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| California Burning: The veteran firefighters of California and Los Angeles called it “a perfect storm”. The hillsides and canyons were full of “fuel”. The LA Fire Department was underfunded, below-strength, and inadequately-equipped. A key reservoir was empty, leaving fire-hydrants without the water pressure needed for fire hoses. The power companies had successfully delayed mitigating the risk posed by their powerlines. |
IT IS NEARLY 60 years since the American author Joan Didion wrote about Los Angeles’ “weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse”. The hot, dry Santa Ana wind, trailing wildfires in its wake, affected “the entire quality of life in Los Angeles”, accentuating “its impermanence, its unreliability”. According to Didion, Santa Ana showed Angelenos “how close to the edge we were.”
Los Angeles’ wildfires are making it clear to the whole world how close to the edge it now stands. In 2024, an increase of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era’s average temperature was confirmed by climate scientists. That figure represents a catastrophic, an apocalyptic, failure of global political will. How so? Because keeping the impact of global warming below 1.5°C was the critical objective of the COP21 agreement signed in Paris by humanity’s leaders in December 2015. It has taken them just ten years to fail.
Warmer air holds more moisture, so, when it rains, it rains harder and for longer. Californians experienced this directly when for two years in a row the state’s rain gauges registered an appreciable increase in precipitation. What that produced was a sudden spurt in plant growth on the state’s mountainsides and hillsides, and in its canyons. This was especially true of the mountains, hills and canyons to the east of Los Angeles.
After two wet years, however, California went dry. All that vigorous vegetative growth became tinder, just waiting for a spark.
Did the leaders of California realise the danger? Did the city and county governments of Los Angeles comprehend the risk? Of course they did! It’s not as if wildfires are unknown in the Hollywood Hills. It’s just that the people in charge were convinced that ‘CalFire’ and its fire-fighters could handle anything Santa Ana sent them.
CalFire’s veterans weren’t so sure. Over their long careers they had been able to count on nightfall bringing a slackening in wildfire ferocity. A respite that allowed them to rest and regroup their forces. But, in recent years they had detected an ominous change. Sunset now brought no respite. Wildfires burned as fiercely in darkness as in daylight, making them much harder to contain. If Santa Ana blew long and strong, then Los Angeles would be in peril.
The defining characteristic of modern politicians is that they invariably plan on events unfolding as expected. Until they occur, deviations from the norm are routinely dismissed as unlikely. Politicians reflexively hope for the best until the worst happens – by which time, of course, it is much too late.
California and Los Angeles should have been prepared. They should have taken precautions: kept the reservoirs topped-up for the helicopters’ monsoon backets; made sure there was full pressure in the suburban fire hydrants; provided the firefighters with new recruits and state-of-the-art equipment; compelled the power companies to mitigate the risk of their powerlines arcing in the middle of tinder-dry forest and brushland.
But in California, and everywhere else on Planet Earth, preparation, precaution, and mitigation cost money – lots of money. They require higher taxes, stricter regulations, long-term planning: all those measures that politicians, along with the people who elect them, prefer to minimise, delay, or avoid altogether. We trust to luck there will be no day of reckoning, until the day arrives in a torrent of fire and smoke.
The veteran firefighters of California and Los Angeles called it “a perfect storm”. The hillsides and canyons were full of “fuel”. The LA Fire Department was underfunded, below-strength, and inadequately-equipped. A key reservoir was empty, leaving fire-hydrants without the water pressure needed for fire hoses. The power companies had successfully delayed mitigating the risk posed by their powerlines.
And Santa Ana was not herself. This year she blew longer and stronger than anyone could remember. With hurricane force, as if the gates of Hell itself had been thrown open. Embers raced ahead of the fire-front by up to two miles, igniting rooftops and turning trees into flaming torches. CalFire’s helicopters could not be sent aloft. Fire hydrants proved useless. The highways were choked with the cars of fleeing residents. Whole blocks were reduced to ash.
Didion’s “weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse” had descended, and Los Angeles was burning.
Hoping for the best is not a strategy. Not for our political leaders, not for us. We are all standing perilously close to the edge.
This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star on Friday, 17 January 2025.
‘ ‘Hope for the best’, expect the worst’, as the song goes, is so a strategy, and a good one.
ReplyDeleteMopery and obedience to higher powers ( BMG, for Mr The Barron) is not the Kiwi way when at its best. Not always, even though more so now than it was.
Without being contrary, do you really think as you say that powers that be don’t want higher taxes, more regulation and ‘long term planning’?
But my query is, what is your point here?
Fire rain and the folly of men are not amenable to these remedies lived by Big Mommy Government. Not ultimately, or, when it matters.
The USSR, the government of Clark, Adern or Hipkins might wish you to think the reverse, but surely you know that’s a lie?
David Lange had the decency to be discomfited by reality which none of the previous did. He was Laocöon, they were cartoons.
As my name has been raised, I will hive a view on the role of governmental in emergency. The first point is it is necessary to raise tax. We already have infrastructure deficit because business demands immigration, but the user pays emphasis of this governmental requires workers to disproportionately pay for an employer benefit. Local government is highly over burdened, and costs are pushed to a body which two thirds of potential voters opt out on. So, I already advocate addressing tax proportionality.
DeleteAdd to this climate resilience in which many suburbs and even towns may require relocation and major new infrastructure and we either act as a community and nation to address or we see many of our citizens becoming like the Okies of the great depression. This is, of course, a waste of human capital. It should surprise no one that I not only believe the state has a crucial role in rehousing those that have to relocate, but those that have not previously been housed should be subject to housing as a human right.
For those facing climate resilience, insurance is unlikely to be a future option, this demands an acceptance of the role of the state as a provider of social insurance.
I have always been an advocate for the NZ Defense Force to having a primary role in disaster response within the bounds of the Pacific Forum, and within NZ with response plans with local and national government and hapu and Iwi. Even if we were to be part of wider alliance, reserving our spending to disaster response would free other nations to other use of defense spending.
ReplyDeleteIf we were to become a specialised emergency response military our mana and prestige in the region is enhanced and the forces engaged regularly. We are aware of the dangers of being in a regional cyclone, volcanic and earthquake zone and we are aware the needs of our Pacific neighbours when disaster strikes. Regional stability is achieved by being the partner in crisis.
"More people isn't a problem" - Julie-Anne Genter; "let's put it out there: Auckland could be twice the size" Paula Bennet.
ReplyDelete"Humanity" doesn't have leaders.
Before the green-left there was a slogan "quality of life versus quantity of life"
Mr The Barron, I’m glad you think of the best ways to defend New Zealand. Your idea has some merit in it. Some, but defense as in fighting fires requires considered action combined with real leadership. What other people think can matter, and it is pleasant to be well thought of, but that can’t be the goal.
ReplyDeletePeter Levi wrote ‘The Hill of Kronos’, his account of Greece through the ‘60s and time of the Colonels. It is v evocative but also frequently brought to mind, ‘this is NZ’.
The Greeks ( sadly can’t say we come close) had and have deep soil of culture and great self respect, which allowed them to survive ( with wounds) the terrible times of a few of their own imposing facile solutions to ill thought out anxieties. You may indulge your hatred of ( long dead now) Americans here, with my blessing. It is justified, in this.
Poets and civil debate leading to self respect will best defend NZ, with God, I hope.
Given that the only country remotely capable of invading as is the US, should we be scared?
DeleteMy hatred of Americans? I am unsure I have expressed such. As with all people we take the good with the bad. It may seem there's a bad moon on the rise, but we should remember, Trump got 77m votes, Biden 81m. The democrats took a vacant Iowa seat the other day, a 24 point swing from the presidential.
DeleteI retain an optimism .
.
Actually, I will elucidate a little. I think New Zealand's independent foreign policy is a fallacy. I get concerned when those on the left make grandiose statements in defense of an ideal as if it exists.
DeleteWe have a formal defense treaty with Australia, but beyond that we are intrinsically bound to the sphere of western democracy.
At a time when Finland and Sweden formalises alliances, it is folly to maintain a fantasy as to our semi-formal alliances.
Like Ireland, the question is how we integrate with other western democracies while upholding our leadership role in the Pacific. For this reason, we should negotiate what our role is, before crisis imposes one, as the Nordic nations discovered.
All armed forces have disaster relief capacity, my view is we make this our specialist role.
Did the world temp really go up 1.5 c? After Covid and 3 years of hard progressive politics and agenda's, it's hard to trust official stats, given they're routinely manipulated to suit their causes.
ReplyDeleteAnd even if that is correct, as I sit here thinking this is a rather cool summer, it's impossible to define human input over other inputs.
And why the entitlement to expect exact weather behaviour consistently in our micro short lifetimes?
Or the outrageous notion that we can control global temperatures any more than we can stop the tides!
But okay, I'll take the progressive narrative bait, it's climate change. And we're all doomed...
It wasn't intensely built suburban neighbourhoods right next to the very source of almost perennial intense fires, that do this from one strength or another, from the beginning of time.
It wasn't because they're was no decent border of no fuel for these fires, i.e. fire breaks around Pacific Palisades, Altadena, etc.
It wasn't that upper management of the LA Fire Dept were primarily focused on insane identity politics for gay, lesbian, trans rights, rather than...fire prevention, control and management.
It wasn't because water catchments were dry because numerous hydro dams were seen as non environmental and removed.
It wasn't because of a hugely mistaken belief that if fire took hold, the LA Fire Dept could handle it. Not even if their cut budgets and missing equipment were reinstated.
No way Jose, it's "climate change". It's the weather gods and they are angry at humanity and they demand sacrifices!
Climate change is the fantastic political straw man, a gift from the gods for politicians to hide behind when they get it wrong, or worse, see spending money on their activist causes rather than real public necessities exposed. Or to push their political barrows.
It's so much easier to hide behind primitive weather demons and offer absurd progressive left solutions cleverly designed to live life they way they see fit, as our saviour. If we just de-industrialise and cease commercial farming and ban oil, cars and civilisation. With more Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, then LA would be saved! Yeah, nah!
Humanity just needs to adapt, like it always has and lock up the inmates who have been running amuck, back to their asylums. It does not need to abandon civilisation!
"And even if that is correct, as I sit here thinking this is a rather cool summer,"
DeleteThat's why it's called climate change, the results are somewhat unpredictable.
"it's impossible to define human input over other inputs."
That's a very serious statement. You have evidence of that from actual scientists?
Ahh, the magic of man made climate change. If it rains, it's climate change. If it's sunny, it's climate change. That invisible dragon we must chase but never catch! The Herald even claim it causes coronary problems! I have to pay $77 dollars for a food scrap bin that I do not want or need from Auckland Council because, wait for it, it fights climate change! There is nothing it cannot do!
DeleteIf I recall correctly, the world is...burning...boiling. We are all going straight to hell for our capitalist sins. But then the damned temperature wouldn't play the game, so global warming was ever so quietly rebranded "climate change". The totally indefinable nonsense that underlines the woke progressive lefts religion. The excuse to spend insane amounts of money that achieve no physical objectives (but worsens society through the loss of those funds actually doing something useful)) but manipulate the woke narrative to keep us on a downward spiral to nowhere.
Keep trying to adjust the earth's temperature with that magic invisible temperature button. And save us from the poison that is CO2, (the basis of plant life, by the way). Delude yourself you can! You can save the world. The activist's ultimate cause!
The changes in the weather are now highlighted by it's unpredictability. Like here in NZ, they in LA have been lulled into complacency in the last few years where the weather treats us as if it's our friend. Of course at any one time there may be drought in one part of the country and too much rain in another. The authorities in LA will answer to the ballet box for their unpreparedness but will the next local government there do better. I believe in LA the fires have been so catastrophic that big money will have to be spent on water availability and upgraded fire fighting ability but it seems to me other measures like back burning for fire breaks and regulating trees allowed around property were lacking. We are no different here in NZ, there is the lack of money but also like all humans, time makes us forget. We keep making the same mistakes and so nothing really changes. In Hawkes Bay where I live we are still recovering from the cyclone. They have repaired the stop banks that were breached, but where the river took half the bridge at Waiohiki, the Maori settlement that was flooded there is being rebuilt in the same place , right next to the river. It seems we will never learn. The weather itself has turned into a mystery even to the forecasters. They can give you ten days warning but the seasonal predictions that their computer models have thrown up in the past are now useless in my opinion. We are breaking new ground, as Chris says, Living on the edge. Before Xmas in HB we were very dry verging on drought. Nothing special about that of course but since Xmas nothing but rain and cloudy days. The place is now green and no doubt for some, drawing them into that complacency that can have such devastating effects on the unsuspecting. Our world resources will need to be spent on preparing for such events to the best of our ability. Although we should be moving in the right direction to eliminate fossil fuels where we can, we are imo, never going to stop the planet heating enough to prevent weather changes any time soon. The story of king Canute comes to mind. If the world economies are not strong enough to produce the finances needed for the fight against the destruction, relocation and rebuilds needed in the future, there will be social chaos and breakdown. Chris is correct. We are living close to the edge.
ReplyDeleteIf you take the view of someone who actually knows what he is talking about like Cliff Mass, a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at University of Washington who actually teaches meteorology and weather modelling, he has a lot more measured view of the weather that created the firestorm.
ReplyDeletehttps://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-origin-of-los-angeles-wildfires.html
In the full rainfall record, it hasn't been particularly wet or dry and the winds were predictable, though from a combination of weather factors, exceptionally strong. He actually issued a warning about them.
The Palisades fire was just media disaster porn with all the celebrities affected. California is burning more, like Australia, because they have suppressed the fires that remove undergrowth and banned scrub clearance. The devastation of the fire was almost totally due to the incompetence of officials in the city and State governments. Blaming climate change is so they don't have to accept responsibility. But Californians got what they voted for.
You got it, Chris.
DeleteThe "human caused climate change" scam is a total falsehood.
You mention hillsides and canyons full of ‘fuel’, Chris.
ReplyDeleteThose few outlets for debate, which your blog is one, have become fewer, certainly in New Zealand. A feudal lord or not very bright modern equivalent would see such debate as dangerous fuel likely to catch fire and disturb the convenience of administration. It was ever so and could be so now. No debate or thinning out just gives a bigger fire, eventually. Kooks with causes may induce clampdown from constituted authority, if that authority is brittle and foolish. Then, one gets Greek Colonels. It could happen here.
Whether or not you agree with this I hope someone in the apparat who reads your blog reads this, and can think, thinks about it.
A natural disaster or something else?
ReplyDeleteIn many ways this is a repeat, and a failure to learn from, the Katrina disaster. Plans were made and funding allocated to raise and improve the levees protecting the city decades previously. Corruption, incompetence and "pork barrel politics" saw the program's resources wasted elsewhere. Thousands died.
Things go seriously wrong when reality is ignored, when people come to believe that they're bigger and better than infinite, omnipotent and omnipresent reality itself.
Another brilliant essay from Mary Harrington:
Intro: "With hindsight, Covid was a high-water mark of elite idealism: an apparently widespread belief that you could simply decide what was real, then make it so via a combination of fiat declaration and media censorship. And whatever else Trump brings, the end of the Biden administration stands as a sharp rebuke to elite hubris. But what kind of “real” can we expect from the Trumpian New Normal?"
https://unherd.com/2025/01/donald-trump-is-the-end-of-hilarity/
PS: Chris, you deserve to be more widely read, have you thought of submitting an essay or two to some of the outstanding new international media outlets - UnHerd, The Free Press, Quillette etc.? You're, at least, the equal of many of their writers.
The power companies had successfully delayed mitigating the risk posed by their powerlines.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most terrible recent fires started when a power line hook broke, dropping the line and sparking the fire. Later recovered the hook was found to be 100 years old.
But here's the thing with your statement: PG&E, the primary utility company in the state, is so regulated in every area of business - prices and price increases being just one - that it might as well be owned by the state of California. However, despite their wealth they don't want a bar of the responsibility, or the cost of putting power lines under ground.
Just one recent example should suffice:
According to the Los Angeles Times, in 2019 the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) began replacing nearly 100-year-old power-line poles cutting through Topanga State Park when the project was shut down within days after outraged conservationists claimed endangered Braunton’s milkvetch plants had been trampled during the process.
The irony is that area was consumed in these latest fires, likely wiping out all the milkvetch.
BTW, much as I appreciate Didion you really should include Raymond Chandler's classic take on the Santa Ana winds:
ReplyDeleteThere was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.
'They require higher taxes, stricter regulations, long-term planning'. How much more can we pay for achieving nothing. What is the money actually doing to improve things?
ReplyDeleteWe can't run a half decent health system, education system or any other type of system. We can't fix homelessness, child poverty and violence. But throwing tons more money, money we need to first borrow, will fix it.
Sounds like a tui ad.
What a confusing load of random thoughts and doubts from Anonymous 21/1 16.34. I find it no help and I fear that it is a true reflection of a majority of our uneasy minds and their inability to form any firm conclusions and decisions (even miniscule ones).
ReplyDeleteWell, graywarbler, texting does not allow one to say anything really r e a l l y s l o w l y.
ReplyDeleteSorry about that.