years leaves LOTS of fuel in those hills.

the Chumash to those in MD where I grew up, was to set fires. Now we call them "controlled burns," but back then they were frequent enough and the population sparse enough that 'uncontrolled' was acceptable.

Controlled burns are unacceptable to many. There's unacceptable risk--which means "there's risk"--of property damage, or environmental concerns that fire is bad.

As one reporter said today, when the winds reversed direction and pushed part of the Mandeville Canyon fire back to an area previously burned, it was a kind of "nature fire break." Which is identical in meaning to "fire brake."

I like the practice that those around in 1500s MD and the centuries prior to spread mast. And set fires. Think "roasted chestnuts" as a mnemonic. I sort of liked Smokey the Bear's cute "only you can prevent forest fires" when I was a kid, and he's not wrong. Doing stupid crap with fire in the forest is bad. Not a control freak, I still think untimed out-of-control isn't a good. But stopping all forest fires? Also bad.

Now differs only in small details from the early-mid '90s when I lived in LA. Drought. Torrential rains. Fast forward to fire seasons. Deal with the ash "snow" that was Malibu, or "had been" Malibu. Then the next step--rains that lead to mass wasting, which is, after a fire like this, mostly just bouncing the rubble. That was Malibu, not Mandeville Canyon. (I used to take time when I lived in the UCLA grad dorm to bike, not an easy ask in LA; but biking up the canyon roads was a joy, and many a time I biked miles up Mandeville Canyon Road. Nice houses, scant traffic good incline, great ride, tired, on the way back. Still, I got a lot of funny looks because I obviously did not belong.)

in those tight residential canyons — unless we can throw lots of money and personnel at the problem. One main difference I’ve heard discussed between now and even the ‘90s, when I moved here, is that we no longer have a wildfire season. A Santa Ana wind event in January wouldn’t normally cause a huge fire or two because we wouldn’t be so dry. And in the winter, it used to be safer to do some of these maintenance activities, clear brush, fix reservoir issues. Now we don’t have a “quiet” period to complete necessary tasks.

Wind changes everything.

"The Palisades Fire started at about 10:20 a.m. Tuesday, near Temescal Ridge Trail in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area." It's 10:20 a.m. at, near or on, a hiking trail. There was no electrical storm and no lightning. The temperature was normal for a Winter January day in California. Fires usually don't just spontaneously ignite under these circumstances. Someone was negligent.

If it was arson, I hope they catch the perp and put him away for a very long time.

This I am watching

It was determined that their power lines were at fault — well, that and severe drought and Santa Ana winds.

No lit cigarettes. No campfires. No matches. No arson.

So you know what SoCalEd does now — aside from an accelerated level of upgrading? They turn off the power in our neighborhood when the wind kicks up. The longest was 36 hours, which was a pain in the butt — but no fire, and especially no fire that could be traced to them.

We could still lose our house some day, and if (or more likely when) that happens it will be due to climate change: severe drought and Santa Ana winds at 100 mph.

on Facebook that was spouting the "rake the forests" crap a while back.

I live in Washington state. You could drop 10000 people into the forests around this area to "rake the forests'. If they ever got to the point of finishing raking the forest in this area it would years and everything they raked during the early days of raking would have grown back just as thick as it was originally. They would have a perpetual job.

Its such a ignorant idea. No wonder right wingers think its brilliant.

It helps around towns but there is no way you can "rake" the forest.

and forest fires can still travel tree top to tree top.

As you note the cost to pay people to do it would be astronomical. At which point they would be screaming about libs/dems wasting tax payer $ to clear uninhibited forest.

I wanna throttle the idiots. They go spouting off RW/MAGA talking points without the slightest clue what conditions are like in URBAN, arid west. Horse whipping propagandists comes to mind for me, raised in arid urban southern California.

I'd like to get some feedback on how quickly they run into the forest, or simply drop the rake and fun into their houses.

To be honest, I woke up in the middle of the night Friday morning convinced I had to start removing trees from my property.

But then I saw video this morning of a neighborhood where the houses were gone but the trees were still standing, apparently unscorched.

I need to find out more about what constitutes firewise yards.

having firewise landscape is not much security. Non native grasses can be a problem, but those winds are the enemy.

Removing fuel will always help. The fire still likely would have spread, but it is disingenuous to claim that clearing underbrush would not have helped.

We should stick to the orovable facts and not try to spin reality. We are not repukes.

Removing some of it won't help unless you completely denude the hill sides. Then, what do you do when the next "atmospheric river" rolls around, dumps inches of rain in a short time and the hill sides turn to a sliding slurry of mush?

Fire suppression efforts and allowing development in areas that need fire historically are huge issues. The state has badly failed in its duties to conduct controlled burns and other mitigation efforts. Add in global warming, and this fire is a predictable outcome.

With 80mph winds, possibly the strongest Santa Anna winds on record, nothing short of completely denuding the hillsides would make any difference. Controlled burns would not have helped in that environment. Not with this kind of vegetation and recent conditions. This isn't temperate forests of the wet east.

Would there still have been a devastating fire? Yes, but if mitigation is first had been undertaken, the fire likely would have been more manageable.

No one is saying that mitigation efforts would not help. They are just saying that mitigation would have not 100% prevented the fires.

Once into built up areas, all bets are off. And there's no way to keep it out with winds that strong.

Let’s just say it is not what the experts in the OP’s article are saying. They have a far more nuanced take that what the OP is claiming.

Once into built up areas, it's a whole different ballgame. Keeping it out of populated areas, given the conditions, is impossible, even with controlled burns.

areas where it is no longer feasible, if it ever really was. Controlled burns and brush clearance become that much more difficult in those areas. Trying to force homeowners to clear and maintain their properties is also unfortunately a huge battle, and some of these homes are also quite old with shake roofs and other fire hazards.

It might be best if we could scrape together the funds to buy these people out, but it would be astronomically expensive.

forests. in tall tree forests low key fires often burn at ground level to remove the carpet of debris without burning up into the tall trees.

Which is why I said controlled burns and other mitigation efforts. There is room for both. Prevention is a multifaceted, multi layered process. And yes, that includes mechanical removal a.k.a. “raking“, as much as we hate to admit it.

but “raking” wouldn’t be possible in many areas. Add to that the fact that we’re in a cycle of wet years causing massive growth followed by dry years where they all burn. Both the state and the feds would have to devote an enormous amount of money — I don’t think that’s going to happen at the fed level, do you?

Just keeping the trails clear is a major chore. Then we try to go off trails to eradicate invasive plants. That is even more difficult because we encounter thorns, branches tree trunks, insects and on and on. Oh, and our terrain is mostly flat or it probably wouldn't be a swamp.

Fortunately, we have no poisonous reptiles on the property. Nor bears or Mountain Lions.

So let's consider Pacific Palisades. I have never been there. But the photographs and videos.I don't know if the area qualifies as mountainous. But there are clearly substantial hills. When my club volunteers to clear a part of the Appalachian Train in N.J., then we get hills. And guess what. We "run out of gas" in about an hour or two. In other words, the weed wacking, combined with chopping, cutting and so forth - tires us out quite quickly.

I cannot imaging trying to clear the brush from those hills.

3H

Clearing or "raking" the forest is just an impossible ask.

Controlled burns do need to increase as do cutting larger and more breaklines to protect neighborhoods, etc. With all that said winds that high would likely have jumped any breaks that would have been there anyway.

Part of the problem in the west is that we can developed these huge population centers in areas with limited water and high incidence of wildfire.

far beyond any breaks, and over the decades development moved closer and closer to the mountains, too many targets to adequately defend against a force of nature event like this.

Growing up in SoCal, I've lived through a couple fires that came uncomfortably close, the Cedar Fire of 2003 and the Laguna Fire of 1970, which as a kid I watched coming at us from the roof of our house - all of the houses in our development had shake shingle roofs (you sure don't see that anymore). We were very, very fortunate.

she said she still had the shake roof! I think in Altadena, which is largely working and middle class, there were probably a lot of homeowners who couldn’t upgrade to more fire-safe materials.

I hope you're safe, and stay safe, and thanks for weighing in. I love our state, and this is hard to watch.

especially Altadena, which is an especially economically and ethnically diverse community which will have a really hard time rebuilding.

and then what happens when it rains, and there is nothing to hold the soil? Yep - landslides.
Stupid idea.

So short of turning Southern Cal into a denuded moonscape, there not much you can do when it comes to the natural environment. Add climate change, drought and possibly the strongest Santa Anna's on record and this is what we get. Going forward, California and a bunch of other places are going to have to learn to live with increased wildfire, thanks to fossil fuel companies and petro-states. The real culprits in all this. It can be done without destroying the natural environment. It's a matter of codes, landscaping and building materials.

That they used to do controlled burns to prevent this type of thing? Well, at least reduce the likelihood of it anyway. Now, most of what I see is people throwing up their hands saying it’s unpreventable. If that is the case. Then why in the hell would they allow anything to be rebuilt in that area at all? This isn’t a one off thing. Yeah the damage is unprecedented, but this happens every year. It’s as predictable as the sunrise. I’ve read that some people have had their homes burned down more than once. I dunno, seems to me. If you build your home in a known fire hazard, you shouldn’t be surprised when this happens.

It's susceptible to hurricane induced flooding, both minor and biblical. I know. Use to live in the area. Soon as I heard something definitive on Helene's path, I figured Biltmore Village was gonna flood. It always does. This one was just the latest in a long list of hurricane induced floods dating back to the beginning of human habitation in that area. Funny, I didn't hear your argument when it came to that natural disaster.

will be goners

About MANY places around the country over the years. Especially those in hurricane prone areas.There is a reason I didn’t say anything about the ones you mention in particular. As far as I know, they aren guaranteed perennial disasters.

As far as flooding goes. That is a failure at the federal level. In case you aren’t aware. They are these things called fema flood maps. You may not build in the floodway. If they failed to properly identify this, it’s on them. The rest comes down to failure at the local zoning level. I don’t know of any community that is at know risk that hasn’t spent a lot of time and effort on mitigation measures. Unfortunately you can’t plan for every possible contingency.

It really should not be controversial

End of story.

... give rise to designs that work in concert
with native ecosystems? There are stories of
Spanish and English sailors 100s of years ago
noticing fires in the Chaparral in what is now
Southern California.

The oils in Chaparral are highly flammable but
no matter how big or hot the fire is or was the
roots almost always survive to push up new growth.

Genetic mutations cause variations within a species and the individuals with the most beneficial mutations survive at a greater differential rate than individuals without those mutations. Over time the beneficial mutations dominate the population. This is a continuous process. While the mutations are effectively random, the survival of those mutations is determined by the environment the organism lives in. There is no “design” and no “designer.”

Mutations and or novel genetic lines that are beneficial to a living organism are part
of an evolution or co-evolution that happens over time with environmental conditions
and or genetic drift? Btw only a small fraction of mutations are beneficial and in most cases for those
new beneficial aspects to express themselves you need both parents to have that mutation and
or the mutation or new morphological change needs to be dominant. See the back squirrels
of N.E. Ohio.

Evolution is really change in genetic frequency over time with sex shuffling the deck
and if people see this and want to call it a design to adapt to a given environment then
so be it

Saying that Chaparral is a plant that is based on a pyrrhic environment that is designed
to live and thrive with fire is not wrong.

In a fire area right above a canyon.

The brush can be managed right off the backyards. After that, a steep cliff that animals couldn’t walk.

The area burns about every ten years and the only way to fight it is with air support and firefighters in backyards.

Every time some asshole will come yell at fire fighters for not going down into a narrow V shaped canyon to fight the fire. Let’s us know which neighbors are assholes who need to be ignored.

“Every time some asshole will come yell at fire fighters for not going down into a narrow V shaped canyon to fight the fire. Let’s us know which neighbors are assholes who need to be ignored.”

About this and "newson" and fire hydrants and woke

What the hell would you do with all the brush that you cleared? It would be a pile the size of Mt Everest.

and rate of spread.

Lies in that this kind of 'brush' growth - replaces itself in very short periods of time. How many times ( and how often) are you going to deploy your army of ' brush cutters' through the miriad hills and valleys .. ?

old bone spurs brought this up. The article says National Recreation Area. That is the Federal
Government. If it is a state park that is the state's job. Who pays when it is not federal or state,
most likely the county. What if the area is unincorporated? My best guess the locals that live
there. So, as usual it boils down to the old reliable axiom money, money, money, MONEY.

It is working for Australia. Clear brush. Have controlled burns. Clear brush from around homes. Remove Eucalyptuses trees. Have water available.

in a fire event.