From the Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Cliff Mass
The weather forecasts for the Los Angeles area were nearly perfect for Tuesday and Wednesday.
Very strong winds and low relative humidity were predicted by the high-resolution models (such as the NWS HRRR model), with forecast winds greater than 60 mph. The region was bone-dry with little rain during the past months.
The NOAA’s HRRR model prediction of wildfire potential on Monday indicated very high values in the Pacific Palisades region (see below). It is hard to imagine doing better.
The National Weather Service put out an ominous forecast for the danger of wildfire. I blogged about it on Monday because I was quite concerned.
Yet with all this warning, a huge fire (actually three major fires) occurred with at least 5 deaths. Over a thousand homes were destroyed. The damage will easily be in the billions of dollars. And the story is not over yet.
Did local governments take sufficient steps to stop this well-predicted disaster? Should Southern California Edison have been more aggressive in turning off power?
Update
The area of the Palisade fire this afternoon is shown below, with a current size of about 16,000 acres.
There are two other large fires, the Easton and Hurst fires.
The strong winds predicted on Monday were verified..
Below are the maximum wind gusts yesterday and today. Up to 98 mph in the hills northeast of Malibu yesterday and 89 mph today.
Also very low relative humidity.
Wednesday Max Wind Through Noon
We know the fire started around 10:30 AM yesterday (Tuesday) not far from the Summit community (see map)
The big question is ignition. What started the fire?
Considering the history of such fires, the most probable origin is a sparking electrical line and the second is arson. Eventually, we will know.
If a sparking electrical line was the cause, then Southern California Edison needs to explain why the power was not shut down to the entire threatened area. As shown below, pictures from aircraft landing last night revealed that neighborhoods near the fires were still energized.
Even Edison’s own maps this AM showed that large areas near the fires (and strong winds) were still energized.
Just frustrating….. such good weather predictions and still such unfortunate outcomes. We need to do better.
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No. Multiple recent popup fires there are due to arson. Arson for the original ignition source is possible, if not likely.
If the arsonists are caught, I suggest burning at the stake.
Good idea, perhaps put a full propane cylinder at the bottom of the stake.
At least one arsonist was caught in the act and arrested. Others were caught on video.
Stake and kegs?
Arrested and released. I guess videos of him trying set stuff on fire wasn’t enough evidence.
Yes, holding a torch and possession of accelerants while trying to start a fire was insufficient evidence to charge with arson. California justice system is as at fault as their stupid environmental policies.
Failure to do proper wildlands management is the problem, which is the fault of the local and state politicians. Given known irregularities in the state election system, any change would have to be overwhelming to overcome ballot harvesting and the like.
Risk mitigation activities fall below diversity priorities now. LA even decided to stop testing fire hydrants a month ago to save money.
Sierra Club, NRDC, et al do their best to make wildland management as slow and expensive as possible.
Some government agencies try to do their jobs but are blocked by lawsuits and permitting interventions from these pathological organizations.
Other states do much better. California is accused of sue-and-settle agreements with the green NGOs, of not really attempting to fight the lawsuits, just using them to do what the apparatchiks wanted anyway.
We don’t need to do better. Newsom, Bass, and the DEI LAFD chief needed to do better. Newsom vetoed the N/S water diversion bill out of concern for the extinct delta smelt. Bass cut the LAFD budget nearly $20 million and installed a new LAFD chief whose express top priority is DEI
“a new LAFD chief” at 750K/year? unless I’m thinking of some other LA bureaucrat- a previous thread said something about this?
Was me on another thread. Actual LA public records data:
Answers question: how can CA real estate be so expensive.
All of America should know about this! Somebody tell Trump- he’ll rant about it. 🙂
9 LA employees made over $700,000 in one year
Citizen Free Press on X: “TOP 10 HIGHEST PAID LOS ANGELES CITY EMPLOYEES. https://t.co/aHf3YdI1Nj” / X
What’s the column “Other”?
It seems some are doubling their already high base salaries with “Other”
Kristine Larson, LAFD ‘Equity Bureau’ deputy chief and top DEI enforcer, $399,000.
And who says stuff like “If I have to carry a man out of a fire, he got himself in the wrong place.”
That must include a number of minority bonuses. If you don’t make $750K then you ain’t a black, lesbian fire chief.
Did local governments take sufficient steps to stop this well-predicted disaster?
You are reading this wrong. You foolishly assume that Newsom, Bass and the DEI LAFD actually care about the jobs they are expected by the public to do – and that is to effectively manage resources and serve the public.
You could not be more wrong. The evidence is Right There before you when they speak. The only thing is the acquisition and maintenance of power to implement their destructive policies.
Why destructive policies? Because, destruction is where the money is. Hundreds of billions to Ukraine once the destruction started, trillions to the Middle East as the destruction started. Hundreds of millions and billions given to local government when disasters strike.
A $10M fire is settled quietly between the property owner and insurance. a $10B fire, the government receives emergency aid. a $100B fire the government receives billions in unaccountable money plus a new agency to study the problem where well compensated sinecures with no clear purpose, mission or contractual delivery obligation (like Climate Change Studies) can live on lavish expense accounts, lifelong benefits and pensions and authority to obstruct private citizens from living their lives.
Newsom, Bass and DEI LAFD actually are “getting it done” by carefully crafting the conditions where a disaster is automatically promoted to epic disaster and turns a $10B fire into a $200B fire where now they get to win the US Congress Ultimate Sweepstakes Prize. Its a master stroke of grifting genius as they take the money ear marked for fire supplies, forestry, reservoirs, training and water management and piss it away on pet DEI and Sodomy projects allowing the conditions for epic disaster to grow. They even pass special legislation to guarantee epic disaster because everyone in government know that the bigger the crisis the bigger the Lottery Winnings.
They may not have lit the match, but they sure as hell made sure that when the match was lit, there would be a massive Pay Day for the strapped California Government.
Whether its Biden or Trump, no POTUS has ever said “No” to lavish if not grotesque spending of tax money.
All too true and now I understand they plan to re-zone the area to eliminate those wasteful single-family homes. Apartments in a 15 minute city.
A fire was inevitable. This fire is a consequence of poor land management and development policies.
As one of the lucky ones from the Mountain Fire November ’24, we empathize with the Pacific Palisades residents who are suffering. That said, aerial photography of the area actually reveals the border between LA and Ventura Counties. Those disparate development patterns are part of the reason for the extent of destruction. Sadly it is already a done deal that the rebuilding will ignore those lessons.
Yep.
It’s more that the size and impact of the fire were a consequence of those factors.
A smaller fire could still be bad, but on a much smaller scale.
except the Kenneth fire is fully within Ventura. all the other fires are a considerable distance from Ventura so how could your statement be tru at all? Looking at the East Ventura boundaries, i cant see any pattern at all.
https://boundaries.us/ca/ventura-county/
seriously, i wanted you to be correct, but it is nonsense.
hapy to be shown otherwise.
The problem is also building homes that so easily catch fire and burn down under these circumstances. Sana Winds and wild fires are an normal circumstance in Southern California yet adequate precautions are not taken.
I dare say for the alarmist mind it was essential for ramming home the narrative.
Hard to imagine.
“If a sparking electrical line was the cause, then Southern California Edison needs to explain why the power was not shut down to the entire threatened area. ”
WOW, the author wants to blame the electric company for the failure of every level of government, Federal, State and Local. Through mismanagement they created a hazardous condition that put lives in danger. If YOU knowingly pour gasoline in a parking lot and a smoker happens to accidentally drop a lit match and the lot goes up in flames is it the smokers fault? People depend on electricity and its supply is critical.
There definitely is enough blame to go around, but SoCalEd has indeed been responsible for other previous fires.
Look, fires start for all kinds of reasons. It is the government’s responsibility to create conditions where the public is safe. Proper forest management is of vital importance. This hazard has been pushed under the rug for decades.
Maybe they’ll build back better.
Voter’s priorities are going to be reset, although most in LA voted for the idiots who prioritize diversity or false ecological beliefs over the proper forest management and risk mitigation.
That’s my thinking too, and I grew up in Paradise. Anything could start these fires — lightning, hot car parking on grass or a car accident, careless cigaret smoker, BBQ, house fire, anything. To put all the blame on the power company is ridiculous.
We have total fire bans in such conditions, including bans on the outdoor use of grinders. Does California do something similar?
Yes. Do people follow the rules? No. Somewhere someone is always doing something against the rules, thinking they are above it all.
Most people here are very aware of bushfire risk, so are pretty good about observing fire bans.
There are still some ratbag arsonists, unfortunately.
Predictable. Insurance companies ought to stipulate to these government officials to reduce fuels, establish management policies, water storage etc… Otherwise they won’t insure period. When the people feel the pain of incompetence, they just might vote differently and vote in actual leaders.
Don’t count on insurance companies. I hear thousands of policies were cancelled recently.
Yeah. I read that,1600 policies. It was wishful thinking on my part to think insurance companies might stand-up to local and state officials and demand real solutions actions.
The reason the companies cited are new regulations enacted by the California marxo-democrat junta that could have caused them to go insolvent. The only option for home owners was some state-run insurance program that is prohibitively expensive.
The policies were canceled because of laws that capped premiums.
All insurance companies can do is to charge rates that are commensurate with the risks, and if they state won’t let them do that, pull out of the state. Which is what many insurance companies are doing.
It is illegal to cancel policies. The worst they can do is not renew.
Very nice Cliff.
Wind induced powerline sparking is not an issue with underground utilities. If nothing else the LA Basin needs to adjust to the combination of Santa Ana winds, dysfunctional governance, and some arsonists (see video of person arrested with blowtorch near fire start) by rebuilding with underground utilities. Why not pump sea water into the fire hydrant system to fight fires? Wait a minute, there’s already talk about Harris being the next governor…….
She will definitely be unburdened by what has been.
You got Harris’ attention when you mentioned blowtorch.
It appears that control of Cal’s water is to a large degree in private hands. Somehow, the dem donor Resnick family is able to make money taking water from a government reservoir and selling it back to the government, while at the same time meeting all of their irrigation needs for their agricultural businesses.
Chinatown!?
When the electricity is shut off, the pumps …
windmill assisted?
Update: the individual held by citizens, several of which said they saw the person trying to start a fire, who is an illegal alien out of jail on a felony probation, has now been released by the LAPD who said “they had no reason to hold him”. There is no hope for Kalifornia.
That’s crazy. Sanctuary inferno.
The NOAA’s HRRR model prediction of wildfire potential on Monday indicated very high values in the Pacific Palisades region (see below). It is hard to imagine doing better.
Trust models??? OMG
Some models can be useful but not all. I have seen some very attractive models.
Gee… if only models could put out a fire.
You [snip-mod]
By the time the weather warning comes, it is too late. Fuel management is key, and the most important is clearing flammable trees, undergrowth and material away from houses and infrastructure. No fuel, no fire. We know it works.
The next most important are (a) fuel reduction in the forest. One way is how Americans did it before Europeans arrived. We know that works too. (b) Defences against ember attack. These involve things like water supply, energy supply ie. not grid electricity, and blocking vulnerable places from ember entry.
palisades is chapparal. not forest,
clear the shrubs and youll end up with landslides.
now innorthernn california up by my cabin. underbrush is a huge issue.
two people a skatic ans warmist hear the word fire
warmest: climat change
skeptic: forest management
neither bother to examine te details
The chaparral ecosystem ridges and canyons north of Los Angeles are a loaded cannon pointed at the wildland boundary areas of the city:
The topography of the hills and valleys in that area of California causes them to act as wind strakes directing the flow of air into the urbanized areas to the south of the shrub and bush-covered hills.
Periodic wildfires are a natural part of the lifecycle of the southern California chaparral ecosystem. Wet conditions promote vegetation growth. Sooner or later, dry conditions burn that vegetation off.
Three questions: Looking at the map, on any given day, how much mass and volume of combustible vegetative material is present north of the city? How much of that total mass and volume can be mobilized by extremely strong winds after being ignited? How far and how fast can it move after being ignited and mobilized?
Sooner or later, a wildfire was going to be sparked by some kind of ignition source, either natural or man-made, and then be hugely amplified by exceptionally strong winds, sending masses of burning embers well beyond any fire barriers which might have been constructed between the hills and the urbanized areas.
Some more questions here:
(1) Had the standard measures which had been taken for some number of years to fight wildfires in southern California been pursued as vigorously as they had been in the past — brush removal, controlled burns, etc., etc. — could this disaster have been prevented?
(2) In this particular instance, if those standard measures weren’t enough, because of the unusual strength of the winds, would the only possible means of avoiding this huge disaster have been the use of only non-combustible materials for construction of every house and building in the path of the wildfire?
In the aftermath of this disaster, local LA county and city governments will decide whether or not to rebuild the destroyed urban areas.
Those governments will likely impose stringent requirements on home and business reconstruction, including the use of non-combustible materials, while also imposing limits on the numbers and types of structures which can be present in any particular destroyed urban area.
every 50 years it burns from he mountains to the sea.
dont build in fire zones
dont insure in these zones
dont rebuild
My understanding that the electric utility that owns the power lines in the ignition area was LADWP and NOT SCE. Cliff is right about the need to shut off power in extremely high wind conditions, and SCE and SDG&E have been proactive in shutting off power in these situations.
On a longer term basis, the big failure was not controlling vegetation (fuel) in the fire areas. Thousand Oaks has had a weed abatement ordinance since the early 1960’s and that ordinance has been and still is being enforced. BTW, this could explain why SCE hasn’t shut off power in parts of T.O. I ran across a comment from a fire prevention expert stating that he could tell where the boundary between Beverly Hills and LA County was by the fact that Beverly Hills was controlling vegetation while LA County wasn’t.
The solution might be making various individuals in local, state and federal government personally responsible for decisions that result in wildfires due to blocking clearance of overgrown vegetation. This would include judges.
ya cut all the brush on hillsides, duh, wait
I tried the Cliff Mass website many years ago and he did not impress me. This article is a nothingburger — a waste of reading time. We do not know what started any of the fires but can assume a manmade accident or arson. So what?
Did this have to happen can not be answered without knowing the cause.
The idea of turning off electric power every time there are strong winds in fire prone areas is stupid.
In California, wildfire season typically starts in June and continues through October, when the weather is hot and dry. This year the CA winter has been unusually dry too.
Typically, about 10 to 25 Santa Ana wind events occur annually. A Santa Ana wind can blow from one to seven days, with an average wind event lasting three days.
Mike Wofford, a lead forecaster at the National Weather Service’s office in Oxnard, Calif., says the Santa Ana winds are most common during the cooler months from September through May.
Would the Cliff Mass “advice” be to shut power on every windy day during fire season (June through October) and every windy day during the Santa Ana wind season (September through May)?
That adds up to no electricity on EVERY windy day during EVERY month of the year. Another reason to ignore the Cliff Mass website.
The WUWT editor who chose this article gets a Three Stooges head bop:
The Three Stooges – Slaps, Smacks and Pokes
There is no such thing as a wild fire season.
There is no such thing as a wild fire season
I’m guessing you never lived in SoCal?
When I lived there, fire season and mudslide season (which is typically the first rain after fire season) were all well known seasons.
I live in Southern Victoria. The most fire prone place on Earth, There is no such thing as a fire season.
I live in Southern Victoria.
So, no, you never lived in SoCal.
There is no such thing as a fire season.
If you don’t live in SoCal, there may not be. But if you haven’t lived there, then you don’t know SoCal culture. Windy, fire, rainy (which is quite short), and mudslide are the seasons.
https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-malibu-wildfire-history/
It is certain that the billions of dollars wasted on ‘Climate mitigation” and Net Zero would have been better used for fire mitigation and prevention. Nothing California can do will ever change the weather, much less the climate, but damage can be minimized if resources are allocated more wisely, and years of neglect have consequences. Smaller measures taken regularly can and do reduce risk.
Cliff did not say that every windy day should be treated with the same caution. He said that this set of conditions was a particular risk that should have been treated with extra caution.
One thing is clear, the website to ignore is yours if your regular rants are any indication of its content..
Cliff Mass lays blame for the start of Palisades Fire on sparking powerlines located just northeast of The Summit ridgetop housing development.
Where and how did the Palisades Fire start?
Legions of lawyers are now massing outside local courtrooms to hold those who had authority over the operation of these powerlines accountable for the Palisades Fire.
The idea of turning off electric power every time there are strong winds in fire prone areas is stupid.
the area was under a PDS warning.
4 this season all led to fires
the last PDS was in 2020.
i lived in malibu, you know nothing
Once a fire has been started, the fact that power in nearby neighborhoods is still on doesn’t make the fire worse. Turning off power also hurts people, and can in some cases prove fatal, even if no permanent structural damage results – so it should not be done unless there is specific reason to believe that power lines are somehow simultaneously and coincidently sparking new fires – which seems extremely unlikely.
As Scissor wrote above, more likely that the firebugs came out once the fire began. But the major reasons these wildfires are so damaging is the failure to reduce fuel loads. Fires can’t burn with out fuel or oxygen. The oxygen obviously is there in the outdoors, and the high winds certainly deliver more and more oxygen to fires creating a “firestorm”. But if there is little fuel, not much will happen.
The government in California must prioritize methods of reducing fuel loads particularly in densely-developed areas like in LA. If not, then the next big fire is coming again … and again … and again … until the fuel loads are cut way back.
Almost the entire state of CA’s forests are one big fuel load during the hot and dry fire season. Cutting down even a majority of dry growth would be an impossible job.
According to available information, a proper forest management plan in California could cost around $1 billion per year if aiming to treat 1 million acres annually, with costs averaging around $1,000 per acre; however, the exact cost can vary depending on the specific management practices and land conditions involved.
CA has 33 million acres of forest land. This is about one-third of the state’s total land area.
CA did 700,000 acres of forest management in 2023 and hoped to reach one million acres annually by 2025. The right way for forest management is to work on every forest every year, not just once a decade. Prescribed burns are dangerous in windy CA so the forest management job in CA is tougher than in most states.
It’s easy to say Forest Management, Forest Management, but CA is 1/3 forests, so total CA forest management is just a green fantasy.
Forest management does not start any fires.
Forest management does not prevent any fires.
Cutting down even a majority of dry growth would be an impossible job.
If you don’t even start, everything is impossible. Does it sound Democratic?
There is nothing remotely close to “impossible” about managing fuel loads in developed areas. To claim it is impossible is something only an incompetent Dem politician or bureaucrat would ever say.
Duane: You underestimate our Mr. Greene. I don’t think he’s a dem pol or bureaucrat, he’s more “old man yells at cloud”, and he sets the bar at the entire wooded area of CA to make it seem impossible. He won’t get it.
How about forest management near residential areas?
Forest management helps prevent fires from getting up into the canopy, thus keeping them much more controllable. That’s the issue.
In this case we’re not talking about a forested area though. Looking at the photos of the remains of a friend’s house, it is totally destroyed but the trees in the gardens of the surrounding area are intact. Seems likely that the most effective mitigation policy would be fire-proof roof material.
Without knowing what the roofing materials were, we can’t really say. Are terracotta tiles good? Metal roofing? Asphalt?
Also using dimensional lumber (or non-flammable materials) for construction which burns MUCH slower than modern engineered lumber.
Looks to me there were a lot of foam roofs, (note I have one here in Arizona,) steel roofs would go a long way in helping the ember problem. Pea rock on the old asphalt roofs had a function not limited to breaking up the hail. Personal note it a pain to work on and with and asphalt roof material, hot tar burns and you can’t wipe it off!
Reducing fuel loads is a must, maintained fire breaks and water storage and much large mains at a much larger scale would also help. Cutting fire departments budgets and not being prepared for something like this is stupid, it is not like they haven’t been warned by the urban fires California has had recently. I personally don’t think California political climate of neglect and corruption is going to change anytime soon.
When these fires get close to structures, it doesn’t matter what the cladding material is. The radiant heat from the fire gets the cladding material hot enough that the wooden frame of the house will catch fire.
As an example. I remember an instance when I lived in Tampa, an apartment complex under construction caught fire. The construction was at the stage where it was all just sticks and floors. The fire grew so hot that a finished and occupied post office, on the other side of a 5 lane road caught fire. At no time was the fire closer than 80 or 90 feet. No sparks. Metal roof. The radiant heat was just so intense that the post office ignited.
The only thing you can do with these wildfires is to try and keep the total amount of fuel down so that the fires don’t get too hot, and to try and keep that fuel well away from structures.
Forest management does mitigate the effect of fires.
Forest management does allow fires to burn out.
You do the forest management where it can be most effective…
Pointless doing it in the middle of the forest.. as you say, there is just too much of it.
There should be a good buffer zone, maybe 100m+ in the case of the Santa Ana wind regions, where there are no trees or shrubs, regularly mown grass etc between all wooded zones and residential zones.
If you are on top of a ridge, with trees directly below.. you are asking for trouble.
Maybe Google Earth is deceptive, but it looks like the terrain in the area would support some substantial dams and reservoirs.
What is 100m+? Meters? Miles? 100 meters wouldn’t have made a difference in 80mph winds.
I think multiple 100meter breaks would have been a huge help. It would not have prevented all of the devastation, but it would have allowed staging and fighting in defendable and somewhat safe zones. It would be a component of a more robust system of defense. Other things like having enough water would help too.
You have to do the management throughout the forest. You need to keep the under brush under control so that any fire can’t climb into the canopy. Once the fire gets into the canopy, it will continue to spread in the canopy until it runs out of forest.
I grew up in Altadena and currently live just a few miles to the south. I drove through the affected area on Wednesday. The destruction is unbelievable. Forest management might give some benefit but the “forest” behind Altadena is mostly chaparral growing in very steep and inaccessible terrain. More important for LA county is city/suburb management.
The recent fires need not have been wild fires. If one home had caught on fire with the dry winds blowing 70 mph, large sections of the suburbs still would have been lost. The problem was flying embers, few people there to put them out when they landed (because almost everyone evacuated) older homes that were not very fire resistant, and a lack of water.
In the future I think better construction practices, more fire reservoirs in the mountains around the cities and suburbs, and citizens organized to extinguish blowing embers on a block-by-block basis.
A friend’s house in Altadena was totally destroyed, however the trees nearby were fine! The umbrella on the porch was unaffected too, basically it was hot embers blown by the winds setting fire to the house roof that was the problem, raking the brush wouldn’t have done any good.
You mean does not prevent natural ignition? Well it stands to reason that it can prevent some dry lightning ignitions.
Crap. Many out-of-control fires have been started by forest management here in Australia.
Fuel load matters a lot more in developed areas than in forested areas with few human habitants. It doesn’t take a genius to come to that conclusion.
Reducing fuel in developed areas is not very difficult. Cut down and remove dense brush and overgrown timber within a practical radius of human structures. Do controlled burning in boundary areas. None of the above are new or innovative – it just requires a government that gives a damn about protecting its citizens – instead of promoting DEI, transgenderism, promoting homelessness and crime. It requires governing competence and accountability, which does not exist in Dem run jurisdictions.
This ^
You don’t have to cut down a majority of the forests.
What you do have to do is to remove fuel from near buildings.
You also thin the growth so that when a fire does exist it doesn’t get as hot.
You cut breaks so that equipment can reach the fire more quickly.
What you do have to do is to remove fuel from near buildings.
I don’t know what the laws/regulations are now, but when I lived there, I knew someone in the Arrowhead area who got into trouble for clearing brush (for a fire break) around his house.
Cutting down even a majority of dry growth would be an impossible job.
So use a strategic approach and focus on the high risk areas.
In trying to make comparisons between the LA fires and the scale of destruction of past fires in Australia, it was an image of burnt out beachside residents in Malibu that made the Black Thursday fires on 6th February 1851, under ferocious conditions burning over 13 million acres, about 1/4 the state of Victoria, burning to the coast in many areas, comparable in terms of the conditions driving the fires. A sailing ship about 20 miles out to sea came under ember attack with it’s sails catching fire. Victoria was more sparsely populated back then, but the scale and losses were fully documented.
The 1800’s were a time of more frequent droughts with major droughts around the time of Australian Federation, the Federation Drought ran 1895 to 1902. Such drier conditions have gradually been giving way to wetter conditions from the mid 1900’s through to now due to warmer sea surface temperatures in the waters surrounding Australia becoming more frequent.
WWII as well in heavily settled Victoria as a result of the 1850s gold rushes when they were also distracted by conflagrations elsewhere-
Country Fire Authority – Wikipedia
Black Friday bushfires – Wikipedia
That would lead to the formal Country Fire Authority when resources permitted but you can see how all that changes is more lives and property in harms way with ongoing development and settlement. The topography of Palisades says it all and it was just a matter of time and conditions to destroy a dense patchwork of inherited tinderboxes.
Interesting that the major Federation drought ran from 1895 to 1902. Here in the UK there were major drought periods in the years between 1890 and 1909
Do you know to what extent the drought conditions extended to those on the other side of the English Channel?
Here in Australia we have a wall poster updated annually that displays the annual rainfall in pictorial form from 1890 to present. It is easy to see the short and long term trends and identify the drought times. It seems that there was almost always a drought somewhere in Australia.
https://data.longpaddock.qld.gov.au/static/posters/RainfallPoster.pdf
There are archives of drought data reported over the last 200 years in the UK but as far as I can tell no such wall poster for the UK. We also tended to be very insular until the late 20th C !
Given the region has both a warm climate and many expensive homes, I expect that many, perhaps most, have swimming pools filled with water that could be used to protect homes if the residents had portable fire pumps that can operate independently of the electrical grid and the water supply.
When all homes are left undefended it is only to be expected that fire will leap from property to property.
It’s possible to build back better as you can see here-
The last house standing after California fires
But it’s expensive as Australians know with revised Bushfire Attack Levels and Building Codes so many walk away underinsured. In high risk bushfire areas now whilst you can use appropriate in-ground swimming pools as reservoirs with FF fire fighting pumps if you don’t have that you’ll need to invest in concrete water storage on top of strict fire rated homes. The Palisades will never be the same again.
Anybody remember the Laguna Beach fire? A single house standing unscathed, surrounded by the remains of incinerated houses. Because the owner (I think he was an architect) designed it to be really fireproof.
I also agree with the writer who suggested that wealthy owners with swimming pools should have fire defenses using that water. In fact fire codes in those areas should require installation of that equipment.
I would like to know exactly what he did to fireproof it.
edit
At a news conference yesterday, it was said that the electric company shut down electricity to the fire hydrant pumps because they feared the power lines would start additional fires.
The problem is there was no plan to keep the pumps operating with local generators.
It is quite obvious the root cause of these fires. Look! Here is a picture of the culprit!!
Well that’s interesting, a [Ctrl-F] search on “eucalyptus” turns up “0/0”
Well that’s interesting, a [Ctrl-F] search on “eucalyptus” comes up 0/0
What you’re looking for is the eucalyptus oil in the leaves and you can throw a branch full of green leaves on a fire and watch it leap into flames rather quickly-
Eucalyptus – The Tree That Chose Violence
Still hotting up as somebody Didn’t Earn It-
LA Mayor Karen Bass FIRES fire chief Kristin Crowley after lashing out
Fired fire chief: “We need to double the size of our firefighters”
I don’t think big fat firefighters are the answer.