The Great Los Angeles Fire of 2025

Today is an important day to fight the fire.

Firefighters heroically kept it from spreading east across the interstate highway into Bel Air.

Tonight the winds will return for a few days and nothing good will come from that.


The expanded evacuation area covers some of Los Angeles’ most important cultural institutions, including the Getty Center, an architectural landmark with a world-class art collection. The historic cultural center has a fire-resistant design that may be put to the test.

Katherine Fleming, president and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, said the art galleries are “safe and protected” and are being closely monitored.

The campus of the University of California at Los Angeles is on “high alert” and has been advised to prepare for evacuation, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire. New areas of Bel Air east of the 405 freeway are now also on evacuation warning, Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky wrote in an email to her constituents.

From the map it looks to be approaching highly populated areas once again.

Would be another disaster if it reached UCLA far to the east.

The Getty Center hugs the Interstate down in Brentwood and is closer to the current fire.


Still only 11% contained.
 
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The Getty Center is about 2 miles S/SE of the fire.
 
Isn't it a bit too blatant to have celebrities parading on media to cry about their fifth house being damaged?
I'd give them a pass if that was the house with their important stuff like family photos, documents, and sentimental items, or if they had animals there.


Actually, this, plus the coverage of the Jasper fire last summer that burned a significant portion of it to the ground, has made me realize that I've been lucky. Red Deer has a lot of forested area and we've had too-dry winters and horrendously hot and dry summers in recent years. But while we've had floods, hail, wind storms, blizzards, and smoke from wildfires all over BC and Alberta, we haven't had the actual fires themselves.

I've asked myself what I would choose to save if I only had 15 minutes to decide. Obviously I'd need my basics - meds, purse, computer, and mobility devices, and if there was time, I'd grab what photo albums I could. I don't have cats anymore to take with me (I had good, sturdy carriers with straps so I could take both of them and still have my hands free for other things), but I'd take what I have of my family. I have my grandmother's, dad's, and Maddy's ashes. They go where I go.
 
Best fire map:

 
Ever since you posted it a few days ago, I keep a copy open and updated.
 

And from thread:
The reasons are systemic-

Insurance companies offer no discount to offset increased costs of using non-timber materials, and they put a time limit on rebuilding such that using non-traditional materials is often not possible

Contractors are unwilling to switch because steel and concrete houses require different training for their workers and they already have established timber-based supply chains

Individual homeowners understand that in big fires, concrete homes burn too, and if every other house on the street is timber, a concrete or steel structure is no guarantee
 

And from thread:
The reasons are systemic-

Insurance companies offer no discount to offset increased costs of using non-timber materials, and they put a time limit on rebuilding such that using non-traditional materials is often not possible

Contractors are unwilling to switch because steel and concrete houses require different training for their workers and they already have established timber-based supply chains

Individual homeowners understand that in big fires, concrete homes burn too, and if every other house on the street is timber, a concrete or steel structure is no guarantee
Yeah everyone just thinking about keeping business going right now and not beyond. :(
 
Look like things are holding pretty steady today thanks to firefighting efforts.
Palisades fire 14% contained now.

Just have to get through 3 more days of windy weather.
 
Most of the houses that have burned are older and date back 20, 30 or more years. LA's urban sprawl has been going on for many decades, well before fires were a problem and concrete houses sensible. I suspect we will see more fireproof in the future.
 
Republican leadership, including Trump, Mike Johnson, and others, are now stating they plan to make aid to California for the fires conditional on California immediately embracing significant far right policies. This kind of conditioning for aid is unheard of in modern American history. Disasters being weaponized by the feds was already sort of here on account of Republicans but this would be an incredible escalation of cruelty and another declaration that non Republicans are non Americans.
 
Eh.
 
I will allow it on the fact that nobody realizes they are the closest thing to an agricultural and economic breadbasket of the country and that them leaving would cause significant pain to the rest of the country.
For Trump and the GOP the actual people are of no concern. It is politics all the time. "Own the libs!"
 

And from thread:
The reasons are systemic-

Insurance companies offer no discount to offset increased costs of using non-timber materials, and they put a time limit on rebuilding such that using non-traditional materials is often not possible

Contractors are unwilling to switch because steel and concrete houses require different training for their workers and they already have established timber-based supply chains

Individual homeowners understand that in big fires, concrete homes burn too, and if every other house on the street is timber, a concrete or steel structure is no guarantee
That building to the left looks like it is made of concrete too lol.

It's a directly fire resistant substance, but you can substantially fireproof buildings without just making everything into cement bunkers.

The biggest threat in a fringe suburban area is ember attack starting structural fires, rather than just direct flame contact like in more isolated bushland areas. So fire resistance in most urban circumstances is mostly about preventing embers from building up and getting into structures and igniting eaves and frames and interior walls and the like. That's mostly unsexy things like clearing and covering gutters, installing sprinkler systems, choices of window and cladding materials, thinking about clearance distances to the tree line. Doing so simultaneously with energy efficiency and earthquake proofing considerations is presumably an extra challenge.

Moreover, even buildings made of concrete and brick do absolutely still fail in bushfires, or get damaged and need rebuilding regardless. You can dig through any photos of Australian bushfire aftermath and find destroyed concrete buildings aplenty.

Finally, it's not actually unusual for structures to survive bushfire despite surrounding destruction, due to either preparation, active defence, or even just random chance. For example the pattern of house survival in a destroyed suburb in Canberra in 2003. Were the surviving houses defended, prepared, built different or just lucky? Could've been anything.

images - 2025-01-14T104542.252.jpeg

Posting random photos of a single surviving structure generally tells us absolutely nothing about anything and is pretty much always going to be disingenuous.

They're going to have to rethink a lot of fringe suburban design after this, especially a lot of retrofitting, and just generally will need to take structure fires more seriously as global warming intensifies. But I reckon it's a bit foolish and thought terminating to pretend there's simple responses to global warming induced increased fire intensity like "just make everything out of concrete".
 
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Another GOP genius can solve CA's problems!

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Wants To Use Weather Manipulation To Fight Fires. Here's Why It's Unlikely.​

“They know how to do it," the far-right congresswoman insisted while pushing her half-baked theory, which she previously suggested is used to control hurricanes.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) on Sunday questioned why scientists haven’t manipulated the weather to extinguish the wildfires over Southern California, insisting to her social media followers: “They know how to do it.” The Georgia congresswoman, whose educational background is in business administration, specifically cited a process called cloud seeding, which can stimulate preexisting clouds into producing rain, though at a small scale. She’s previously suggested, without any supporting evidence, that powerful hurricanes are generated this way in the South to deliberately hurt Republican-majority areas.

One of the issues with cloud seeding as a solution in Southern California is that the region has been experiencing a severe drought for weeks, leaving the air with low humidity and a lack of precipitation-producing clouds. Under such conditions, there’s limited to no opportunity for such a method to work, as atmospheric research scientist Frank McDonough with the Nevada-based Desert Research Institute, which has its own cloud seeding program, explained to HuffPost.
“The air flowing across SOCAL at this time is bone dry coming from east to west off the Mojave Desert. There are no clouds present to seed,” he said in an email Monday.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has repeatedly brought up cloud seeding as a way to manipulate the weather.


Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has repeatedly brought up cloud seeding as a way to manipulate the weather.
Tom Williams via Getty Images

Even if there were some cloud availability, it’s also only able to target small areas, around 23-30 miles, he said. The wildfires in Los Angeles cover 38,629 acres as of Monday afternoon, or roughly 60 square miles.
“On a longer time frame (over an entire winter season), cloud seeding could help increase water resources and this could potentially help fill reservoirs and make increased firefighting water available for ground and air,” he added.
Similar assessments have been made for years by other experts in the field.

A worker at a local meteorology bureau fires a cloud-seeding rocket in an attempt to make rain on May 15, 2021, in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province of China.


A worker at a local meteorology bureau fires a cloud-seeding rocket in an attempt to make rain on May 15, 2021, in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province of China.
VCG via Getty Images

“When cloud seeding is used to prompt precipitation, or rain, the technique relies on already existing water molecules in the atmosphere to condense onto the particles, or ‘seeds,’” Heather Holmes explained in 2017, then an assistant professor in physics and atmospheric sciences at the University of Nevada. “Because moisture is the first ingredient for cloud seeding to produce rain, cloud seeding cannot be used as a solution to create rain during drought conditions.”
The North American Weather Modification Council similarly advocates against cloud seeding during drought, stating online that “cloud seeding opportunities during these periods would be very limited and the results likely marginal.”
In past instances where it was used to produce rain or snow ― in places like China, Pakistan, Idaho and Colorado ― scientists would monitor incoming clouds by satellite, analyze their content and, if the conditions were ideal, shoot or release silver iodide into the passing water vapor. This chemical causes water droplets in the clouds to freeze together and fall as rain.

The process isn’t simple or always successful, and results aren’t immediately substantial, as one meteorologist with the private company Weather Modification International told NBC News in 2022. “It’s one of the things that makes it so hard to evaluate, is you don’t see a doubling or tripling of the precipitation,” Bruce Boe, the company’s vice president of meteorology, told the network while discussing the process’ use to create artificial snow.

“You see an incremental increase, but you add that up over the course of a winter and then it can be significant,” he said. The National Center for Atmospheric Research, which has tested cloud seeding to generate snowfall for water management purposes, has also pointed to wind conditions needing to be just right (Los Angeles is currently experiencing 45-70 mph wind gusts that authorities blame for helping fan the flames). The research center has also questioned how cost-effective cloud seeding is.
 
Republican leadership, including Trump, Mike Johnson, and others, are now stating they plan to make aid to California for the fires conditional on California immediately embracing significant far right policies. This kind of conditioning for aid is unheard of in modern American history. Disasters being weaponized by the feds was already sort of here on account of Republicans but this would be an incredible escalation of cruelty and another declaration that non Republicans are non Americans.
What are the conditions?
 
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