Posted on 01/12/2025 3:45:23 PM PST by lightman
The horror that has hit Los Angeles is something we haven’t seen since Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over that lantern in 1871. Back then, Chicago burned to the ground and roughly 300 people died. That was more than 150 years ago, things were different then, and things are very different now. There is literally zero reason for a repeat, in any respect, of what happened in Chicago, and yet we are getting just that because of the mentality of the radical progressive leftists who’ve run that city for all but 8 of the last 64 years.
The Great Chicago Fire makes sense in a weird way. Wood and brick were the building materials of choice back then, and wood burns like mad. There were no zoning laws to speak of; buildings were clustered together because “traffic” was a bunch of horses stopping for water or a poop. Go to any old town’s “historic district,” and you’ll see what I mean – it is not rare to find “roads” or alleys where you or a friend can touch buildings on both sides of the street.
When fire hit one house, it risked wiping out the block or the section of town for those very reasons. Add in the infancy and luddite nature of the fire fighting profession and technology and it was a recipe for disaster. Almost every major city around back then has some (much smaller) version of the Great Chicago Fire.
But we aren’t living 150 years ago. Los Angeles is not a densely clustered town of swinging-door saloons and rickety wooden buildings; it is heavily regulated (just try to build something there or put a pool in your own backyard, and you’ll find out how heavy-handed a government can be), and sprawling metropolis with millions upon millions of people. There is more money in the greater Los Angeles area than most countries in Africa and South America.
“Modern” is an understatement to describe LA, or at least describe how it was…how it appeared to be.
It turns out that modern Los Angeles was like so much of the entertainment industry upon which it is built: beautiful and new on the surface but rotting at its core. Recommended Elon Musk’s First DOGE Agents Arrive In DC Sarah Arnold
All the modern architecture and “smart homes” wired for the digital age were wiped out by a lack of water – something the ancient Romans mastered with a mortarless aqueduct system 2000 years ago.
California doesn’t lack for water; it lacks the will to move it to where it’s needed. Los Angeles is basically a desert. Irrigation greened it and Hollywood grew it. At a certain point, the progressive left decided to destroy it.
OK, they didn’t decide to destroy it, the natural result of their policies just do that.
Rather than put in place whatever is necessary to safeguard the lives and property of its citizens, the Democrats in California were busy congratulating themselves for the configuration of the people they hired to administer the city.
No one’s skin color, gender or sexuality has ever put out a fire. Yet, you would be hard-pressed to find a story about LA’s Fire Chief prior to the current disaster that was about anything else. She seems to have an impressive resume, but given the way no one talked about it when she got the job, it should be asked if it was the most impressive resume or just impressive enough for a gay woman to satisfy the DEI Gods.
Janisse Quiñones, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, has overseen the failure of the water supply and her incompetent leadership may well be the most responsible aspect of this disaster. She is paid three-quarters of a million dollars per year to…check DEI boxes. The ones she doesn’t personally check are what she sees as her priority in that job. “It's important to me that everything we do is with an equity lens and social justice and making sure that we right the wrongs that we've done in the past,” Quiñones said before her incompetence helped destroy the city.
Mayor Karen Bass was the first black woman to be mayor of Los Angeles. That and $7 will buy you a cup of coffee. But until her inability to do the job cost lives and tens of billions in damages, she was celebrated for existing. That’s what Democrats do – they elevate and celebrate people who exist while ignoring what they do or what they can’t do.
It’s really easy to be “historic” and congratulate yourself for the unimportance when there is nothing actually important needing to be done. But there is always feces flying toward a fan somewhere, and when they meet you damn well better have someone who knows what they’re doing at the helm, no matter what their configuration happens to be.
The best person for any job may well be a woman, a minority, someone who is gay or whatever, but if your priority is to look like a Benetton ad from the 90s rather than hire the most qualified person for a job, don’t be surprised when things don’t work out the way they should. And it’s much more than a coincidence that none of these “leaders” is remotely conservative, as any conservative would have refused to participate in press coverage about their irrelevant characteristics. Condi Rice doesn’t bill herself as the first black female Secretary of State; liberals do (through clenched teeth, if they acknowledge her at all).
There is no serious argument that Los Angeles has the best, most qualified people in the positions necessary to have prevented this disaster or to have gotten it under control quickly once it started. But they all could serve as grand marshals of various progressive interest group parades. That gets them celebrated, with glowing press coverage…and puts out exactly zero fires.
“Build Back Better” means destroying first.
He just showed up at the dance wanting his brand of fun. He's going to hang around for the after-party, too. The chaos, destruction, mayhem, and circus, will scrub the place clean down to the hard-pan dirt scorched by fire and chaos
Almost like "The Stand" conclusion. The whole region is pure concentrated evil. Most know it. Some don't.
Yup
Maui, Asheville...
Redevelopment nature’s way.
/s
Good article by a great writer....thanks.
Oprah Winfrey?
Actually, we have seen this type of fire before in Southern California, only not on such a massive scale. In November, 1961, a brushfire in Bel Air, north of UCLA destroyed more than 500 homes. I was in Germany at the time, but it made the news over there.
Following the Panorama Fire in San Bernardino in 1980 and the Painted Cave Fire in Santa Barbara in 1990, I drove through entire neighborhoods that resembled Tokyo or Berlin in 1945.
Scott Adams posted this commentary - some responses say #3 will be less of a problem but there will undeniably be a LOT of people who will be totally pissed-off at the bureaucracy and regulatory nightmare even if they have the finances and can actually get a contractor within 5 years.
I need a fact-check on my current assumptions about rebuilding after the fire:
Adams said:
1. It can take years to get anything approved in normal times in California. The backlog from the fire could push it out a decade.
2. The cost of building a custom home in California is roughly double the market value of the home when done.
3. The new home will get a property tax step-up to become unaffordable for anyone who owned the original home for a decade or more.
4. The fire risk will return once everything regrows, and insurance companies will not come back. Here I assume continued state incompetence.
5. There are not enough qualified builders to rebuild.
6. Owners would be rebuilding in the midst of unchecked and growing crime.
Tax revenues are going to plummet. Which means the city (which already does everything badly) is going to do everything much worse. I see no recovery ever. This is the new Detroit.
Too bad there is no getting rid of all the low life that now occupy the S.CA. region. It was like a big party once upon a time, and that party got crashed bad! They took the crown jewel of the U.S. reduced it to ****. Lots of people there nowadays who’d like to see the whole place fry. It’s very all very unfortunate.
THERE IS NO LOGGING IN CALIF & THE LIMBER MILLS VANISHED AFTER THE SPOTTED OWL FIASCO.
110 LUMBER MILLS NO LONGER EXIST.
Really though. Why should democrats care? They will get re-elected again and again. Even if every homeowner who lost their houses changes their vote to republican, it is a rounding error against the corruption of the ballot process in that state.
Trump is coming and with it change.
Reminds me when I worked for the state in the late 80s and early 90s during the spotted owl panic. After non stop lectures from the treehuggers that the owls ONLY lived in any particular tree that was going to cut down, people started finding their nests in street signs and one made a nest in the sign on the Kmart in Crescent City. The treehuggers went crazy and said it is proof their forests are gone and they were forced to make nests in warm protected man made structures.
And now we know... “ Oopsie, it is another own out competing them for territory.”
Nature doesn’t give a crap the feelings of some treehuggers.
bttt
This is going to be the biggest transfer of wealth the world has ever seen.
California will vacuum up all the available building materials west of the Mississippi. This will drive up inflation for us for years to come.
Can you say $50 to $80 for a sheet of plywood?
Neither does being a black lesbian qualify you to do anything.
It’s fratricide, demoncrats killing demoncrats.
Here, let me buy you some more ammunition....
BTTT
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