Firefighters say that L.A.'s hellacious firestorm started at 10:30 Tuesday morning in Topanga Canyon. This paradise is — was? — filled with bespoke homes and came with built-in privacy — a rare commodity. People have been uprooted, their family memories are in ashes, and they have to find a place to sleep tonight. Evacuated entertainment stars such as James Woods, Ben Affleck, Eugene Levy, and more likely haven't had a chance to ask this secondary question: What started this fire?
First, any number of things could have started the fire that turned into a conflagration that destroyed untold numbers of homes and scorched at least 3,000 acres — and counting — of prime Los Angeles area real estate. Someone could have flicked a cigarette butt out the window. Car exhaust could have sparked dry brush on the side of the road. Arsonists have been known to purposely set fires in Southern California.
Arson for California wildfires needs to bring the death penalty. pic.twitter.com/XjbAweMgFG
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) January 8, 2025
Or maybe it was the same thing that started fires in the past: homeless encampments.
In 2021, Topanga Canyon residents were so concerned with homeless encampments and fire danger that they ostensibly "banned" them. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted to ban homeless camps because cooking dinner or drugs outside in dry brush is a really dumb idea.
Film producer and conservative Mike Cernovich predicts that before the embers are put out of the Palisades fire, a Hollywood "sh*tlib" will blame it not on homeless encampments or an arsonist but on climate change.
California does almost no wild brush clearing and let druggies camp out and start fires.
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) January 7, 2025
Then when a big fire like in Pacific Palisades (shitlib central) happens, the narrative is climate change.
It’s time to vote Republican!
Blaming these fires on "climate change" when there's little to no fire mitigation (clearing brush, trimming undergrowth, managing forests) and allowing millions of acre-feet of water to be washed out to sea are also really dumb ideas. Maybe these dumb ideas are what they mean by "man-made" climate change.
It's hard to ignore the record.
Fire officials say that homeless camp wildfires doubled from 2020 to 2023 to 13,909. There were 24 "homeless related" fires in LA County responded to every day of 2021.
According to NBC 4 in L.A., some of the homeless campfires started from campers illegally hooking up to underground electricity outlets. That's what caused a fire in Hollywood.
The I-Team discovered that some of these encampment fires are apparently caused by homeless people tapping into city electrical wires under the sidewalk, meant to bring power to streetlights, and diverting the electricity into their tents.
Here are just a few recent wildfires started by drug-addled "homeless" campers.
- Jan 7, 2025: Santa Ana Riverbed Fire one acre, destroyed tents, RVs, and at least 12 cars.
- Nov. 14, 2024: Van Nuys, impacted commuters on freeways throughout San Fernando Valley.
- May 2024: Hollywood Boulevard, aforementioned electrical fire, threatened nearby buildings.
- Jan. 7, 2024: Hollywood, Cahuenga Pass, during high winds. Two cars and some trees were destroyed.
- April 20, 2021: Venice Beach, one home was destroyed and a dog killed. Believed linked to a string of homeless encampment fires in the area.
There are more. A homeless encampment fire nearly got to the Getty Museum a few years back.
The response has been next to nothing by county and state officials. Gavin Newsom's plan to help the homeless has resulted in missing billions of dollars and a nearly doubling of the homeless population.
Here's Cernovich again.
Wildfires are Gavin Newsom’s legacy.
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) January 8, 2025
In October 2024, Joe Biden's Administration officially pronounced an end to controlled burns in California for fire mitigation.
[T]he U.S. Forest Service directed its employees in California to stop prescribed burning “for the foreseeable future,” a directive that officials said is meant to preserve staff and equipment to fight wildfires if needed.
The pause comes amid the crucial fall window for planned, controlled burns, which remove fuel and can protect homes from future wildfires — raising concerns that the move will increase long-term fire risks.
“There are two times in the year when it’s safe to do prescribed fire: in the fall right before the rains come, and in the spring when things are dry enough to burn but not dry enough to burn it in a dangerous way,” said Michael Wara, energy and climate expert at Stanford University. He worries half of the prescribed fire season on federal lands will be sacrificed because of this decision.
Though this doesn't impact what happened in Topanga Canyon, it tells you the mindset of these do-gooders.
In the Sacramento area, where a homeless camp sparked a 585-acre wildfire in June 2024, local officials were asked to provide homeless campers with firefighting equipment instead of telling the campers to get out.
I know people will say that those rich Hollywood people don't need protection. That take is dumb, too.
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