Posted on 01/14/2025 10:52:19 AM PST by Red Badger
As officials investigate what caused Los Angeles’ devasting fires, I know the answer. It was the homeless. The LA Fire Department reports that 54% of fires in 2023 were started by homeless. They responded to almost 14,000 fires that year alone related to homelessness!
Regardless of whether the Pacific Palisades fire was directly started by a homeless person, the extent of the destruction from the fire can be attributed to the homeless. A few months ago, a LA City Council person reported to me that she spends 80 percent of her time on LA’s homeless problem. Eighty percent! That does not leave much time to focus on the basic needs of the average tax paying LA resident, such as water, power, sanitation, safety, security, roads, sidewalks, traffic, parks, beaches, schools, firefighting and fire prevention. And when the mayor feels free to jet off to Ghana for a presidential inauguration on the other side of the globe, we cannot assume the other twenty percent of time is well spent.
In addition, the Council passed a budget for this year providing $1.3 Billion for homeless-related expenses. The same budget cut spending on the fire department by $17 million!
If the Council was focused on what it should have been, it likely would have known that the main reservoir needed to fight fires in Pacific Palisades was under repair and unavailable to provide water to fight fires in the middle of the Santa Ana winds fire season. Firefighters had access to only 3 million gallons of water which ran out on the first night of fires. The reservoir normally contains 117 million gallons of water! None was available.
According to the LA Times, the reservoir shut down in February for minor repairs to its cover. LA’s Department of Water and Power, did not even seek bids for the repair until April! It did not hire a contractor until November! It still is not repaired! Total cost of repair: $130K, about the cost of a new Mercedes.
Some city officials claim that based on the size of the fire even the reservoir would have run dry. But the fire would never have gotten so big but for the reservoir being inoperable! I have proof.
My Palisades neighborhood (Castellammare) was one of the first to be hit with fire. It turns out that it was a blessing, because firefighters had water to put out the flames. I estimate based upon my inspection that approximately 80 percent of my neighborhood’s homes were spared. But soon thereafter the water dried up, and surrounding Palisades neighborhoods lost 100 percent of their homes.
In the second largest city in America with the third most expensive homes in the wealthiest and highest taxed state in the country, there simply is no excuse for this level of destruction. Over half of the homes in the town of Pacific Palisades are estimated to have been lost. It is prima facie negligence by City leaders.
If LA simply put the ban back in place, and enforced it, the homeless problem would go away. The problem started when a court barred LA from enforcing its no camping law. But that decision was overturned last year by the U.S. Supreme Court. Yet, unlike most cities, LA has not put the ban back in place. Instead, all of LA is open for camping: sidewalks, parks, beaches, etc. There is a very limited number of designated no camping locations, such as outside a kindergarten. But even those exceptions are now being debated by the council.
Instead, the council and mayor have embarked on a plan to find permanent housing for anyone and everyone on the street, no matter where they come from. In addition to the $1.3 Billion budgeted for homeless, a new LA County sales tax for homeless housing and services will provide another estimated $1.1 Billion.
A recent study by the Westside Current found that LA has acquired 2,750 housing units (condos, apartments, or hotel rooms) at a cost of close to $1 Billion. One of the buildings purchased for $36.6 million still had an active website advertising “luxury” apartment featuring “spacious, modern elegance” and “sweeping views of LA.” The units feature balconies and a rooftop deck offering “stunning views of the Hollywood sign . . . in a great neighborhood with plenty of restaurants, shops and bars within walking distance, and just minutes from Beverly Hills.” That is double the cost of the fire department budget cut.
The plan has been in place for years but has hardly put a dent in the problem. The word is out that LA is a good place to go if you want to live outside, so more and more come.
The LA city council consists of about two thirds’ Democrats, one third Democrat Socialists of America (DSA), and zero Republicans. It uses the homeless problem as an excuse to implement its far-left agenda, which includes rent controls, tenant eviction protections, mansion taxes, free basic income, reparations, sanctuary laws, and free housing for all.
For the City’s leaders, basic services that most Angelenos care about, like firefighting, are at the bottom of their list of priorities.
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James Breslo
James Breslo is a civil rights attorney and host of the “Hidden Truth Show” podcast. He was formerly a partner at the international law firm Seyfarth Shaw and a public company president. He has appeared numerous times as a legal/political expert on Fox News and CNN.
BIGOT. HOMOPHOBE. RACIST. TRANSPHOBE. HOMELESSPHOBE. ISLAMAPHOB. RREEEEEEEEEE
We all know it is the bad orangeman’s fault and global warming. I’ll even go so far as to blame the same weather machine that Dick Cheney and GW Bush used to steer hurricane Katrina in to New Orleans. Any criticism of the brilliant hard working supremely qualified leaders of California and Los Angeles is misinformation...
/s
Good point. The fire supposedly happen near a well known hiking trail at 10:15 AM. A week before an 8 acre fire was put out during the early morning hours of new year's day. The fire was close enough to a residential area or access road that fire fighting crews eventually got a hose on the fire after big time water drops by helicopters. I am leaning towards a home owner in the area shot off some larger fireworks on the 1st of Jan. The fire smoldered after being put out but reignited after the winds picked up bigly. Time will tell...
“Do homeless cook with open flames etc?”
Yes, of course, they do anything they want.
lots of speculation, somebody did something... I think it’s a stretch to say there was embers from a week before, I know they would have made sure there were no hot spots before they left. Thisis NOT the type of neighborhood you walk in either, every street is a steep hill, if there were any houses left, somebody would have cars on their ring cameras. Palisades dr is the only way in or out all the way to sunset.
I was just checking the map of burned homes, looks like No houses in the Highlands burned, It had to start at the south end of Piedra Morada and I have customers on that street, actually all over the palisades, probably lost 200 customers from this. A whole lot of these people have second and third homes though.
Ditto that. I am a flat lander that spent some time in coastal LA. It is a real chore to haul your ass up steep roadways let alone hiking trials. If there aren't any reports of constant break-ins, I think it safe to rule out homeless encampments.
I consider the term deceptive, because it implies these people would have some idea of how to live in a home if they had one. My son has had to deal with them in law enforcement and discovered that mental illness and drugs has caused many to descend into such a feral state that anything resembling our homes would be inappropriate.
This could be a repeat of the Oakland Hills fire. The fire reignited a day later and torched parts of Oakland. I’ve seen a few articles that suggest ignition days later are possible. If the fire gets hot enough, the fire may work it’s way in to the roots of plants and the surrounding soil.
Doesnt matter. All one has to do is get over grass or whatever when its that dry and the heat from even the exaust pipe or engine will ignite a fire.
That is why they tell people when lower levels of fire caution is in effect to NOT, park in grassy/trashy areas.
Havent heard.
Were those areas closed off to any and all recreational activities?
If not. Then thats another serious failure. Nobody, and i mean NOBODY, should have been allowed on ANY trails around there. Only authorized people should have been allowed. And those MUST, carry required hand fire fighting tools...such as water pump packs, etc.
On the weather channel the fires were blamed on ....”CLIMATE CHANGE, CLIMATE CHANGE! CLIMATE CHANGE!” like two parrots repeating it over and over again.
Ok, so what i understand is that the trails were still open for at least hikers. Which is an absolute failure in level 5 fire classification.
When fire risk is at even level 4, restrictions are in place. Like no smoking outside, nothing that might cause even an accidental fire, etc.
Level 5 is extreme fire conditions. The whole thing gets shut down. Nothing is allowed and even authorized vehicles are really cringed upon.
No hiking, no smoking even sometimes within vehicles driving even outside of the forest boundries. Sometimes they even shut down blacktop county roads through forests. No horse riding, nothing is allowed.
So, this was a complete and utter failure by the authorities if they allowed human access during a level 5 extreme fire condition.
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