A Los Angeles Fire official just highlighted another one of California's self-inflicted wounds which may be responsible for at least one of the firestorms consuming thousands of homes. At least two dozen people have perished in the fires that started on January 7.
LAFD is now appealing to homeless people to please stop setting fires — even fires to keep warm.
The request came on the same day that a guy was seen setting a fire in the Los Angeles river bed.
Strolling LA River in Griffith Park this morning, and this jackass starts a fire, trees right above him. I alerted another walker, who doused it with his water bottle while I called 911/fire dept.
— L.A. Dork (@la_dorkout) January 11, 2025
Older guy, not homeless but not all there. If you're out & about, stay vigilent! pic.twitter.com/a9iVZPvRTO
The request was days after a "homeless" man was seen setting fires near the big Kenneth Fire in Woodland Hills.
When the man was caught with a gas torch setting recycled Christmas trees and garbage cans on fire near the Kenneth Fire, LAPD was conflicted. The man was an illegal immigrant from Mexico and had been in the country since 2016 and had plenty of time to accrue quite a rap sheet, including assault with a deadly weapon, for which they held him on a probation violation. In addition, the state's "sanctuary policy" left police unable initially to turn the guy over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Now, ICE has referred to the man as a "person of interest" in the Kenneth Fire.
What's that line from "Sleepless in Seattle" when Rob Reiner and Tom Hanks talk about a bevy of bad things happening at the same time? "What do they call it when everything intersects," Reiner's character asks. Hanks responds, "The Bermuda Triangle."
Welcome to the L.A.'s Bermuda Triangle, where dumb leaders, bad public policy, and woke voters combined to create a disaster.
This is not to say that all of the fires, four of which are still burning, were set by homeless people. A lawsuit against Southern California Edison has already been filed by several people who cite video from a Ring camera showing sparks from a downed transmission line either started or worsened the Eaton Fire that wiped out Altadena.
But no one should elide the fact that more than half of the fires in L.A. County are started by homeless people as I've pointed out in What Started L.A.'s Firestorm? Hint: It's Not 'Climate Change.' and several other stories.
Official California and Los Angeles haven't been honest about this self-inflicted problem.
An L.A. Fire Vet Says No One Prepared Even After Extreme Wind Warnings that made things worse. But let's not forget the lack of pattern recognition (and money it turns out) for why the LAFD had not prepositioned apparatus at the usual places where Santa Ana winds have created hellacious firestorms before.
Some of the worst fires in the L.A. area have occurred in the Sepulveda area near the Getty Museum.
The Getty Fire of 2019, threatened to damage the museum and burned more than 600 acres. That one was caused by "an act of God" according to the mayor when a branch fell on a power line.
Another fire nearby in 2019 consumed only seven acres but was started at a homeless camp at the Sepulveda Basin Fire. Multiple propane tanks kept at the camp were heard exploding as the fire grew.
Before that, six Bel Air homes were destroyed and a dozen others were damaged in 2017 by the Skirball Fire. The 422-acre inferno broke out on December 6 from someone cooking breakfast at five in the morning at a homeless camp. The campers ran away and left the fire. Fire investigators found the encampment, scorched pots and pans, a cheese grater, and, oh, yes, a "fuel canister." The fire was finally surrounded (contained) nine days later.
The day after the Palisades and other firestorms began, the Woodley Fire broke out in the nearby Sepulveda Basin. It burned 30 acres before it was contained. It's the same area where homeless camps have started fires before. The cause of this particular fire, however, is still under investigation.
So you may add increasing the homeless problem to the list of the dumb things California's "leaders" have inflicted on its citizens. Indeed, voters' big hearts and Good Intentions Might Be the Cause of Devastating Palisades Fire because of lax attitudes about the homeless encampments nearby.
And by asking the homeless to stop sparking up the campfire, the city has openly admitted that this is a problem worthy of solving.
California is home to more than 44% of the nation's chronic homeless. The state and the city of L.A. brag that the rate of growth is slowing, but the raw numbers of people — many of them drug tourists — continue to rise.
Sadly, we won't know by how much since 2024 because the homeless count has been delayed due to the wildfires.
Over the past few years, the state opened the taxpayers' wallets and invited the nation's homeless to make the Golden State their home. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass reduced the fire department budget to increase the spending for homeless programs. After voters approved a tax increase to help homelessness, Bass put her city on the hook for another $1.3 billion, which is 65% more than she spends on firefighting efforts.
The city's priorities are not the only distortions in the budget. The extraordinary pay of so many employees from the boss to the bottom is gobsmacking, as I pointed out in Can California Afford Its Luxury Beliefs After This? Let's Look at the Books. No city can afford a lot of $700,000-a-year firefighters.
The city has reorganized its services, such as water availability, to center its priorities on "diversity and "equity," which I took up in the story asking the question, Is Woke ‘Equity’ the Reason Why Pacific Palisades Is Now a Moonscape?
Environmentalists and the state's regulatory apparatus stopped brush clearing in Topanga Canyon in Pacific Palisades, as I reported in California Saved a Shrub Instead of Protecting Humans From the L.A. Firestorm. The state has allowed dead trees to remain in the state's forests and has failed to clear brush from the forests and canyons.
No wonder there have been calls for the mayor and Gov. Gavin Newsom to resign.
Can we call this place the Bermuda Triangle now?
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