My wife wanted me to ask this so here goes.....how come THEIR homes survived?
They’re special, don’cha know.
Probably mostly luck. However, these guys have enough money to have done preventative measures like private water reservoirs and stuff.
That’s what I’d like to know!
Here is the big tragedy of this event. Almost every home in this area has a swimming pool filled with water- usually a pretty big one.
A very high volume gasoline powered water pump that uses a fire hose sized hose called a trash pump costs about $500 -$1000 at harbor freight.
I bought one to empty a flooded retention pit about 20 ft wide by 40 feet long and 2.5 feet deep. This is less water than your typical pool.
The water flow was similar to a fire hose in volume and it took over 12 hours to drain the water out of the retention pit.
If every home in Palisades had went to Harbor Freight and bought one of these pumps with a couple hundred feet of hose and used their pool water to wet their house and fight any fire early there is a good chance the wild fire never would have gotten out of control in that area.
Have a few friends who live in Palisades and I did a real hard sell to convince them to buy the pumps for their pools after a family member narrowly escaped being burned to death in the last series of wild fires in the LA hills and Santa Barbara.
Heck, I even offered to buy the pumps for them they were so cheap.
No takers. They thought I was kind of crazy. Should have bought them a few anyway.
Kind of heartbroken on this one.
Probably better building materials and fire suppression systems.
Being rich means you can spend more to build and maintain your homes.
Did they have blue roofs?