P.S. One last thought: At Los Alamos, before Cerro Grande, our fire department (with our national laboratory) far better and better equipped than in most towns twice our size, but they were equipped and trained solely as urban firefights. When a "blowup" moves into a city, it is no longer an "urban fire" for urban-trained firefighters, it is a wildfire and until one has witness the blowup of a wildfire from nearby (as I have, and it changed me as a person) one can have no concept of what wildfire, in today's forest, is!
So, my point is that ALL towns and cities of any size need firefighters trained in both "urban" and "wildland" firefighting, as they are two vastly different animals. In Los Alamos, Forest Service firefighters later told me, Los Alamos crews--with a huge firetruck (NOT a wildland fire truck) rushed to where fire was exploding into town, realized they were confronted by 100-foot flames of a full blowup, panicked and "cut and run." What that means is they, basically, simply fled where they were, in the process, leaving their firetruck behind, engine and pumps running full bore, water running wasted down the street, where it remain sitting until, HOURS later, U.S. Foresters found it (surrounded by burned houses) and radioed Los Alamos crews asking if they wanted them, the Forest Service, to bring them their firetruck.
That might sound like cowardice, but for someone untrained in wildland fire, that could be expected. Of note, today, Los Alamos firefighters all MUST be certified in both urban firefighter AND wildland firefighting, while the town's fire-fighting equipment consists of as many, or more, wildland fire trucks and tenders, as of ladder trucks and conventional fire trucks. And that's another lesson that our "leaders" (such as they are in our failing country) is in no way providing leadership to countless towns in the American West that are also sitting in forests of gasoline.
I write on wildfire and have lived wildfire when, after years of warnings, my own town, Los Alamos, New Mexico, burned in May 2000, with that, the Cerro Grande Fire, the first official LONG-PREDICTED mega fire. My frustration is that we know so much about the new generation of "mega" fires, of many causes but with the characteristic of HUGE burn areas and ghastly, unnatural burn intensity such as in Los Alamos, Paradise, California; Lahaina, Hawaii, and now those of the Los Angeles Basin, plus others OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF ACRES throughout the West.
Of note, there has been NO leadership by either party or at local, state or federal levels to implement lessons learned at Los Alamos and no leadership to do the one thing that wildland firefighters had said until it sounds like a church chorus: We MUST have DEFENSIBLE SPACE and our communities must evolve to understand they are no longer living in forests, grasslands or other ecosystems that are anything like they were 50 or 75 years of go. (Of note, the deadly fire in Lahaina thanks to today's BROKEN, DEREGULATED MEDIA received almost no reporting after the fact of the part that a highly flammable exotic (not native to the area) common on the island and long warned of as being like gasoline. YET, NO ONE DID DIDDLY TO WORK TO ERADICATED IT AND NO ONE DID DIDDLY TO, AT THE LEAST, CREATE FUELBREAKS BETWEEN LAHAINA AND THOSE GRASSES--exactly what blew to kill so many. Instead, media--as they so predictably do anymore--angrily blamed all the wrong people, firefighters in particular, with nary a word about the island's sick ecosystem.)
Another primary problem--as a journalist I always return to today's failed media--of wrongly blaming climate change as the "cause" of such fires. Bull, and as a reporter who covered much of the research on the topic at Los Alamos National Laboratory, I believe in climate change, but as we stand, reporters (such as they are) seem to imply that somehow, if we all go by E.V.s, it will magically fix forests, for example, that are today DUE TO 150 YEARS OF MISMANAGEMENT the equivalent of "forests of gasoline."
And thanks to both Kevin and Steve for discussion about fire being ESSENTIAL on the landscape, though today, we also run into the issue of how difficult prescribed burns are in forests of gasoline that are now also forests full of towns and people! Of note, Los Alamos' deadly Cerro Grande Fire was ignited by a poorly conducted, poorly funded prescribed burn!
And that's another issue and something I investigated extensively after "my" town burned, with the bottom line being--AS NO ONE, NATIONALLY, AT STATE LEVELS, MUNICIPALITIES--has stood up to demand reform of the prescribed burn system! We need fire on the land but on MILLIONS of acres, especially in the Southwest's ongoing Modern Megadrought, cannot be as anything similar to the fires that Native Americans ignited--yes, including in New Mexico!
Prescribed burns continue to be the forgotten stepchild of agencies, like the U.S. Forest Service who, instead, emphasize fight wildfires. Prescribed burns (while training is improving) is still conducted by local people on an OCCASIONAL BASIS who are not properly trained, who are vulnerable to pressure within their jurisdiction to "just get it done," who lack the ongoing experience that they should have if doing prescribed burns was their sole responsibility! In the same area as Los Alamos in 2022 YET ANOTHER prescribed burn escaped, resulting in a fire eventually totally roughly 300,000 acres and spanning 40 or 50 miles of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It burned for at least 3 months! So, where is ANY leadership for people--federal prescribed burn crews or state prescribed burn crews with NO TIES to whatever national park or U.S. Forest District to serve them, rather than do only a SAFE PRESCRIBED BURNS and answer to all the public and to SCIENCE in doing burns.
As to blaming firefighters--some of their efforts in Los Alamos were poor and, like in Pacific Palisades, fire hydrants ran dry, as happens during fires due to loss of power and, subsequently, pumping capacity--but I have grown jaded with endlessly blaming low-ranking employees while giving governors, mayors, senators, members of Congress and high-level people within agencies a pass. So, why was an underfunded crew at Los Alamos to blame, rather than the head of the U.S. Park Service of the head of the Department of the Interior.
So, I'm WAY beyond the blame game and am interested only in systemic issues, like better prescribed burns AND the responsibility of individual property owners (who in Los Alamos had done nothing to fireproof their properties, despite years of warning) and communities still sitting in "forests (or grasslands or brush) of gasoline, but still having no FUEL BREAKS between fuels and town. Though the town had nearly burned earlier, Los Alamos had no fuel breaks despite YEARS of foresters begging them to allow them, the foresters to thin timber to create a buffer between the town and a forest THANKS TO 150 YEARS OF TIMBER MISMANAGEMENT that was the equivalent of living next door to an open multi-million-gallon gasoline storage than,
Thanks for that Kathleen. True, demand for housing in areas that we ought to not be building is a factor. As soon as the expand lanes of the 405 in Los Angeles County, all the lanes are full.
"And thanks to both Kevin and Steve for discussion about fire being ESSENTIAL on the landscape, though today, we also run into the issue of how difficult prescribed burns are in forests of gasoline that are now also forests full of towns and people!
In 1998, after a wildfire blew through part of a New Mexico forest near me, a forester took me to see (1.) the blowup and utter devastation and (2.) what happened when the fire hit "fuels" (timber and undergrowth returned to what nature intended). When that exploding blowup hit that area, it turned from a monster to a pussy cat, moving on into the thinned area, then to simply die along its furthest edge.
How sad at a time when we need unity and GOOD LEADERS we end up instead with people like New Mexico's current governor, with Los Alamos' continued failed leadership, at Los Angeles mayor and people lacking integrity. Incidentally, that cleared area I describe above was created by a forester WITH INTEGRITY, who saw the danger and acted by sticking his neck out when so many bureaucrats instead just keep their mouths shut and their heads down. That means I TRY to remain hopeful.
Well we only had 30 years of forest mismanagement, but it was enough. Everybody should have known and should have adjusted their policies, but NOOOOOOOOO
My next door neighbor had a lot of all concrete paving, tile roof, closed stucco soffit eaves all the recommendations. It went down as well as everyone else’s. at 100MPH there is no defensible space and the framing in the building just outgasses and ignites. Defensible space is a fools errand but it transferrs blame from the government agencies who each refused to do their jobs to the individual homeowners. My studio mack wall was DOUPLE type x under the sheathing with a class A roof and type x under the facia and thin soffit at the back. It burned incredibly well and my trees and deck didnt ignite the studio, my studio ignited them and flung embers onto the house. Of course there were leaves everywhere because we had severe wind the 36 hours before. All the “fire hardened “ building landscape combinations in town burned as well as everything else.
Well, that's what happens when, lacking an original firebreak, a fire gets started. The ONLY thing that might have prevented the January fires would have been if there had been nowhere for the original ignition fire to spread, although in the face of the Modern Megadrought and 100 mph winds, there are no guarantees.
ALL government fails! It's easier to keep their heads down, pretend that all is well, and when something inevitably goes wrong, blame the little guy or gal on the ground who as least was trying. And here in the Atomic City--with some of the best educated people on Earth--it wasn't just government but uninformed "scientists" who didn't want a single tree cut. So, instead, they got an entire forest burned to a crisp.
California has a problem with non native planting, and a big one is Eucalyptus trees. Beautiful as they look, they are also like gasoline, along with palm trees, right? Kathleene, your post gave me examples I will not forget. Thank you. I will speak out if the topic of fire in California comes up. If the topic of wildfires & forest fires comes up (I’m in California) I will pass along the information I read in your post. You’re right about blaming the first responders, and the firefighters. Thank you for the post.
Kathie, I have long loved Eucalyptus trees, but I hadn't thought of that and it certainly makes sense, since they are a source for (Duh!) Eucalyptus oil! What upsets me is that Native American tribes and others are spending fortunes trying to reduce the "loads" of some invasive species; yet, there are no bans on local plant nurseries to keep them from selling more of them. Go figure!
What irks me most is media--which USED TO BE A SOURCE OF EDUCATION--today "journalists" try to blame everything on climate change, as part of whatever agendas. (I am believer since "my" laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, has done extensive research confirming it.) But what are "reporters" (If that's what you want to call them.) saying, that if we all buy E.V.s, it'll somehow thin out "forests of gasoline" or address drought of a type common in a Southwest with a host of ecological problems caused by humans? (Idiots--or corrupt!)
Blessings and all we, any of us, can do, is to keep fighting for reason and the information that those who SHOULD be providing aren't!
Eucalyptus trees are generally downright explosive in fires. Whats really odd in this fire was how many eucs survived and did not burn. The County though is desperately cutting them all down for some reason.
The irony in Los Alamos was that while some nice, fire-resistant homes burned, old wreck duplexes and triplexes from the Manhattan Project--made of wood, old, dried out--sadly, survived.
In fact, if one must look for a rose in a thornbush, at Los Alamos, what was supposed to have been (in the 1940s) temporary housing was "thinned out," though some, most of them dilapidated, dangerous eyesores, survive.
And at Los Alamos, because a park superintendent with INTEGRITY assumed responsibility for the escape of a prescribed burn, the people of Los Alamos made out like thieves, overall, because not only could they collect insurance, but Uncle Sugar reimbursed us as well, while the HUNDREDS of huge mobile homes that FEMA and the Army Corp of Engineers brought in as temporary housing were a wonder to behold.
How sad that there's so little help for people today, the product, in my view, of a nation that has impoverished itself with too much explosive growth from illegal immigration while simultaneously with a government not living within its means. Enough soapboxing.
It's funny. If we come across a building that was designed fire resistive this is proof we should all be forced to build that way, yet today I came across what has to have been Altadena's last shake shingle roofed house. EVERYTHING 360 degrees around it was lost. it's still standing. By the logic of the endless control junkies I should force everyone to have a shake cedar roof because the survival of that house is PROOF!. But unlike Code writers, hardie board salesmen, inspectors and code counter jerks I am neither stupid nor corrupt
And the control junkies will fail, but then, I'm one who (particularly seeing the ignorance in Los Alamos (with the highest number of Ph.Ds in the nation) and who has spent her life in what used to be INFORMATIVE journalism, I believe in information and education. Plus, individual "defensible space" can't withstand what you guys endured.
What a forestry expert wanted here--and Los Alamos "leaders" blew him off because, gosh, it might be controversial--was to go in and thin timber south and west of town (where heavy timber was the worst and where the prevailing wind could bring fire if it hit to the south) but he got zip, nada, nothing in the way of help from Los Alamos County.
They could have been very helpful just by speaking up supporting his idea. He wasn't talking clearcutting but doing a thinning like one that stopped another blowup on another nearby mountain 2 years earlier. Of note, Los Alamos recently gave a permit for a HUGE, HIGH DENSITY apartment complex, immediately uphill of heavy timber and with only ONE exit (something illegal in Colorado), so why should anyone trust Los Alamos to order us about?
So, education, information and no dictating, because--though I know the danger--it's my property and I want to live in it in peace. So, say please, inform me, and know when to back off. Meanwhile, dictators, act like leaders of communities used to and focus on fuel breaks and those common areas where fire is likely to start.
In my state, our Democratic governor eagerly seeks airtime to criticize every employee (those TRYINNG to address a dangerous problem, while she's done nothing, such as work to ensure that communities are educated where wind will bring fire from and fuel breaks. Of course, she was going to be the education governor and under her "leadership" our state has moved from 49th in education to 52--possible only because there are two U.S. territories included in the data! But on ALL topics, this older American sees a lack of common sense and a lack of LEADERSHIP from "leaders" more eager to espouse woke, well, stuff than to lead.
Fire breaks work. Thats why California stopped doing them. Prescriptive burns work .Thats why California stopped doing them. Ground clearance in the foothills works on private land, that's why it takes three years to get a permit. Government policy induced fires . If Climate Change is real, we should be by policy doing more not less fire mitigation. But the state policies clearly are to burn everyone out of their homes and force everyone into dense open air prisons
I agree, but I'm also aware, in New Mexico, of the sheer scale of the problem. We face millions of acres that need thinning, so need to focus, short term on thinning strategically on the south and west sides of towns where fire is likely to be brought by the prevailing wind. But that requires leadership, and New Mexico isn't first in poverty and last in education because of good leadership, in our BLUE state, though a recent couple of Republican governors were just as bad.
P.S. (again) Like it or not, while governments are NOT regulating defensible space, removal of "fuels" around houses, as some things mentioned in this interview, insurance companies ARE. In Los Alamos (and many other towns), assuming you can buy fire insurance, you WILL remove trees and brush touching the house, you WILL remove wood decks touching the house or you WON'T get insurance at any price.
Interesting. The Planning department was at first demanding people in the non WUI fire zone area rebuild according to chapter 7. So I asked them for their legal authority to do so. They responded that you wont be able to get insurance unless you do, so I FOIA them for all documentation of conversations they have had with the insurance industry indicating that homes outside of the fire zone built to the applicable legal standard but not to chapter 7 will not be insured. Every two weeks they send me another extension letter.
P.S. One last thought: At Los Alamos, before Cerro Grande, our fire department (with our national laboratory) far better and better equipped than in most towns twice our size, but they were equipped and trained solely as urban firefights. When a "blowup" moves into a city, it is no longer an "urban fire" for urban-trained firefighters, it is a wildfire and until one has witness the blowup of a wildfire from nearby (as I have, and it changed me as a person) one can have no concept of what wildfire, in today's forest, is!
So, my point is that ALL towns and cities of any size need firefighters trained in both "urban" and "wildland" firefighting, as they are two vastly different animals. In Los Alamos, Forest Service firefighters later told me, Los Alamos crews--with a huge firetruck (NOT a wildland fire truck) rushed to where fire was exploding into town, realized they were confronted by 100-foot flames of a full blowup, panicked and "cut and run." What that means is they, basically, simply fled where they were, in the process, leaving their firetruck behind, engine and pumps running full bore, water running wasted down the street, where it remain sitting until, HOURS later, U.S. Foresters found it (surrounded by burned houses) and radioed Los Alamos crews asking if they wanted them, the Forest Service, to bring them their firetruck.
That might sound like cowardice, but for someone untrained in wildland fire, that could be expected. Of note, today, Los Alamos firefighters all MUST be certified in both urban firefighter AND wildland firefighting, while the town's fire-fighting equipment consists of as many, or more, wildland fire trucks and tenders, as of ladder trucks and conventional fire trucks. And that's another lesson that our "leaders" (such as they are in our failing country) is in no way providing leadership to countless towns in the American West that are also sitting in forests of gasoline.
I write on wildfire and have lived wildfire when, after years of warnings, my own town, Los Alamos, New Mexico, burned in May 2000, with that, the Cerro Grande Fire, the first official LONG-PREDICTED mega fire. My frustration is that we know so much about the new generation of "mega" fires, of many causes but with the characteristic of HUGE burn areas and ghastly, unnatural burn intensity such as in Los Alamos, Paradise, California; Lahaina, Hawaii, and now those of the Los Angeles Basin, plus others OF HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF ACRES throughout the West.
Of note, there has been NO leadership by either party or at local, state or federal levels to implement lessons learned at Los Alamos and no leadership to do the one thing that wildland firefighters had said until it sounds like a church chorus: We MUST have DEFENSIBLE SPACE and our communities must evolve to understand they are no longer living in forests, grasslands or other ecosystems that are anything like they were 50 or 75 years of go. (Of note, the deadly fire in Lahaina thanks to today's BROKEN, DEREGULATED MEDIA received almost no reporting after the fact of the part that a highly flammable exotic (not native to the area) common on the island and long warned of as being like gasoline. YET, NO ONE DID DIDDLY TO WORK TO ERADICATED IT AND NO ONE DID DIDDLY TO, AT THE LEAST, CREATE FUELBREAKS BETWEEN LAHAINA AND THOSE GRASSES--exactly what blew to kill so many. Instead, media--as they so predictably do anymore--angrily blamed all the wrong people, firefighters in particular, with nary a word about the island's sick ecosystem.)
Another primary problem--as a journalist I always return to today's failed media--of wrongly blaming climate change as the "cause" of such fires. Bull, and as a reporter who covered much of the research on the topic at Los Alamos National Laboratory, I believe in climate change, but as we stand, reporters (such as they are) seem to imply that somehow, if we all go by E.V.s, it will magically fix forests, for example, that are today DUE TO 150 YEARS OF MISMANAGEMENT the equivalent of "forests of gasoline."
And thanks to both Kevin and Steve for discussion about fire being ESSENTIAL on the landscape, though today, we also run into the issue of how difficult prescribed burns are in forests of gasoline that are now also forests full of towns and people! Of note, Los Alamos' deadly Cerro Grande Fire was ignited by a poorly conducted, poorly funded prescribed burn!
And that's another issue and something I investigated extensively after "my" town burned, with the bottom line being--AS NO ONE, NATIONALLY, AT STATE LEVELS, MUNICIPALITIES--has stood up to demand reform of the prescribed burn system! We need fire on the land but on MILLIONS of acres, especially in the Southwest's ongoing Modern Megadrought, cannot be as anything similar to the fires that Native Americans ignited--yes, including in New Mexico!
Prescribed burns continue to be the forgotten stepchild of agencies, like the U.S. Forest Service who, instead, emphasize fight wildfires. Prescribed burns (while training is improving) is still conducted by local people on an OCCASIONAL BASIS who are not properly trained, who are vulnerable to pressure within their jurisdiction to "just get it done," who lack the ongoing experience that they should have if doing prescribed burns was their sole responsibility! In the same area as Los Alamos in 2022 YET ANOTHER prescribed burn escaped, resulting in a fire eventually totally roughly 300,000 acres and spanning 40 or 50 miles of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. It burned for at least 3 months! So, where is ANY leadership for people--federal prescribed burn crews or state prescribed burn crews with NO TIES to whatever national park or U.S. Forest District to serve them, rather than do only a SAFE PRESCRIBED BURNS and answer to all the public and to SCIENCE in doing burns.
As to blaming firefighters--some of their efforts in Los Alamos were poor and, like in Pacific Palisades, fire hydrants ran dry, as happens during fires due to loss of power and, subsequently, pumping capacity--but I have grown jaded with endlessly blaming low-ranking employees while giving governors, mayors, senators, members of Congress and high-level people within agencies a pass. So, why was an underfunded crew at Los Alamos to blame, rather than the head of the U.S. Park Service of the head of the Department of the Interior.
So, I'm WAY beyond the blame game and am interested only in systemic issues, like better prescribed burns AND the responsibility of individual property owners (who in Los Alamos had done nothing to fireproof their properties, despite years of warning) and communities still sitting in "forests (or grasslands or brush) of gasoline, but still having no FUEL BREAKS between fuels and town. Though the town had nearly burned earlier, Los Alamos had no fuel breaks despite YEARS of foresters begging them to allow them, the foresters to thin timber to create a buffer between the town and a forest THANKS TO 150 YEARS OF TIMBER MISMANAGEMENT that was the equivalent of living next door to an open multi-million-gallon gasoline storage than,
Thanks for that Kathleen. True, demand for housing in areas that we ought to not be building is a factor. As soon as the expand lanes of the 405 in Los Angeles County, all the lanes are full.
"And thanks to both Kevin and Steve for discussion about fire being ESSENTIAL on the landscape, though today, we also run into the issue of how difficult prescribed burns are in forests of gasoline that are now also forests full of towns and people!
In 1998, after a wildfire blew through part of a New Mexico forest near me, a forester took me to see (1.) the blowup and utter devastation and (2.) what happened when the fire hit "fuels" (timber and undergrowth returned to what nature intended). When that exploding blowup hit that area, it turned from a monster to a pussy cat, moving on into the thinned area, then to simply die along its furthest edge.
How sad at a time when we need unity and GOOD LEADERS we end up instead with people like New Mexico's current governor, with Los Alamos' continued failed leadership, at Los Angeles mayor and people lacking integrity. Incidentally, that cleared area I describe above was created by a forester WITH INTEGRITY, who saw the danger and acted by sticking his neck out when so many bureaucrats instead just keep their mouths shut and their heads down. That means I TRY to remain hopeful.
Well we only had 30 years of forest mismanagement, but it was enough. Everybody should have known and should have adjusted their policies, but NOOOOOOOOO
My next door neighbor had a lot of all concrete paving, tile roof, closed stucco soffit eaves all the recommendations. It went down as well as everyone else’s. at 100MPH there is no defensible space and the framing in the building just outgasses and ignites. Defensible space is a fools errand but it transferrs blame from the government agencies who each refused to do their jobs to the individual homeowners. My studio mack wall was DOUPLE type x under the sheathing with a class A roof and type x under the facia and thin soffit at the back. It burned incredibly well and my trees and deck didnt ignite the studio, my studio ignited them and flung embers onto the house. Of course there were leaves everywhere because we had severe wind the 36 hours before. All the “fire hardened “ building landscape combinations in town burned as well as everything else.
Well, that's what happens when, lacking an original firebreak, a fire gets started. The ONLY thing that might have prevented the January fires would have been if there had been nowhere for the original ignition fire to spread, although in the face of the Modern Megadrought and 100 mph winds, there are no guarantees.
yes, the County and State failed in their basic obligations leading directly to the catastrophe.
ALL government fails! It's easier to keep their heads down, pretend that all is well, and when something inevitably goes wrong, blame the little guy or gal on the ground who as least was trying. And here in the Atomic City--with some of the best educated people on Earth--it wasn't just government but uninformed "scientists" who didn't want a single tree cut. So, instead, they got an entire forest burned to a crisp.
Excellent.
California has a problem with non native planting, and a big one is Eucalyptus trees. Beautiful as they look, they are also like gasoline, along with palm trees, right? Kathleene, your post gave me examples I will not forget. Thank you. I will speak out if the topic of fire in California comes up. If the topic of wildfires & forest fires comes up (I’m in California) I will pass along the information I read in your post. You’re right about blaming the first responders, and the firefighters. Thank you for the post.
Kathie, I have long loved Eucalyptus trees, but I hadn't thought of that and it certainly makes sense, since they are a source for (Duh!) Eucalyptus oil! What upsets me is that Native American tribes and others are spending fortunes trying to reduce the "loads" of some invasive species; yet, there are no bans on local plant nurseries to keep them from selling more of them. Go figure!
What irks me most is media--which USED TO BE A SOURCE OF EDUCATION--today "journalists" try to blame everything on climate change, as part of whatever agendas. (I am believer since "my" laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, has done extensive research confirming it.) But what are "reporters" (If that's what you want to call them.) saying, that if we all buy E.V.s, it'll somehow thin out "forests of gasoline" or address drought of a type common in a Southwest with a host of ecological problems caused by humans? (Idiots--or corrupt!)
Blessings and all we, any of us, can do, is to keep fighting for reason and the information that those who SHOULD be providing aren't!
Eucalyptus trees are generally downright explosive in fires. Whats really odd in this fire was how many eucs survived and did not burn. The County though is desperately cutting them all down for some reason.
The irony in Los Alamos was that while some nice, fire-resistant homes burned, old wreck duplexes and triplexes from the Manhattan Project--made of wood, old, dried out--sadly, survived.
In fact, if one must look for a rose in a thornbush, at Los Alamos, what was supposed to have been (in the 1940s) temporary housing was "thinned out," though some, most of them dilapidated, dangerous eyesores, survive.
And at Los Alamos, because a park superintendent with INTEGRITY assumed responsibility for the escape of a prescribed burn, the people of Los Alamos made out like thieves, overall, because not only could they collect insurance, but Uncle Sugar reimbursed us as well, while the HUNDREDS of huge mobile homes that FEMA and the Army Corp of Engineers brought in as temporary housing were a wonder to behold.
How sad that there's so little help for people today, the product, in my view, of a nation that has impoverished itself with too much explosive growth from illegal immigration while simultaneously with a government not living within its means. Enough soapboxing.
It's funny. If we come across a building that was designed fire resistive this is proof we should all be forced to build that way, yet today I came across what has to have been Altadena's last shake shingle roofed house. EVERYTHING 360 degrees around it was lost. it's still standing. By the logic of the endless control junkies I should force everyone to have a shake cedar roof because the survival of that house is PROOF!. But unlike Code writers, hardie board salesmen, inspectors and code counter jerks I am neither stupid nor corrupt
And the control junkies will fail, but then, I'm one who (particularly seeing the ignorance in Los Alamos (with the highest number of Ph.Ds in the nation) and who has spent her life in what used to be INFORMATIVE journalism, I believe in information and education. Plus, individual "defensible space" can't withstand what you guys endured.
What a forestry expert wanted here--and Los Alamos "leaders" blew him off because, gosh, it might be controversial--was to go in and thin timber south and west of town (where heavy timber was the worst and where the prevailing wind could bring fire if it hit to the south) but he got zip, nada, nothing in the way of help from Los Alamos County.
They could have been very helpful just by speaking up supporting his idea. He wasn't talking clearcutting but doing a thinning like one that stopped another blowup on another nearby mountain 2 years earlier. Of note, Los Alamos recently gave a permit for a HUGE, HIGH DENSITY apartment complex, immediately uphill of heavy timber and with only ONE exit (something illegal in Colorado), so why should anyone trust Los Alamos to order us about?
So, education, information and no dictating, because--though I know the danger--it's my property and I want to live in it in peace. So, say please, inform me, and know when to back off. Meanwhile, dictators, act like leaders of communities used to and focus on fuel breaks and those common areas where fire is likely to start.
In my state, our Democratic governor eagerly seeks airtime to criticize every employee (those TRYINNG to address a dangerous problem, while she's done nothing, such as work to ensure that communities are educated where wind will bring fire from and fuel breaks. Of course, she was going to be the education governor and under her "leadership" our state has moved from 49th in education to 52--possible only because there are two U.S. territories included in the data! But on ALL topics, this older American sees a lack of common sense and a lack of LEADERSHIP from "leaders" more eager to espouse woke, well, stuff than to lead.
Fire breaks work. Thats why California stopped doing them. Prescriptive burns work .Thats why California stopped doing them. Ground clearance in the foothills works on private land, that's why it takes three years to get a permit. Government policy induced fires . If Climate Change is real, we should be by policy doing more not less fire mitigation. But the state policies clearly are to burn everyone out of their homes and force everyone into dense open air prisons
I agree, but I'm also aware, in New Mexico, of the sheer scale of the problem. We face millions of acres that need thinning, so need to focus, short term on thinning strategically on the south and west sides of towns where fire is likely to be brought by the prevailing wind. But that requires leadership, and New Mexico isn't first in poverty and last in education because of good leadership, in our BLUE state, though a recent couple of Republican governors were just as bad.
March 19 is not the day before Easter. April 19th is. The fire did not occur late last year. It occurred early this year. January 7-8.
Happy Easter to you both and thanks.
P.S. (again) Like it or not, while governments are NOT regulating defensible space, removal of "fuels" around houses, as some things mentioned in this interview, insurance companies ARE. In Los Alamos (and many other towns), assuming you can buy fire insurance, you WILL remove trees and brush touching the house, you WILL remove wood decks touching the house or you WON'T get insurance at any price.
Interesting. The Planning department was at first demanding people in the non WUI fire zone area rebuild according to chapter 7. So I asked them for their legal authority to do so. They responded that you wont be able to get insurance unless you do, so I FOIA them for all documentation of conversations they have had with the insurance industry indicating that homes outside of the fire zone built to the applicable legal standard but not to chapter 7 will not be insured. Every two weeks they send me another extension letter.