[FRIAM] L.A. wildfires

Wed Jan 8 13:58:27 EST 2025

Jochen -

I grew up in a Forest Service household in NM and AZ where my father had 
a "fire radio" in the dining room (in a nook with a sliding door) which 
ran 24/7 during the fire season.  It was a very remote area (on the edge 
of the first designated US wilderness areas, and one of the first US 
Forest Service districts)...   There were 2 lookout towers who chattered 
pretty continuously through that period reporting lightning strikes and 
fire perimeters/progression.  In spite of the large timber sales in the 
area, the policy was to allow a great deal of natural fire (also lacking 
resources to put them out).  My father traveled to the Pacific Northwest 
and California nearly every year for at least 2 weeks to lead a 
firefighting crew (Zuni and Hopi native crews) where the *big fires* were.

At the time it seemed out-of-scale, at least the ones in CA/WA/OR, 
though in the southern rockies where we lived, the fuel load and 
topography just didn't support the huge fires.   My father had *some* 
idea that the emerging policies around protecting Timber (to sell for 
pennies on the dollar to Big Timber) and Range (to benefit the small and 
large ranchers who had the luck or guile to get grazing allotments at a 
similar discount) was going to lead to problems.  He seemed to 
understand that our modern fossil fuel-driven economy was on a crash 
course of some time but I think Climate Change was too large for him to 
imagine.

I "survived" the two major fires that threatened Los Alamos in 2000 and 
then 2011?   It was my first wakeup call, having watched the class of 
fires that happened in the high desert mountains like ours being either 
containable or naturally self-limiting (compared to the West Coast)...  
With Los Alamos (Plutonium Facility in particular) being about the most 
critical thing to protect from such a conflagration (think aerosolizing 
even the smallest stores of Pu?).   It *did* get deterred from the worst 
risks but I was mightily alerted to how helpless we are in the face of 
something like this.

Until about 2000 I was a mild climate denier, feeling that it was "human 
hubris" to believe we could tip the biosphere as radically as it appears 
we have (and continue to).  I was working with (not yet named as such) 
Climate Scientists (oceanographic, atmospheric, etc modelers) and even 
they were reluctant to say it out loud (officially) but they (without 
exception) said privately that they were living *their lives* as if 
Climate Change (then referred to as Global Warming) were an absolute 
certainty.  It moved me (very slightly/slowly) and I began to go from 
being a mild environmentalist to a mild Climate Change believer.   I'm a 
bit less "mild" about it now <grin>.

I just saw a notice on a local community social media site that there 
was only one insurance company willing to provide (wild)fire insurance 
in White Rock (and Los Alamos?).   Sounds like Florida and 
Flood/Hurricane insurance?

On a tangent, we just watched the most recent movie adaptation of the 
story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life.   We had read a biography of his 
life so we knew the general outlines and the final ending to his story, 
but this particular performance/dramatization made it ?nicely? more 
personal and helped me (yet more) to appreciate what that era must have 
been like for  a huge portion of the German population who were neither 
Nazis nor even sympathetic to the movement.   Sadly it seems way to 
prophetic or salient to where we (the US for sure, maybe the entire 
"West" as well) are?

I tend to be a bit of a "hopium fueled optimist" but even I am having a 
hard time making up "don't worry your pretty little head" stories...   
Bonhoeffer's story was mildly inspirational as an example of how to 
"just keep on doing the right thing, no matter how it seems to be 
turning out".

- Steve

On 1/8/25 10:21 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> I fear it will get worse now every year. More and bigger wildfires in 
> California. Higher temperatures and less rain.
>
> If Kamala would have elected there would have been wildfires as well 
> but at least some hope that steps will be taken to protect the 
> climate. Under a new Trump administration I see no hope.
>
> L.A. is burning from all sides now. The famous Hollywood sign is 
> surrounded by fires.
> https://www.latimes.com/wildfires-map/
>
> The wildfires will probably come to Santa Fe too in the next years. 
> Like the ones in NM last year, only worse.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_New_Mexico_wildfires
>
> -J.
>
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com>
> Date: 1/8/25 5:52 PM (GMT+01:00)
> To: friam at redfish.com
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] L.A. wildfires
>
> A good friend who grew up in Pacific Palisades recently moved his
> elderly parents to an assisted living.
>
> As it unfolds, they are on the very edge of the acutely threatened zone,
> holding on for evacuation orders (at least the facility will
> "facilitate" that as it would not have been reasonable at all in their
> 90s to self-evacuate if they were still in the family home.   The family
> home, built in the 60s was purchased by a private developer (after much
> negotiation) to surely be razed and replaced by a mcMansion.  The move
> was 6 months ago and the home sale closed the day before our elections
> (by design).
>
> My friend is in HI right now (visiting Kilauea and Waipio) but his
> brother lives in the LA area, able to attend to the parents anxiety more
> directly.  The family home has not been engulfed yet, but if/when it
> does, it may actually increase the value of the property to new owner
> (the anticipated razing being done on insurance/FEMA's nickle?)....  but
> he just watched the high school he attended (70s) burn to the ground 
> on TV.
>
> <snark> I think Donald Trump is about to announce that this is the price
> of LA and CA being a "Liberal Hellhole" and that if they would just
> "rake their forests" these things wouldn't happen.  Part of the
> Liberal/Chinese hoax about Climate Change and extreme weather? If
> Kamala had been elected the fires would be much worse!  At least it
> wasn't triggered by a Cybertruck loaded with fireworks, (legal)
> firearms, and other accelerants blown up by a MAGA supporter.  If we
> owned Greenland and Canada we could pipe their water (or even
> snowpack/glaciers) down to dump on the fires...  maybe the Boring
> Company is already tunneling under middle America to facilitate
> this?</snark>
>
> SimTable is probably looped in with the myriad evacuation/fire-fighting
> activities?   I'm betting there may be a Pixelated Pile O' Sand on Lena
> street in the shape of the LA hills and valleys?
>
>
> On 1/8/25 5:17 AM, Jochen Fromm wrote:
> > I hope everybody is OK in L.A.? Especially Russ ? The news do not
> > sound good
> > 
> https://www.npr.org/2025/01/07/g-s1-41408/pacific-palisades-fire-wind-california
> >
> > -J.
> >
> >
> >
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