling and you’re in an eight year drought, fires will happen. When you add in 75-100 mph winds, you’re going to get overwhelmed.

…but sure. Let’s engage in political mudslinging while people are trying to make the best out of an out-of-control situation. Gonna be great when your autocratic master cuts disaster funding and then blames a shortfall on resources on “cAlIfOrNiA deMoCraTs.”

I swear. MAGA doesn’t just cause brain rot; it destroys any sense of empathy.

 

Speaking as a current municipal firefighter, my personal takes...

Forest fires aren't controlled with water. Water and retardants help but fire breaks and weather do the bulk of the work. The winds and terrain in California have made it impossible to fight these fires. Choppers and planes can't fly in these winds and breaks aren't possible given the speed of the spread and winds. Also, fires generate their own winds as well. This thing is a turbo fueled jet fire. It's just a disaster. In florida, once a fire gets 50 by 50 ft especially with wind forestry comes out and cuts tractor lines. Water helps but it's probably going to get away unless a large response and accessible hydrants are available. Especially if it's in the tree tops. Generally a first tone out response in my area is one engine and one brush truck. By the time more resources are called its more often than not too late for water suppression alone.

Sounds like the politicians have kicked the can regarding the reservoirs. We talk about government waste and corruption but I don't think people understand just how much mismanagement is the result from waste, corruption and incompetence. I laugh at most conspiracy theories because of the amount of coordination, secrecy and ridiculous theories that are required by these same incompetent grifters. Conspiracy theorists are delusional.

I work in a small city approximately 150k people on average including commuters, tourists and residents. We had a 3 story hundred year old apartment fire years ago that got into walls and the attic spaces which became a defensive fire. My numbers are probably off by a couple million but I spoke with the water dept manager and he said we were a couple million gallons away from capacity of the system at which point we would have had problems. Something like 14 million gallons normal daily use and we used another 8 to 10 million gallons. That was for just one defensive fire. I don't think people realize how much water would be needed to fight entire neighborhoods on fire.

There is a DEI problem in police and fire. People can cite "decorated work histories" but I can tell you as someone who only cares whether someone can do their job or not that there is a definitive push in lowering standards and pushing candidates through careers that aren't based on merit. I know a few women who I am confident when on a job but they are far far fewer than the overall number in the force. Plenty of male frauds as well but way too many females that are not physically capable of the tasks required. The men and women that can do the job pick up the slack for those who can't. Always the way its been but it becomes more dangerous when the numbers go up. With that said, the lesbian fire chief isn't the issue at all with what is happening in California right now. Ignorant, political hate porn to say otherwise. Sometimes things aren't political...

Just my experience almost 20 years in

 

@spicy.smuggled.memes6 on Instagram: "‍♂️"

Rogen back in 2023

 

Florida uses tanks to store treated water so there are finite limits which leads munis to add cross-connections for emergencies. not many florida munis have raw water of high enough quality to add to their blend to boost fire supply if needed

Cali uses large open reservoirs and can pump directly from those to the system if needed. the problem wasn't the volume int he cup, it was the size of the straw. the US has a major problem with paying a fair rate for potable water and sewer. we pay more for cable and phone than water and sewer, and our systems are degraded and overloaded as a result, especially the older systems or areas where impact fees are not appropriate.

DEI is a problem, racism is a problem, sexism is a problem, misogyny is a problem. eliminate the last 3 and the first one isn't needed

 

Uh, they wouldn't make "Letters to the Editor" in any respectable publication. Most belong on the wall of a dive-bar bathroom. I mean, that's what Twitter, TicTok always were and were always going to be. Digital Graffiti (I guess Led Zeppelin were prescient).

 

Now do the state, like here. Stop cherry picking. LA gets most of its water from well outside the metro area.

This is from mid-2024 to today.

California Seasonal Rainfall and Percent of Normal

This is an explainer on how snowpack is critical to CA water resources and how several unseasonable warm years have impacted snowline.

Note SoCal precipitation percentages, compared to historic normal:

California

Note that only Northern CA currently is showing normal levels of prescription, with a few wetter areas. Almost everything south of Sacramento? Nope. Guess what sort of biomes exist there? Shrubs. Literal kindling.

Need more?

It amazes me how the only large group of people who deny climate change are America’s right wingers. Hell, even major oil and gas companies acknowledge reality.

 

Newsom will never win a presidential election

 

The first one is just a corporate PR/HR rollout looking to take advantage of/maximize profits in an environment (10+ years ago) that was viewed as generally favorable to those kinds of positions. Which is why - like all things Big Corporate - it sucked so bad and is basically on its death bed. Good. Diversity officer shouldn't be a career path.

 

Racism and sexism was/is a problem but fixing it through lowering standards and targeted directives to specifically increase workforce based on demographics especially sexuality is not the answer. Again, I rarely speak about this stuff because texts can be taken out of context and vilified to make me someone I am not. I have ZERO issue with people living their lives as they choose. There were ugly times in the past in my department where good ole boys ran things and I'm sure bigots imposed their beliefs on hiring and work practices but in almost 20 years on I have never seen anyone hindered based on sexuality or race which is a credit to affirmative action and cultural evolution. I also think SOME things have swung too far in the other direction that need to be reevaluated. There usually isn't room for nuanced discussion so it will continue to be an all or nothing game.

Regardless, this isn't even an issue with the wildfires so back on topic...

I'll defer to your expertise on the water system based on what I believe you ascertain from your line of work. All I'm saying is it takes a riculous amount of water to fight such a large scale fire and beyond just the supply but the delivery systems as well.

 

Gavin Newsom and Mayor Bass need to answer a few questions

 

Not letting people live there or anywhere near there

 

the problem in cali is the delivery. that is why it is so stupid to keep talking about the reservoirs. the delays are legit issues, nothing to do with the fire problem

 

Yeah, that's fine and all, but we're (MAGA) trying to throw turds at the D's here. Come on man! Can you help us out? All this "common sense" stuff is bringing down the MAGA vibe.

 

The problem with blaming "DEI" is that none of these public sector jobs were ever doled out on merit, they were patronage gigs historically. "Why were all the cops Irish and somehow related to each other" in 1925 wasnt because the Irish were good at being cops.

 

Maybe so but that isn't as much a concern to me today as is knowing the crew on my engine company can force a door, efficiently move a charged hose line, throw a 72 pound ladder or drag out bodies when we respond to an apartment fire where the boyfriend locked the door after killing his girlfriend and setting the apartment on fire with 3 young children inside (2 rescued), or when a man is burning alive in a work truck after a collision with a bus. Just two examples. I could go on and on.

Our employment test has removed hitting a sled and dragging an adult sized mannequin along with increasing the time to complete all events from 8 minutes to 13:30 minutes in the name of hiring females. I could go on with more details about our administration promotions but I'll refrain. Maybe I can expound in another more appropriate thread but I don't want to stray too far from the topic at hand.