“Mother Nature Hates You”

As wildfires rage, private firefighters join the fight for the fortunate few

When devastating wildfires erupted across Los Angeles County this week, David Torgerson’s team of firefighters went to work.

The thousands of city, county and state firefighters dispatched to battle the blazes went wherever they were needed. The crews from Torgerson’s Wildfire Defense Systems, however, set out for particular addresses. Armed with hoses, fire-blocking gel and their own water supply, the Montana-based outfit contracts with insurance companies to defend the homes of customers who buy policies that include their services.

It’s a win-win if the private firefighters succeed in saving a home, said Torgerson, the company’s founder and executive chairman. The homeowner keeps their home and the insurance company doesn’t have to make a hefty payout to rebuild.

h/t XC

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You"

First, they lost their home insurance. Then, L.A. fires consumed their homes

Last year, Francis Bischetti said he learned that the annual cost of the homeowners policy he buys from Farmers Insurance for his Pacific Palisades home was going to soar from $4,500 to $18,000 — an amount he could not possibly afford.

Neither could he get onto California FAIR Plan, which provides fewer benefits, because he said he would have to cut down 10 trees around his roof line to lower the fire risk — something else the 55-year-old personal assistant found too costly to manage.

So he decided he would do what’s called “going bare” — not buying any coverage on his home in the community’s El Medio neighborhood. He figured if he watered his property year round, that might be protection enough given its location south of Sunset Boulevard.

h/t Patti Jo

And …

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You", WTF?

Los Angeles fires: Living here, we’re always on edge of catastrophe

People love — or detest — Los Angeles because it is the opposite of New York.

More space, bungalows with gardens, plenty of nature: in a place like Topanga to the west you can live in semi-wilderness and still be not just within reach of but actually in the city (by LA’s weirdly distended definition of the term). Then there’s all the wonderful hardcore nature of mountains, deserts and ocean within a few hours’ drive. Add in the endless sunshine and you have the ingredients for a laid-back, outdoor life.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You"

The L.A. Wildfires Should Be a Wake-up Call

Decades of fire suppression policies have left forests dangerously dense and overgrown.

The devastating fires raging near Los Angeles have again drawn national attention to America’s wildfire crisis. Such destructive blazes have become increasingly common, and their human toll is staggering: lives lost, families displaced, and entire neighborhoods reduced to ashes. Like other recent severe wildfires, the blaze in Los Angeles raises questions about what can be done to prevent such devastation in the future.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You"

Can California Afford Its Luxury Beliefs After This? Let’s Look at the Books.

California is undergoing a crisis of competence. Surrounded by ashen heaps of what used to be thousands of homes and businesses, voters finally may realize that luxury beliefs sound nice at cocktail parties and the gym, but somebody should make sure there’s water in the reservoirs and fire hydrants.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You", California

New theory emerges over what could have sparked the deadly Los Angeles inferno

Faults along the Los Angeles power grid alarmingly soared in the same areas where major wildfires raged this week, sparking a new theory that they may have caused the devastating crisis.

Bob Marshall, the chief executive of Whisker Labs, a company that monitors electrical activity, told Fox News that the firm saw spikes in faults in the hours before the Eaton, Palisades and Hurst Fires.

He said a network of around 14,000 ‘ting’ sensors recorded faults across the power grid in those areas, which he said can offer ‘extraordinary precision and accuracy.’ Marshall said data shows the power was not immediately shut off after the faults surged.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You"

No, the LA inferno is not Mother Nature’s revenge

When the Great Fire swept through London in 1666, the fleeing citizens were convinced God was punishing them. ‘The dreadful judgement’, they called it. London’s been set alight for its ‘deadly sin of gluttony’, they wailed. A plaque put on the smoky ruins of the bakery where the fire started said: ‘Here by permission of Heaven, Hell broke loose…’ Fast forward 350 years and this view of fire as retribution, as the hellish judgement of sinning humanity, still holds. Only now the fire is set not by God, but by Gaia.

h/t patthedog

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You"

How the Los Angeles Fires Became So Devastating

Devastating images have emerged of the immense destruction wrought by several fires in the Los Angeles area this week. These will likely be the costliest wildfires in U.S. history, overtaking the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, California.

Many are looking for a clear culprit to blame for this disaster, with climate change being one of the most popular. The fires, however, are the result of both natural and human factors. Climate change may have played a role, but other, more direct causes warrant our attention.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You"

The Los Angeles Wildfires: An Avoidable Tragedy

The scenes from the wildfires devastating Los Angeles are apocalyptic. As of this writing, more than 1,000 homes, businesses, and other buildings have been destroyed, and two people have died. Firefighters have battled, with little success, flames spread by hurricane-force winds from Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica—wealthy areas in western L.A. near the Santa Monica Recreation Area—to the east in Eaton (near Pasadena) and toward the Cattle Canyon Bride, located near the San Bernadino National Forest.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You"

Where’s the Water, Gavin?

When fire fighters at the scene of the catastrophic Pacific Palisades fire got the wrenches out to open the fire hydrants…they were dry. And that, friends, is the avatar for all that is wrong with the incompetent leadership of Los Angeles and the state of California: a dry fire hydrant.

People have to go to jail.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You"

Trump says Gov. Gavin ‘Newscum’ chose to save an extinct fish instead of sending water to Southern California to fight ‘apocalyptic’ wildfires

Politically connected fish.

President-elect Donald Trump blamed California’s Gavin Newsom for the ‘apocalyptic’ wildfires ravaging the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles — claiming he chose to save an extinct tiny fish species, instead of sending more water to southern California.

Trump raged that the Democratic governor blocked an order that would have diverted more water from the much wetter north to the state’s parched regions “including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You"

What Started L.A.’s Firestorm? Hint: It’s Not ‘Climate Change.’

Firefighters say that L.A.’s hellacious firestorm started at 10:30 Tuesday morning in Topanga Canyon. This paradise is — was? — filled with bespoke homes and came with built-in privacy — a rare commodity. People have been uprooted, their family memories are in ashes, and they have to find a place to sleep tonight. Evacuated entertainment stars such as James Woods, Ben Affleck, Eugene Levy, and more likely haven’t had a chance to ask this secondary question: What started this fire?

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You"

Los Angeles faces 12 more hours of monstrous wildfires as California elites forced to evacuate

Fire-ravaged residents in ritzy suburbs across southern California have been warned to brace for another 12 hours of hell as wildfires turn cataclysmic.

Million-dollar mansions in the celebrity enclave of Pacific Palisades were razed last night, with landmark institutions and beloved restaurants leveled as three out-of-control blazes and winds nearing 100mph spread at a rapid rate across Los Angeles.

The night sky blazed red and was blanketed in heavy smoke – while a windstorm the worst Los Angeles has seen in more than a decade whipped up debris and sent fire embers traveling more than a mile ahead of the monstrous inferno itself.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You"

Palisades Fire

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"Mother Nature Hates You"