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The Los Angeles fires of January 2025

I addressed this when I said that the fire hydrant system was sufficient to put out house and building fires.

But it was not sufficient to put out a WORLD WAR TWO LEVEL FIRESTORM.

It is irrational to expect that such a fire of wartime levels of destruction could be extinguished by even a very capable fire department.

To put this in proper perspective when the United States Army Air Corps firebombed the German city of Dresden the destruction totaled 1,600 acres.

The current Los Angeles fires have so far destroyed 40,300 acres of city and open land.
 
To put this in proper perspective when the United States Army Air Corps firebombed the German city of Dresden the destruction totaled 1,600 acres.

The current Los Angeles fires have so far destroyed 40,300 acres of city and open land.
It's a big fire.... It has caused many people to look toward God. The righteous wonder at why the scoffers and mockers prosper. Perhaps this fire demonstrates that their actions have been noted and at some point, even the long suffering of our Messiah wears thin.
 
To put this in proper perspective when the United States Army Air Corps firebombed the German city of Dresden the destruction totaled 1,600 acres.

The current Los Angeles fires have so far destroyed 40,300 acres of city and open land.
Incredible figures. Just wondering for the sake of clearer comparison, do you know how many acres of urban land were burned in either case?
 
Incredible figures. Just wondering for the sake of clearer comparison, do you know how many acres of urban land were burned in either case?
You have to include greater density of Dresden.

Any American city will have lower density (except oldtown cores) since they are car cities and most US cities don't lack space. It's opposite. They have too much space.
 
To put this in proper perspective when the United States Army Air Corps firebombed the German city of Dresden the destruction totaled 1,600 acres.

The current Los Angeles fires have so far destroyed 40,300 acres of city and open land.
So, I guess to put it in even more perspective,
the Woke Leftists running the People's Republik of Kalifornia managed to do an even more massive job of firebombing their own constituents than the WW II US military.

And to think, somebody gave the Senile Marionette nukes, and his puppeteers still have a whole week to use 'em.
 
Incredible figures. Just wondering for the sake of clearer comparison, do you know how many acres of urban land were burned in either case?

Dresden was 1,600 acres of urban city center.

The Eaton fire seems to have done the most damage to an urban area and Altadena has lost about 5427.2 square acres of urban and suburban area to this one fire.

About 1/3 of Pacific Palisades was urban and suburban and that much amounts to around 6,000 square acres lost. Maybe more.
 
There were 60mph to 100mph winds blowing the fires across several miles of terrain. Even if the entire fire department had deployed and even if they had all the water their fire hydrant system could manage it still would have been too much.

Exactly, I've heard the fires destroyed more of an area than something the size of a city like San Francisco, so the fire covered an area larger than a large city. Full fire hydrants can't combat that amount of fire, especially with the winds spreading it and getting temps up around 2000F in places.
 
117 million gallons that was not in the big reservoir would have gone a long ways in slowing things down.
It had a leak that has been being repaired since last February.
 
Exactly, I've heard the fires destroyed more of an area than something the size of a city like San Francisco, so the fire covered an area larger than a large city. Full fire hydrants can't combat that amount of fire, especially with the winds spreading it and getting temps up around 2000F in places.

Why?

Procedure with fire spreading by wind is to create at least meters of flat ground without any flamable material. You require only enough people.

Found from US documentary where several paratrooper firefigters died trying to clear forested area.

There is also possibility of actually wetting ground to stop spreading fire.

Remember, fire requires oxygen, material and temperature. Take away one integredient and fire is stuffed out.

And there are options. Use bloody seawater to fill hydrants with ships engines. And don't give me salt is dangerous crap. In Croatia, aircraft and helicopter use seawater in firefighting.

It's political priorities and lack of general competence. California doesn't lack money, so it's not money, it it's people and their refusal do to their job.

They could have firefighting ship to keep hydrants full, receive reinforcements by paradrop and clear front to stop spreading fire. They could do mass city mobilization.

In Croatia, once fire has reached second largest city. It was defended by combination of firefighters with civilian population. Local football club has coordinated 10000+ civilians.

Where were people living in city?

Whole situation is massive multiple failure in political, civilian and proffesional firefighters domains.
 
Why?

Procedure with fire spreading by wind is to create at least meters of flat ground without any flamable material. You require only enough people.

Found from US documentary where several paratrooper firefigters died trying to clear forested area.

There is also possibility of actually wetting ground to stop spreading fire.

Remember, fire requires oxygen, material and temperature. Take away one integredient and fire is stuffed out.

And there are options. Use bloody seawater to fill hydrants with ships engines. And don't give me salt is dangerous crap. In Croatia, aircraft and helicopter use seawater in firefighting.

It's political priorities and lack of general competence. California doesn't lack money, so it's not money, it it's people and their refusal do to their job.

They could have firefighting ship to keep hydrants full, receive reinforcements by paradrop and clear front to stop spreading fire. They could do mass city mobilization.

In Croatia, once fire has reached second largest city. It was defended by combination of firefighters with civilian population. Local football club has coordinated 10000+ civilians.

Where were people living in city?

Whole situation is massive multiple failure in political, civilian and proffesional firefighters domains.

The total urban area of Split is about nine square miles or about 5800 acres. That's about half of the urban are that was destroyed in Los Angeles this past week.

The urban area in the Los Angeles metropolitan area is about two thousand three hundred square miles.

That's a lot more to defend and protect than Split.

Split has 160,000 people. That's about a decent sized neighborhood in Los Angeles which has 18,000,000 people living there.

The solutions that might apply in Split are orders of magnitude irrelevant to a city the size and scale of Los Angeles.
 
However, it is strange that they are talking all the time about reservoirs in the hills, and not about pumping seawater. There really should be no shortage of firefighting water in a coastal city. That is very peculiar - even if it wouldn't be sufficient to have stopped this fire, the near total lack of mention of seawater in the media discussion about this still is peculiar. Presumably firefighting aircraft are using seawater. But why doesn't the hydrant system have a backup seawater pumping station so it can never go dry (just force everyone to wash all the salt water out of their equipment afterwards)?
 
However, it is strange that they are talking all the time about reservoirs in the hills, and not about pumping seawater. There really should be no shortage of firefighting water in a coastal city. That is very peculiar - even if it wouldn't be sufficient to have stopped this fire, the near total lack of mention of seawater in the media discussion about this still is peculiar. Presumably firefighting aircraft are using seawater. But why doesn't the hydrant system have a backup seawater pumping station so it can never go dry (just force everyone to wash all the salt water out of their equipment afterwards)?

Most likely is no one of any level of responsibility ever considered the possibility of this level of disaster.

And up until now anyone who said it would be a good idea to plan and prepare for such a disaster was predictably dismissed by "sensible" people as paranoid and unrealistic.

Normalcy bias is a real thing and it kills people all the time. "That can't happen to us, to me, or here" has been said over and over in history.

Like you and your family are probably a lot more ready for an earthquake in New Zealand than people in New York City. Because you folks have earthquakes often enough.

But guess who faces more danger if there is an earthquake? New York City. And when they finally have a big earthquake they'll suddenly care about the issue and then as a few hundred years go by they'll forget.

Look at all the people who built homes on top of Pompeii. Most of those people will not believe what they see or hear if Mount Vesuvius erupts again. It'll be a big surprise to them. It shouldn't be but it will be.

Likewise all these fancy people in Los Angeles never imagined that the day would come that their homes in their carefully manicured neighborhoods would face disaster. Yet here we are.
 
The total urban area of Split is about nine square miles or about 5800 acres. That's about half of the urban are that was destroyed in Los Angeles this past week.

The urban area in the Los Angeles metropolitan area is about two thousand three hundred square miles.

That's a lot more to defend and protect than Split.

Split has 160,000 people. That's about a decent sized neighborhood in Los Angeles which has 18,000,000 people living there.

The solutions that might apply in Split are orders of magnitude irrelevant to a city the size and scale of Los Angeles.
@MeganC, it's not number of squares, but frontage size. Fire advance over line.

Which makes Los Angeles even worse. Milions of people and still unable to defend line. Man, this sucks.
 
@MeganC, it's not number of squares, but frontage size. Fire advance over line.

Which makes Los Angeles even worse. Milions of people and still unable to defend line. Man, this sucks.

It doesn't work that way. In Los Angeles the wild fire defense has to occur at the same time normal fire department responses must occur such as medical calls, automobile accidents, and small fires.

In Split their limited resources can be concentrated on a defense line and also respond to selected issues as they occur because the geographical area to defend is small compared to Los Angeles. In LA the fire lines in Malibu are as much as 130km away from San Bernardino.

All of Croatia would fit into the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Croatia = 21,851 square miles
LA Metropol = 33,954 square miles
 
From one of my favourite writers:


Brutal:

The Romans built aqueducts stretching hundreds of miles in less time than it takes to permit an outbuilding in California — and their aqueducts actually held water.

One of those Roman aqueducts is still in use. The Acqua Vergine was built in 15BC-19BC and it still delivers water to the city of Rome.
 
All of Croatia would fit into the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Croatia = 21,851 square miles
LA Metropol = 33,954 square miles
Kinda mindboggeling.
 
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