... Authorities said the Palisades
Fire was a “holdover” fire or a continuation of the Lachman Fire that
Rinderknecht allegedly started on New Year’s Day.
Firefighters were able to
suppress the Lachman Fire, but did not know that it continued to smolder
and burn underground, a criminal complaint states.
On Jan. 7, as heavy winds swept through the area, the fire began to surface and spread, becoming the Palisades Fire. ...
Investigators said other
possible factors, including fireworks, lightning and power lines, were
determined not to be the cause of the fire.
... The two reservoirs are used to hold supplies for agricultural
irrigation districts. Nemeth noted that winter is not the irrigation
season for farms, which require more supplies to grow crops in the
summer months, “so there isn’t a demand” for the water in the San
Joaquin Valley at this time. ...
Peter Gleick, a water scientist and senior fellow at the Pacific
Institute, said dam managers would typically only release large
quantities of water in the winter when major storms create a need to
make space for large inflows of runoff. But Southern California has been
very dry and the snowpack in the southern Sierra remains far below
average, so “there is no indication that that’s why these releases
occurred.”
“In addition, when those kinds of releases do occur,
they’re always done in consultation with local and state agencies,”
Gleick said.
“I don’t know where this water is going, but this is
the wrong time of year to be releasing water from these reservoirs.
It’s vitally important that we fill our reservoirs in the rainy season
so water is available for farms and cities later in the summer,” Gleick
said. “I think it’s very strange and it’s disturbing that, after decades
of careful local, state and federal coordination, some federal agencies
are starting to unilaterally manipulate California’s water supply.”
Vink
agreed, saying that given how dry it has been in the region this
winter, there was no need to make such a release. In fact, he said,
farmers were counting on that water to be available for summer
irrigation.
“This is going to hurt farmers,” Vink said. “This takes water out of their summer irrigation portfolio.” ...
. . . The Eaton Fire that scorched 14,021 acres (57 square km) east of Los
Angeles was 91% contained, while the larger Palisades Fire, which has
consumed 23,448 acres (95 square km) on the west side of Los Angeles,
stood at 68% contained. . . .
Along with crews from other states and Mexico, hundreds of inmates
from California’s prison system were also helping fight the fires.
Nearly 950 prison firefighters were removing timber and brush ahead of
the fires to slow their spread, according to the California Department
of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
The practice is controversial
as the inmates are paid little for dangerous and difficult work: $10.24
each day, with more for 24-hour shifts, according to the corrections
department.
The LA Times doesn't lose its cool when reporting the news, but Drudge does.
More than 1,100 homes, businesses and other buildings have burned and at least five people are dead in wildfires scorching communities across Los Angeles County, making this one of the most destructive firestorms to hit the region in memory.
“There’s no water in the fire hydrants,” Caruso said. “The
firefighters are there [in the neighborhood], and there’s nothing they
can do — we’ve got neighborhoods burning, homes burning, and businesses
burning. ... It should never happen.”
A
spokesman for the Department of Water and Power acknowledged reports of
diminished water flow from hydrants but did not have details on the
number of hydrants without water or the scale of the issue.
In a statement, the DWP said water crews were working in the neighborhood “to ensure the availability of water supplies.”
“This
area is served by water tanks and close coordination is underway to
continue supplying the area,” the DWP said in its statement.
Providing basic fire fighting resources is a bare minimum function of local government, at which this very wealthy community is obviously failing, mirroring California government's overall statewide failure to reduce wildfires.
State Farm stopped insuring roughly 30,000 homes in California in the summer of 2024, in part due to the danger to its business there from catastrophic fires in communities where multi-million dollar homes are common, and too commonly go up in smoke.
You'd cut your losses, too, if you suspected the locals had become as hopelessly bad as the one party state under Gavin Newsom.
Alexandros Avramidis/Reuters Destroyed corral where eighteen bodies were found following a wildfire near the village of Avantas.
By Eleni Giokos, Xiaofei Xu and Niamh Kennedy, CNN
(CNN) —Greek authorities have arrested dozens of people on arson-related charges as deadly wildfires – the largest ever recorded in the European Union –rageacross the country.
Wildfires in Mount Parnitha, north of the Greek capital Athens, are still out of control Friday, with more forest destroyed overnight.
The biggest fire front line in Greece remains near the northeastern town of Alexandroupolis, in the Evros region.
The burned body of a man was found on a rural road near Dadia national park, near the border with Turkey, state media AMNA reported Friday.
Earlier this week, 18 peoplewere found deadnear a village in northern Greece. The fire brigade said Tuesday they may have been migrants. Another person was killed in a fire northwest of the capital Athens on Monday.
Greek police have made 79 arson related arrests, Greek government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis told public broadcaster EPT Friday.
“What is happening is not just impermissible, but obscene and criminal,” Greek Climate Crisis Minister Vassilis Kikilias said in a statement.
“You are committing a crime against the country. You will not be spared. We will find you and you will be held accountable in Justice,” Kikilas added.
With more than 73,000 hectares burned, the fires in Alexandroupolis are officially the largest wildfires ever recorded in the European Union, according to EU Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarčič.
Wildfires have intensified around the globe, providing a stark reminder of how the climate crisis is upending lives and inflicting billions of dollars a year in damage.
While wildfires are often ignited by lightning strikes or human activity, they are becoming more frequent because of human-caused climate change. Scientists found, for instance, that climate change made the extreme weather conditions that fueled the 2019-2020 destructive fire seasons in Australia 30% more likely to occur.
The so-called Oak Fire destroyed127homes and66outbuildings. Roughly6,000people were forced to evacuate as the inferno torched30square miles of land and smoke from the fire drifted more than200miles into parts of Nevada and the San Francisco Bay Area.
