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SoCal Fires - newguy - 01-08-2025

has anyone here been affected by the fires in Southern California?  Two people have died in the Eaton Fire near Altadena, and over 1,000 homes have been destroyed in Pacific Palisades and Malibu.

RE: SoCal Fires - M T - 01-08-2025

I think all California residents will be affected by the consequences on the California home insurance industry. 

As a Stanford area resident, I have not been affected directly by the fires, but my heart goes out to all those that have lost their homes or businesses and especially those who have lost friends or relatives

RE: SoCal Fires - SkiBum80 - 01-08-2025

In Ventura county, power loss since middle of night. Still off, indefinitely.
Watching closely, but no evac notice yet, hopefully not.
Weather might be turning around some? At least in Ventura county.
With winds dying down, even possible reverse to prevailing onshore direction by this eve.
Always unpredictable though.
Didn't expect this in January.
God help those in LA county, is horrendous disaster for many.

RE: SoCal Fires - dabigv13 - 01-08-2025

Big Santa Ana event happening with minimal rain to date this season in SoCal. Not a surprise this happened though certainly devastating. Last night it seemed all of the Santa Monica mountains were on fire from my view in Venice. 

Air quality is markedly better than earlier this morning, and it seems the rate of growth is diminishing as winds improve so hopefully the tide will turn. Have quite a few friends and colleagues who have had to evacuate and a couple have lost homes. I am beyond thankful that the Getty Villa seems to have survived at least. Where all these people will go now, I don't know....housing supply is already very constrained in LA.

RE: SoCal Fires - Leftcoast - 01-08-2025

I have friends who were evacuated yesterday. They were able to visit their home this morning to rescue some stuff and reported the fire was about a mile away and the winds had died down.  They are hopeful their home will be spared.

RE: SoCal Fires - Mick - 01-08-2025

My son and his fiancee evacuated their condo in northwest Santa Monica late yesterday. They live in the mandatory evacuation zone and headed to his future mother-in-law's place in Laguna Beach. He has a Ring camera on his back porch and he let me know that the fires are "threatening but his house is not currently on fire."

RE: SoCal Fires - dabigv13 - 01-08-2025

https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/1/7/palisades-fire

And the Watch Duty app are good resources.

I heard there was an isolated fire in Santa Monica at 4th and Adelaide, just within Santa Monica north of San Vicente, though this isn't showing up on the official maps. Seems like Santa Monica otherwise is still ok.

RE: SoCal Fires - M T - 01-08-2025

CalFire incident site on the Eaton Fire (Altadena/Pasadena area;  10K+ acres at 3PM Wed., 21 hrs after start)
  Google map of the burn area (updated Wed. morning)   You may have to click on the name of the fire to see the fire area.

CalFire incident site of the Palisades Fire (Between Malibu and Santa Monica, 15K+ acres at 3PM Wed)
  Google map of the burn area

I don't know the population density of the Palisades Fire area.  It appears the fire didn't get to Pepperdine.  I see that the Getty Villa was able to preserve its collection.

I do know the Altadena area.   I saw a video looking north on Lake Ave at Alameda, approximately 1 mile north of the turn of the Rose Parade (where most TV video is from), showing a building on fire and the dark smoke behind it.  JPL is just west of the westernmost point of the burn area.

Here's a short video showing 2 hours of the fires from a satellite ending just after noon (local) on Wednesday.

RE: SoCal Fires - Mick - 01-08-2025

(01-08-2025, 05:46 PM)dabigv13 Wrote:  https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2025/1/7/palisades-fire

And the Watch Duty app are good resources.

I heard there was an isolated fire in Santa Monica at 4th and Adelaide, just within Santa Monica north of San Vicente, though this isn't showing up on the official maps. Seems like Santa Monica otherwise is still ok.

That is a block and a half from my son's place.

RE: SoCal Fires - dabigv13 - 01-08-2025

From what I can tell it was a spot fire coming from an ember from palisades. SMFD had it put out very quickly, with no further spread within Santa Monica. AFAICT, there is no active fire within Santa Monica presently. I can still see plenty of smoke from the north, but I am not seeing the big fires from last night, so hopefully the chance of spot fires will lessen.

Winds are lightening a bit now but still breezy. I hope your son's place makes it through ok. Still a long way to go with this event. Big new start in Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills just now.

RE: SoCal Fires - 2006alum - 01-08-2025

Cousins' house in Pacific Palisades total loss. Partner has a place in Hollywood Hills very close to the Sunset Fire that just broke out in Runyon an hour ago and moving VERY fast. Completely terrifying and devastating. Keeping fingers and toes crossed tonight...

RE: SoCal Fires - cardcrimson - 01-08-2025

Prayers for everyone there. Lots of friends in the area, evacuated yesterday. Apparently the hydrants ran dry in Palisades around 3am. No water in Altadena now, either.

RE: SoCal Fires - BostonCard - 01-08-2025

Classes at UCLA (where my son is a student) cancelled tomorrow and Friday.  No evacuations that I heard of, but concerns about the air quality.  Not sure about whether basketball games are happening at Wooden.

BC

RE: SoCal Fires - Mick - 01-08-2025

(01-08-2025, 07:26 PM)dabigv13 Wrote:  From what I can tell it was a spot fire coming from an ember from palisades. SMFD had it put out very quickly, with no further spread within Santa Monica. AFAICT, there is no active fire within Santa Monica presently. I can still see plenty of smoke from the north, but I am not seeing the big fires from last night, so hopefully the chance of spot fires will lessen.

Winds are lightening a bit now but still breezy. I hope your son's place makes it through ok. Still a long way to go with this event. Big new start in Runyon Canyon in the Hollywood Hills just now.

Thanks for the news, dabigv13.  That was heartening.

RE: SoCal Fires - Spiny_Norman - 01-08-2025

Runyon Canyon fire is slowing down. Because wind is not as bad as yesterday, they are able to make aerial water drops which are having a major impact.

Palisades and Eaton fires have been catastrophic. I am reading reports that 75% of Pacific Palisades is burned. I have hiked in and around there hundreds of times. I just cannot believe the devastation. Several friends have lost their homes and others anxiously await news of theirs. It's such a tragedy.

RE: SoCal Fires - qwerty49 - 01-08-2025

My brother-in-law evacuated his family from Altadena last night and came back this morning to see what he could do.  Entire block across the street from him was gone.  Miraculously, his side of the street (not a very wide one) was intact.  He and several neighbors used buckets of water to put out numerous small brushfires and windblown embers.  Water ran out early afternoon and they continued, using tarps as best as they could to smother the little fires.

If you know Altadena, a lot of the establishments lining Lake Ave up the hill to Altadena Dr are gone.  CNN was on the scene but Fire Dept was presumably busy elsewhere.

RE: SoCal Fires - M T - 01-09-2025

I expect the fire department prioritized protecting homes rather than businesses.

RE: SoCal Fires - Nobadeer - 01-09-2025

My LSJU classmates lost homes, in Pacific Palisades and Malibu. Another was evacuated from Altadena. My daughter left LA last night after the Hollywood fire started. At least so far there haven't been any people trapped in cars like in Lahaina.

RE: SoCal Fires - M T - 01-09-2025

California has suffered many larger fires.  We don't know yet how many structures this week's fires will destroy.

As a local comparison, the CZU fire complex in fall of 2020 burned 86,509 acres and destroyed 1490 buildings and killed one person.

The Camp Fire (Nov 2018) burned 153,000 acres, destroyed more than 18,000 buildings, and killed 85 people.
Quote:Traffic jams on the few evacuation routes led to cars being abandoned while people evacuated on foot, but did not contribute to any deaths. At least seven deaths occurred when the fire overtook people who were trapped in their vehicles, most on Edgewood Road, as well as one person outside a vehicle and two on ATVs

The fires in Maui in August 2023 killed 102 (+ 2 missing), burned 17,000 acres, and destroyed more than 2,200 buildings.
From this report:
Quote:“You heard all the reports of cars stuck on Front Street,” Pelletier said. “Not one person died in a car on Front Street.” ...
Overall, approximately 42 bodies were recovered from inside structures, 39 from outdoor locations, 15 from inside vehicles, and one in the water. An additional three deaths were later reported to have occurred in a hospital on Oahu due to fire-related injuries, the report said.

Big fires occurred well before dense housing and global warming.
1923 Wisconsin Cloquet fire killed 453 people, burning 250,000 acres.
1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires(plural) destroyed 25,000 buildings. I see no estimate of how many of the 3000 deaths were attributed to fire.
1871 Great Chicago Fire killed 300 people, destroyed 17,000 buildings in 2112 acres.
1871 Michigan Peshtigo fire killed 1500-2500 people, burning 1.2M acres.
1851 San Francisco, in the 6th of 7 major SF fires from 1849-1851, three-quarters of San Francisco was destroyed by fire, at least 9 died.
 (I see no reports of people trapped in cars for those fires ;-)

RE: SoCal Fires - M T - 01-09-2025

It does seem that gridlock of escape routes was a problem in SoCal.
The BBC reports
Quote:As residents of Pacific Palisades fled their homes on Wednesday, the Pacific Coast Highway, the main road towards Malibu, quickly became gridlocked. Some people abandoned their cars, opting instead to try to escape the blaze on foot. Bulldozers had to clear abandoned vehicles to make way for firefighting crews. One resident told the BBC that he was stuck in a traffic jam for two hours while trying to escape the Palisades fire.


Members of my family got stuck in the 2005 Hurricane Rita evacuation when 3M people tried to leave the Houston area.  Evacuations can be very difficult as they create situations that have never been tried before.

I once read an early 1960s document that was intended to be a guide if a nuclear attack was anticipated in the Bay Area.  My opinion was that the purported evacuation routes would have been immediately jammed, leaving people quite exposed and without resources.