What caused the wildfires in California?

[msc545]

I live here in California very close to where the fires were. They came extremely close to burning down my house. Luckily for me we have literally the world's best firefighters and they didn't let that happen.

The consensus of opinion is that the fires were caused by climate change. This keeps happening and has happened for many years and aside from mitigating climate change there isn't much we can do about it. The winds here are just vicious and in the last couple of days we're blowing in excess of 70 mph. Contrary to what you might have heard, we have plenty of water and plenty of fire equipment and everything we need except calm air. So you can take the word of scientists for it and decide that most likely it is due to climate change and also possibly due to our utility company not maintaining their power lines properly as usual. They keep getting in trouble for this and they keep not fixing it. Or you can take Trump's word for it since he's such a great scientist. And he will tell you that it's because all the leftists that live here kept the firefighters from fighting the fire and cut off the water because they did and a bunch of other bullshit.

If you believe Trump and the MAGA assholes about this I think you are pretty much beyond help. My sympathies.

Updates

1 y

Also, another user here provided a very detailed description of the use of water towers to keep hydrants running. They are large structures that are not obvious, but he was able, using Google Maps, to locate two of them in Pacific Palisades, the location of the worst fire. These things keep a large quantity of water in storage and feed the system using gravity, but - they are not sufficient when there are many fires and high water usage, which is exactly what happened here.

Updates

1 y

The shortage of water has never occurred before, and it is a problem with an old system design that got overwhelmed, and NOT with policy or left-wing politics or any of the other bullshit Trump and MAGA are whining about. Leave to the right to try to lie to gain advantage.

Do they think we cannot or won't call them out on this crap?

[Anonymous]

Okay so, here is the deal about the wildfires…

There was an extreme wind warning and people with common sense wouldn’t light a backyard fire during the weather warning period… Right? Yeah, a moron lit the fire in their backyard and it went out of control due to the winds. Now the winds are currently picking up again and spreading the wildfires outward…. It is terrifying, like Google the images of this devastating shit going on.

Now, the extreme winds and dry areas (due to drought / less rain) is a direct cause from greenhouse gas emissions, though just leaving it there would be misleading since clearly lighting backyard fires during a f*cking extreme wind warning is a direct impact of a dumbass not using his/her brain cells well…

This is a time of crisis and I believe that insurance companies, corporate entities, swindlers, conmen, and bastards will utilize this crisis to stoke the flames of fear & sadness & stress & anxiety to make a quick buck at the victims’ expense and of course their wallets too. There will be people utilizing those fears to get engagement online which will put families affected in jeopardy not knowing who to trust which is disgusting.

This is as much as I know about the situation and it is terrible people lost so much from this…. Stay safe & prayers to all affected & God Bless America and God Bless You!

[Opinion Owner]

- Correction : It was actually burning debris and fireworks that caused the fires… Makes sense given the whole New Years Day celebrations, though the fire didn’t break out until January 7th since that is when the winds picked up allowing for the remaining residue to spark this out of control mess.

[msc545]

Debris and fireworks do not burn for 7 days. We now think it was live power lines downed by the wind. That has happened many times before.

[Opinion Owner]

Yeah makes more sense, though I did think that firework & other debris set it off not like “burned several days”, more like… The winds ignited the dry forest bed covered with some debris / firework residue to start it off sort of thing… Though the downed live powerlines by the wind do make a lot of sense. I guess I’ll wait until we have the exact reason, or maybe it was a combination of things. It is really sad to see these wildfires still being carried by the wind, Jesus Christ it is Hell out there.

[msc545]

Yes it is hell. I live very close to it.

[Opinion Owner]

I’m sorry, I send my prayers to your family & friends & loved ones & neighbors and you. It is terrible, stay safe ❤️🙏🏻

[msc545]

Sorry to nitpick but winds alone do not cause fires, but downed powerlines do. Not much else does except arsonists and lightning, and that has not been ruled out.

[msc545]

Thank you very much! For now we are ok and God willing we will continue to be.

[Opinion Owner]

@msc545 understood, and I’m sure God willing you’re in good hands man!

[Sevenpointfive]

just watch a few minutes

https://www.youtube.com/embed/yqD-CTi-jT0

Can I have 20 minutes of your time to explain the L. A. fires?

[Sevenpointfive]

100 mph winds? ok. i'll get on board. but that would require a big tornado. there wouldn't be fires until it left. it's just a nonsensical explanation to a public that is uneducated.

[msc545]

I stood in those winds 2 days ago.

[Sevenpointfive]

did they knock you over?

[msc545]

No, but it took a bit of effort to stay upright. I wound up hanging onto a lamppost.

[Anonymous]

The arson investigators will look into the cause of each fire. There was six the first day.

[Opinion Owner]

www.msn.com/.../ar-AA1xfGQH

[Opinion Owner]

With the predicted winds before the event (100mph) these towers should have been cut off beforehand.

[exitseven]

The problem is that the people in California believe that climate change is real and want to shut down all the fossil fuel powered electrical plants and replace them with windmills while other countries are burning coal like there is no tomorrow.

Then despite all the warnings about forest management and the premise that water is needed incase of fire the people in charge are more concerned about DEI and virtue signaling.

Incredibly enough these same people will be re-elected and nothing will ever change/

[RavVid]

I'm glad you, family and home are all uncharred. The videos I have seen are cataclysmic. Life is very vulnerable at times.

California is affected by elnino/la nina is it not? We get drought in el nino and rain in la nina. I think it is in reverse for you guys. Maybe this years la nina a factor?

[msc545]

It is difficult to know but you may very well be right.

[RavVid]

On our side of the pacific it is certainly true. El Nino = hot dry and bush fires. La Nina's are good years for us. I am listening to thunder as I type and it is January for gawds sake.

Very concerned for the people in this. A country town I have a strong association with was wiped off the map. The fire was travelling 100 MPH so nobody could drive out of it. All they could do was go down to the football field and let the fire go over the top of them.

But from what I am seeing on video your fires are a 100 times worse. Tears me up.

[msc545]

thanks, brother. We are still ok for now...

[RavVid]

Trust you remain safe.

[DrPepper12]

Trump is a world class expert on self-proctology and nothing else. He is literally less intelligent than a 5th grader based on speech and less than that based on obsevation. Truly a Darwin Award winner that has been protected by daddy, money & privilege.

[DrPepper12]

Glad you're ok and I hope these MAGAs morons in Congress vote for aid ASAP without politics.

[NathanDavis]

nature did... nature just being nature

and then there's us, always building our houses in regions and zones in which nature likes to be... nature

how did it start... it's anybody's guess, but how did they spread so "wildly" well that's the same way they always do... dry enough vegetation and the winds and gusts that always show up from time to time, lol

[ProbablyClueless]

As with everything else, I reserve my judgement and opinion until I have more information. My buddy's parents' houses were in the Palisades and he lives near Topanga and Mulholland. According to him, the stories about the fire hydrants were totally true.

You say the fire hydrants all worked.

Not sure what to believe.

[msc545]

I actually don't think that the hydrants all worked at all. I'm not sure what caused that but even our fire chief was complaining about that.

[ProbablyClueless]

Certainly begs the question... A similar situation happened in La Hina, in Maui. With the location of this fire, are they considering the possibility of arson? Like some environmental activist going crazy?

[Syntosi]

What happened with the fire hydrants is that they are supplied by large water towers which is how they can deliver so much water at such high pressure. After such a long time fighting such a big fire they had managed to empty the water towers. The fact that there was a period of time when the aircraft was grounded meant that the fire fighters had to use the hydrants even more so this came earlier than anticipated.

There are still more than enough water in the system but its not pressurized enough to be used in the fire hydrants so until they can slowly refill the towers they will have a limited amount of pressurized water available. There are some measures to get around this such as filling up fire trucks with water from the normal lines but at the end of the day this is a limitation on the current technology we have.

The amount of water towers were designed to fight a certain level of fire. If you are unlucky and get a worse one, or if climate change happens and fires in general become harder to deal with then it is going to exceed the capacity of the system. You can of course build more water towers to save up more pressurized water but they will also be drained given a big enough fire so its not a "solution" as such.

[msc545]

It probably wasn't arson but it very likely was down to power lines because of the wind. We've had a lot of trouble with that before because the company that owns these power lines refuses to maintain them properly because it supposedly would cost them too much money. We have laws about this obviously, but the power company historically has simply ignored the law.

[ProbablyClueless]

Gotcha gotcha... That's the thing about laws; you can have any and every law on the books that you want, but it doesn't make a bit of difference if people don't care to follow them.

[msc545]

Ok I have more information - it is not that the hydrants didn't work - they just were out of water as a result of overuse due to too many fires. Water is not unlimited here.

[Syntosi]

@msc545
No that is incorrect. There was still water available but as I said earlier the normal water is not high enough pressure to be used in fire fighting so they use gravity within large water towers to provide that. Once the water towers are empty you need to refill them to build up the pressure again.

The difference is basically between a garden hose and a fire hose. Does not really matter how much water your garden hose has, its not going to be super useful in fighting fires without the volume and pressure of a fire hose.

[msc545]

@Syntosi Ok, so the effect will be the same - little or no water flow. I do not know of any large towers that might serve the purpose you are describing...

[Syntosi]

If you are interesting in some more specifics I can sure provide that.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Ana_Water_Tower

Here is an example of how they might look although this is a fairly old design. These towers can provide pressurized water to locations that are lower than it.

In the Palisades region the fire could only be fought by water that is provided by 3 of these 1 million gallon tanks because the rest of the system is at a lower elevation. After fighting the fire for 15 hours. More specifically the first tower was depleted at 4.45pm on Tuesday, the 2nd one at 8.30pm and the third at 3am Wednesday.

The effect of running out of the waters inside these water towers might be the same as running out of water, the problem is that the solution is not to import more water like Trump suggested or whatever. California had plenty of water all over the place, just not in these 3 towers.

You could of course build more of these water towers in that area but that would just give you a few more hours before the water ran out again. This is a technological limitation in our infrastructure rather than a resource limitation.

[ProbablyClueless]

@Syntosi This is very interesting! Thank you for sharing what you know.

[msc545]

@Syntosi That is very interesting - thank you! Do you happen to know the actual location (s) of the water towers serving Palisades? I ask because Santa Ana is a very long way from Palisades...

[Syntosi]

I am not entirely sure but I think I can see two of them on google maps:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/PMPn8tyw3mrR4P2MA
https://maps.app.goo.gl/yE57i3W9EJYckV227

Nothing much to look at since modern water towers mostly just looks like decently large round buildings. This would be what I expect them to look like but I can't guarantee that they are indeed water towers or even the ones that ran dry since I dont know how the network is set up.

[msc545]

I think those might be those. Thank you very much for finding these. This is an impressive logic chain from beginning to end right here in Pacific Palisades.

[Agape93]

Droughts, bad water management

[pinkCadillac2]

Arson

[Ifdyourmom]

Drought/mother nature

[msc545]

I don't think it was the drought so much as we really haven't had that much. Drought, in the last year I think it had more to do with the Santa Ana winds, which can turn even a very small fire into an inferno really quickly. I also think that utility companies that don't maintain their power lines have a lot to do with starting these fires.

[Ifdyourmom]

I guarantee you, it's drought

[msc545]

I live here where the fires started and where they burned. I think I would know if there was a drought or not. Where do you live?