#Department of Forestry and Fire Protection

[mariacallous]

The giant fires that are scouring Los Angeles have officially become the most destructive in the city’s history, killing at least six people and destroying at least 5,000 buildings. But as the winds driving the inferno have slackened, experts are cautiously optimistic that the blazes can soon be beaten back.

With reinforcements from other states, California firefighters have shifted from defense to offense. Rather than just saving individual buildings, they are now trying to stop the overall advance of the flames.

“Tuesday and Wednesday our priority was saving lives and protecting as much property as possible,” says LA Fire Department spokesperson Margaret Stewart. “Now that we’re able to operate at our full capacity, we’re able to have a more powerful assault.”

In a two-pronged attack, aircraft have ramped up dousing the fires from the air while firefighters and bulldozers starve them of fuel on the ground. At times earlier in the week, planes had to be grounded because of the severity of the wind.

“I would say [the tide] is turning,” says Ken Pimlott, former director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. “Today and tomorrow are really the key windows to get through, the red flag fire weather conditions. Then I think we’ll start to see much more progress.”

Massive fires began clawing through the Los Angeles metropolitan area on Tuesday thanks to a combination of long-standing drought and a bout of strong Santa Ana winds, seasonal air that blows from the high desert of Nevada and Utah into Southern California.

The Palisades Fire east of Malibu, which has burned almost 20,000 acres, was 0 percent contained on Thursday. Celebrities like Billy Crystal and Paris Hilton were among the many people who had lost their homes. The Eaton Fire in Pasadena, roughly 25 miles to the east, was also uncontained, but the fire department has been able to slow its growth. The Sunset Fire that started in the Hollywood Hills on Wednesday was quickly hemmed in, and two others are partially contained.

“The only fire that has that potential [to grow] is Palisades, and we have 1,100 people on that,” Stewart says.

The key factor has been the winds of up to 99 miles per hour. They’ve been raking down from the northeast to the southwest, fanning the flames and throwing burning embers half a mile in front of the main fire. Canyons running largely the same direction have funneled and intensified that movement of air, creating what Pimlott called a “blowtorch” that spread the Palisades Fire. The flames have been essentially unstoppable.

“These pressurized winds literally explode out of these canyons,” says Janet Upton, former deputy director of Cal Fire. “All you can do is work to get anything with a heartbeat out of the way.”

But the winds began easing up on Wednesday and Thursday. They were anticipated to reach 15 to 20 miles per hour Thursday afternoon, before ticking up to 30 to 40 miles per hour on Friday, according to the National Weather Service. Firefighters that were helpless against virtually unstoppable wind-driven blazes have been able to return to their normal tactics.

“With those winds being very calm this morning, I believe we can actually make some progress, turn a corner, and start to build some containment on these fires,” Brent Pascua, a Cal Fire battalion chief, told The Today Show on Thursday.

So far the disaster response has been marred by disinformation and controversy. After some fire hydrants ran dry, president-elect Donald Trump baselessly accused California governor Gavin Newsom of mismanaging the state’s water supplies to save an endangered fish.

City employees have now been able to reach three water tanks on hills near the Palisades Fire to turn up the pressure. That allows the tanks to be refilled more quickly so they can keep supplying the hydrants, Stewart says. Each tank can hold 1 million gallons. “We have full flowing hydrants,” she says.

More firefighters have begun to arrive from Utah, Oregon, Arizona, Washington, and New Mexico. Several dozen task forces are on their way, according to Stewart, each with five fire engines plus a command vehicle.

Aircraft began flying again on Wednesday. Twelve helicopters are filling humongous water buckets hanging from cables and sucking seawater up through snorkels. Six planes are also working the fires, including a pair of “super scoop” aircraft that have been skimming across the surface of the Pacific to pick up water. The helicopters and scoop planes dump water on spot fires, letting firefighters close in and extinguish them.

Meanwhile, other airplanes are dropping fire retardant out ahead of the inferno, coating potential fuel with a layer of nonflammable chemicals and slowing its advance. A C-130 cargo plane that Cal Fire acquired from the Coast Guard and retrofitted this summer can dump 4,000 gallons of retardant. That buys time for firefighters to dig and bulldoze firebreaks of bare soil.

With the ocean constraining the Palisades Fire to the south, responders will try to prevent it from breaking out to the east or west. “The real spread is going to be on the flank,” Pimlott says.

A red flag warning for increased fire risk will remain through Friday, with humidity at only 8–12 percent. California has been suffering an abnormally dry winter, with 40 percent of the state under drought conditions.

“Fuels remain critically dry,” James Magana of Cal Fire said at a Thursday morning briefing. “You can expect to see critical rates of spread, especially on those ridgetops or those drainages that are in alignment with the wind.”

On Saturday, the winds are expected to reverse direction. If firefighters aren’t ready, the heel of the fire could become the front and run off to the north.

Even once they’re able to contain the conflagration within a circle of firebreaks and natural barriers, that won’t be the end of the task. Firefighters will have to stamp out smaller fires within that footprint.

“That’s a critical stage, to mop up these hot spots or anything that could rekindle if the winds were to increase again,” Upton says.

Moving forward, the city will need to clean up debris, restore utilities, and analyze damage to the environment before allowing people to move back. With canyons depleted of the trees and vegetation that hold the soil, mudslides could become a threat once the rains return.

Los Angeles will face the prospect of rebuilding destroyed communities. That’s an opportunity to make them less vulnerable to the next fire, says Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension.

Although houses are in many cases required to be built with fire-resistant materials, California law doesn’t say anything about how they should be laid out. Techniques like clustering homes rather than spreading them out among the trees can make them easier to defend from fire, and easier to evacuate, he says.

“That is part of the hope here, that we can do some of this better, smarter, and safer,” Moritz says.

[vintagecamping]

Yours In Trust, We Must Protect It From Fire

Fire prevention poster, Maryland State Department of Forestry

1939

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from The Revelator:

Extirpated from the United States a century ago and almost unknown until the mid-1990s, this endangered species can make a comeback if we give it a small boost. New technology for tracking has allowed an assessment and intervention that may help these birds hold on in several critical areas.

Species name:

Thick-billed parrot (Rhynchopsitta pachyrhyncha)

Description:

A typical parrot-green, mid-sized bird weighing 14-17 ounces (400-500 grams) with a distinctive wine-red mask. In flight, a distinctive yellow band is visible under the wings. Their raucous calls sound like laughter in the middle of the forest.

Where They’re Found:

Thick-billed parrots live mostly in Mexico’s Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range. They were presumably once abundant representatives of high-altitude pine forests, where they persist to this day in much smaller numbers due to the destruction of most old-growth forests and the reduction of mature forests. The species is only present in a small number of zones with adequate conditions for nesting, where they’re mostly under protection or good forest management.

IUCN Red List status:

Considered “endangered” in the most recent 2020 assessment, mainly due to habitat loss and an apparent constant decline. The first comprehensive population estimate will be conducted this fall. The parrot will be one of the first bird species to undergo the IUCN’s new Green Status Assessment, which measures the recovery of species populations and their conservation success.

Major Threats:

The extirpation of thick-billed parrots in the northern part of their range is believed to have been caused by hunting or shooting the parrots for “sport” or food. In the Sierra Madre Occidental of Mexico, where the core populations and range have been holding on, massive land-use change — particularly forestry practices to harvest all old-growth and large trees and remove snags that serve as nesting trees — resulted in precipitous decline over the past century, up until very recently. 

From the 1970s to the 1990s, demand by collectors and the pet trade became an additional threat that has since largely disappeared or represents minimal pressure on the species.

Notable Conservation Programs or Legal Protections:

For 30 years a small group of individuals and institutions have been doing research and developing a suite of techniques for thick-billed parrots, not only for research but also to enhance population growth by mitigating or eliminating factors that increase mortality and reduce productivity.

Most of the work during this time, which provided valuable information and insights, was done at a “pilot scale” and with meager resources. As a result we were basically frustrated witnesses to a species’ decline and potential demise.

Fortunately the species is currently the focus of a comprehensive binational effort of community-based conservation to change the trajectory of decline. The field team is led by Organización Vida Silvestre (OVIS) and supported notably by San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, the Arizona Game and Fish Department, World Parrot Trust, and additional supporters and donors.

Over the next five years (2024-2028) we will implement the full suite of actions, including intensive nest monitoring and management, parasite control on an ad-hoc basis, food supplementation to chicks in select clutches to prevent emaciation, an enhanced nesting box program, fire pre-suppression activities, incentives to local communities, community-based monitoring and nest protection, greater understanding of landscape level need of the thick-billed parrot, and amplifying the telemetry information to include not only long distance movements but also daily activities to food, water and clay licks.

[darkmaga-returns]

1. Update on the currently active fires, as of early Wednesday evening, from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection:

Palisades Fire - 0% contained Eaton Fire - 0% contained Hurst Fire - 0% contained Lidia Fire - 0% contained Woodley Fire - 0% contained Olivas Fire - 0 % contained (Sources: weather.com, fire.ca.gov)

2. The New York Times:

A new wildfire broke out on Wednesday evening in the Hollywood Hills, an area of central Los Angeles indelibly associated with the American film industry, as emergency crews struggled against several other devastating blazes that were raging out of control and forcing desperate evacuations. Even though wildfires are a fact of life in the hills of Southern California, the experience of watching one encroach upon a metropolitan area left residents deeply unsettled and afraid. The 60-acre Sunset fire, burning among the hiking trails and secluded mansions of the Hollywood Hills, was zero percent contained as of 9 p.m. local time. (Source: nytimes.com)

3. Before it’s uninhabitable, it’s uninsurable. Wednesday’s firestorm in a wealthy area of Los Angeles could be the final straw that breaks California’s insurance market. The state’s insurance market has been teetering on the edge of insolvency for years thanks to catastrophic wildfires that have driven many insurers to stop writing new policies and drop existing ones. Wednesday’s wind-driven wildfires in a part of Los Angeles packed with multimillion-dollar homes could accelerate its collapse. (Source: politico.com)

[bekolxeram]

I hate to break it to you, but the pilot in 2x14 is NOT Tommy.

The good old timeline problem

Plenty of pilots hold both licenses for helicopters AND airplanes, it's not impossible to fly both categories of aircraft on a job either. The thing is, helicopters and fixed-wing airplanes generate lift differently, so naturally logged flight hours on one category is not transferable to the other, you have to accumulate them separately. For Tommy to serve in the army, work as an active firefighter since 2005, and build up enough flight hours on both helicopters and multi-engine fixed-wing aircrafts, he would have to live in the sky.

2. LAFD does not own any fixed-wing aircraft, nor does it make sense to have one

The LAFD serves the city of Los Angeles, which is mostly urban, for the more suburban or rural area around LA you have the LA County Fire Department. Green areas within the city of LA are not big enough to warrant a whole air tanker, a fleet of 7 helicopters would suffice. LA has plenty of water source nearby, even if a catastrophic wildfire happens within its city limit, the choppers can simply go back and forth scooping up water and dropping it.

Helicopters are definitely better suited for urban areas, because they can fly straight up and down, they can hover and they only require a space big enough for the aircraft itself to take off/land, while a fixed-wing aircraft needs a whole runway.

Waterbombing in an urban area is also dangerous. The water or fire retardant dropped from an aerial firefighting aircraft is actually quite heavy, and it can cause damage to ground properties, let alone serious injuries or even death to ground personnel.

Fixed-wing aircrafts create lift by flying forward through the air, so precision is not of the essence. Helicopters on the other hand, create lift by the motion of the blades, so they can move in any direction until they get an exact aim at their target.

3. The plane is canonically not from the LAFD

Neither the LAFD nor the LACoFD own any fixed-wing aircraft, the closest department to operate such aircraft is the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, aka CAL FIRE. If you go back to the episode, you can hear the news reporter saying the C-130 is with CAL FIRE just before Chimney turns off the TV.

The LAFD and LACoFD do work with CAL FIRE when there's a major wildfire, so Tommy probably just asked his colleagues at the 217 or called up himself pilots at CAL FIRE to ask for a favor.

In that episode. Chimney asks specifically for the help of the 217 through Tommy, and Eddie receives radio communication just before the plane arrives that "217 is inbound", so it's safe to say the 217 IS where the LAFD AIr Operations are based at. Despite recent confusion on Tommy and Buck's career timeline (5 years vs 7 years), 217 IS harbor station, at least according to previous lore.

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

"from 2021: inside California's Pine Grove Youth Conservation Camp, the last “fire camp” where incarcerated teenagers and young men — 95% of whom are Black, Latinx, or Filipino — earn between $2.20 and $4 per hr (and an additional $1/hr when they’re actively fighting fires) by teenvogue"

hey thanks for the rec!!! https://www.teenvogue.com/story/wildfire-camp-incarcerated-teens

" Chuy Hernandez turned 18 when he was at Pine Grove Youth Conservation Camp (PGYCC), the only remaining “fire camp” for incarcerated youth in California. He’d spent the previous six months working with the kitchen crew, until he was legally old enough to work as a wildland firefighter.  In the weeks leading up to his 18th birthday, Hernandez began the rigorous training process required to make it on a fire hand crew. There were hours of hiking and fitness conditioning, classroom lessons taught by a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) captain, and a series of tests on various firefighting skills. By the time Hernandez was of legal age, he had undergone the same kind of training as a seasonal, entry-level California firefighter at a firefighting academy. When Hernandez was released three years later, he had become first man on his hand crew and racked up significant on-the-job experience. But Hernandez struggled to find a full-time job as a firefighter, despite California’s serious shortage of firefighters in recent years. The closest he’s gotten to professional fire work since leaving Pine Grove five years ago is on a hand crew with the California Conservation Corps, an organization that hires young people, including previously incarcerated firefighters, for a year to “work on environmental projects and respond to natural and manmade disasters.” Their motto: “Hard work, low pay, miserable conditions, and more!” 

"

mod ali

[beardedmrbean]

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California and Nevada voters will decide in November whether to ban forced prison labor by removing language from their state constitutions rooted in the legacy of chattel slavery.

The measures aim to protect incarcerated people from being forced to work under the threat of punishment in the states, where it is not uncommon for prisoners to be paid less than $1 an hour to fight fires, clean prison cells, make license plates or do yard work at cemeteries.

Nevada incarcerates about 10,000 people. All prisoners in the state are required to work or be in vocational training for 40 hours each week, unless they have a medical exemption. Some of them make as little as 35 cents hourly.

Voters will weigh the proposals during one of the most historic elections in modern history, said Jamilia Land, an advocate with the Abolish Slavery National Network who has spent years trying to get the California measure passed.

“California, as well as Nevada, has an opportunity to end legalized, constitutional slavery within our states, in its entirety, while at the same time we have the first Black woman running for president,” she said of Vice President Kamala Harris’ historic bid as the first Black and Asian American woman to earn a major party’s nomination for the nation’s highest office.

Several other states such as Colorado, Alabama and Tennessee have in recent years done away with exceptions for slavery and involuntary servitude, though the changes were not immediate. In Colorado — the first state to get rid of an exception for slavery from its constitution in 2018 — incarcerated people alleged in a lawsuit filed in 2022 against the corrections department that they had still been forced to work.

“What it did do — it created a constitutional right for a whole class of people that didn’t previously exist,” said Kamau Allen, a co-founder of the Abolish Slavery National Network who advocated for the Colorado measure.

Nevada's proposal aims to abolish from the constitution both slavery and involuntary servitude as punishment for crime. California’s constitution was changed in the 1970s to remove an exemption for slavery, but the involuntary servitude exception remains on the books.

Wildland firefighting is among the most sought-after prison work programs in Nevada. Those eligible for the program are paid around $24 per day.

“There are a lot of people who are incarcerated that want to do meaningful work. Now are they treated fairly? No,” said Chris Peterson, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, which supports the measure. “They’re getting paid pennies on the hour, where other people get paid dollars, to do incredibly dangerous work.”

Peterson pointed to a state law that created a modified workers’ compensation program for incarcerated people who are injured on the job. Under that program, the amount awarded is based on the person’s average monthly wage when the injury occurred.

In 2016, Darrell White, an injured prison firefighter who filed a claim under the modified program, learned he would receive a monthly disability payment of “$22.30 for a daily rate of $0.50.” By then, White already had been freed from prison, but he was left unable to work for months while he recovered from surgery to repair his fractured finger, which required physical therapy.

White sued the state prison system and Division of Forestry, saying his disability payments should have been calculated based on the state’s minimum wage of $7.25 at the time. The case went all the way up to the Nevada Supreme Court, which rejected his appeal, saying it remained an “open question” whether Nevada prisoners were constitutionally entitled to minimum wage compensation.

“It should be obvious that it is patently unfair to pay Mr. White $0.50 per day,” his lawyer, Travis Barrick, wrote in the appeal, adding that White's needs while incarcerated were minimal compared to his needs after his release, including housing and utilities, food and transportation. “It is inconceivable that he could meet these needs on $0.50 per day.”

The California state Senate rejected a previous version of the proposal in 2022 after Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration cited concerns about the cost if the state had to start paying all prisoners the minimum wage.

Newsom signed a law earlier this year that would require the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to create a voluntary work program. The agency would set wages for people incarcerated in state prisons under the law. But the law would only take effect if voters approve the forced labor ban.

The law and accompanying measure will give incarcerated people more of an opportunity for rehabilitation through therapy or education instead of being forced to work, said California Assemblymember Lori Wilson, a Democrat representing Solano County who authored this year's proposal.

Wilson suffered from trauma growing up in a household with dysfunction and abuse, she said. She was able to work through her trauma by going to therapy. But her brother, who did not get the same help, instead ended up in prison, she said.

“It's just a tale of two stories of what happens when someone who has been traumatized, has anger issues and gets the rehabilitative work that they need to — what they could do with their life,” Wilson said.

Yannick Ortega, a formerly incarcerated woman who now works at an addiction recovery center in Fresno, California, was forced to work various jobs during the first half of her time serving 20 years in prison for a murder conviction, she said.

“When you are sentenced to prison, that is the punishment,” said Ortega, who later became a certified paralegal and substance abuse counselor by pursuing her education while working in prison. “You’re away from having the freedom to do anything on your own accord.”

[follow-up-news]

So far in this year’s California’s wildfire season, about 20 times more acres of land have burned than around this time last year. Since the beginning of the year, there were more than 3,500 wildfires across the state through early July, causing about 207,000 acres of land to burn. Around this time last year, about 10,000 acres had burned. The five-year average of acres burned through mid-July is about 39,000, Cal Fire said last week. “We are not just in a fire season, but we are in a fire year,” Joe Tyler, director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire), said at a news conferenceearlier in July.

[lucids]

Prisoners are helping to fight the California fires.

This is volunteer work and not mandatory.

Scroll to end of post for pics of female and male inmates fighting fires.

"More than 900 prisoners are battling the deadly flames ripping through the Los Angeles area. Their presence provides much-needed manpower to depleted fire crews but has also revived criticism of the practice, including over their low pay for dangerous work."

"102 female inmates are fighting on the front lines."

Thousands of inmates are used to fight fires. And yet they do not get any recognition.

Depending on the prison camp, inmates get zero pay, $1 to $2 a day, a day or two days taken off their prison sentence, some inmates may get a generous $1 an hour while fighting fires, but that is rare.

Can you believe the payment for fighting fires is better than some of the other jobs inmates get paid to do, very sad.

And after they are released, the smoke inhalation and other medical issues that come with firefighting, they live with those conditions for the rest of their life, which can shorten their life span.

Other USA states send their prisoners to California and other areas to help fight fires.

-

Many of the people fighting the California fires are in prison. Please remember them. People go to prison for all sorts of reason, most prison firefighters go on the front lines without the proper protection, yet after they served their time they are not allowed to become firefighters.

Update: California Governor recently lifted restrictions of inmates officially becoming firefighters after they serve their prison time. Jan 2025. Not sure if this only pertains to the current inmates fighting this particular fires or all inmates skilled at fighting fires.

-

Please make sure the prisoners fighting fires are fed and safe. California is the number one area in the world which uses prisoners to fight fires, they even ship them to other areas of the world such as Australia to help fight fires. Please remember them.

They make amends by volunteering. Everyone deserves a chance. Most people in USA jail are serving petty crimes. USA is harsher on POC prisoners giving them longer sentences for misdemeanors. Choosing to fight fires for zero pay to $1 per fire is not mandatory. Remember them.

-

"In California's wildland State Responsibility Areas, people cause over 95% of fires & CDF's workforce responds to over 7,500 wildfire incidents each year. Adequate fire protection must be provided if the resource values of these lands are to be maintained now & in the future."

-

Article:

Hundreds of California prisoners are fighting the LA fires, with some earning little more than $1 an hour

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hundreds-california-prisoners-fighting-la-125314749.html

Hundreds of prisoners are helping to battle the wildfires in the Los Angeles area.

Incarcerated firefighters earn $26.90 to $34 for each 24-hour shift.

It's far below California's minimum wage of $16.50 an hour.

Hundreds of Californian prisoners have been deployed to help battle the fires raging across the Los Angeles area, with some working 24-hour shifts for as little as $26.90, or just over $1 an hour.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation told The Guardian that it had deployed 395 incarcerated individuals to help battle the blazes.

The inmate firefighters, who have "minimum custody" status, have been embedded with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which has deployed thousands of firefighters to the area.

The CDCR, jointly with Cal Fire and the Los Angeles County Fire Department, runs 35 "fire camps" across 25 California counties. The camps are considered minimum-security facilities. Participation is voluntary, with inmates using hand tools to aid in fire suppression and other emergency responses.

New technology for wildfire detection is being used alongside legacy machinery to monitor and battle the flames.

California, which is grappling with longer and more destructive fire seasons amid the climate crisis, has long relied on incarcerated people for its response. In fact, the CDCR crews have, at times, accounted for as much as 30% of the state's wildfire force.

According to the CDCR, fire crew members earn between $5.80 and $10.24 a day, depending on their skill level, with an additional $1 per hour for active emergency assignments.

Crews can work 24-hour shifts during emergencies, followed by 24 hours of rest, it said, with the lowest-skilled firefighters earning $26.90 and the highest-skilled maxing out at about $34.

For context, California's minimum wage is $16.50 per hour, with some areas, such as West Hollywood, offering higher minimum wages.

In California, inmates are not guaranteed the state's minimum wage, and some earn as little as 16 cents per hour.

The $10.24 basic rate for the highest-skilled incarcerated firefighters ranks among the best daily rate for incarcerated people in the state.

In addition to pay, fire crews helping out during emergencies like this receive "time credits" on a two-for-one basis, meaning that for each day they serve on the crew, they receive two additional days off their sentence.

Participation can also lead to criminal record expungement and the ability to seek professional emergency response certifications.

The CDCR did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

Original article is from Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/california-fire-inmate-firefighters-battle-blazes-earn-27-day-danger-2025-1

Inmates fighting fires:

Note: This is a temporary post.

[mareastrorum]

In case any non-Californians are curious, native Californians have a wonderful, reliable resource about fires:

And if you need more detail than that, CalFIRE often has more details:

[nwalthall]

Half awake in our fake empire...

Copyright 2023 Ned walthall

Over the last five decades, the wildfire season in the western United States has already grown by two and a half months; of the ten years with the most wildfire activity on record, nine have occurred since 2000. Globally, since just 1979, the season has grown by nearly 20 percent, and American wildfires now burn twice as much land as they did as recently as 1970. By 2050, destruction from wildfires is expected to double again, and in some places in the United States the area burned could grow fivefold. For every additional degree of global warming, it could quadruple. What this means is that at three degrees of warming, our likely benchmark for the end of the century, the United States might be dealing with with sixteen times as much devastation from fire as we are today, when in a single year ten million acres were burned.

David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth

From CNN today:

Evacuations are underway across Hawaii’s Big Island and Maui as several different wildfires rage across the islands.

Strong winds are helping to fan the fires, affecting the speed and direction of the inferno.

If you find yourself caught in a wildfire, here are some things you can do to try to protect yourself, according to tips from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

In your car:

Park your vehicle in an area clear of vegetation. Close all vehicle windows and vents. If you have a cotton or wool blanket or jacket, cover yourself with it to deflect radiant heat. Lie on the floor of your vehicle.

At home:

Fill sinks and tubs to stock up on water if the power goes out. Keep doors and windows closed but unlocked. Stay inside your house. Stay away from outside walls and windows.

Outside:

Try to find a place free from vegetation, such as a ditch or depression on level ground.

Lie face down and cover your body to minimize smoke inhalation.

--Holly Yan, CNN

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the LA Times:

A litter of Rottweiler puppies and their mother were saved from a fiery death in the Park fire thanks to a determined member of the Butte County Sheriff’s Office, officials said.

The rescue is one of the few silver linings to the Park fire in Northern California. The blaze had burned almost 390,000 acres as of Wednesday morning and was still only 18% contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The dogs, two adult Rottweilers and their four puppies, were left in a truck that had broken down on the side of the road, left behind by residents who were evacuating the blaze near Campbellville in Butte County, the Sheriff’s Office said.

The truck’s owner was not able to take the dogs, but provided the location of the vehicle to the Sheriff’s Office. Because of the fire, rescuers could not immediately get to the dogs’ location.

On Saturday, days after the dogs were abandoned, Trevor Skaggs, a member of the sheriff’s search-and-rescue team, flew to the area in a helicopter to find the dogs.

After landing, Skaggs ran more than a mile to the location where the dogs were reported to be. Though the adult male Rottweiler had died, Skaggs found the mother and puppies still alive in the truck — “tired and very thirsty” — according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Skaggs’ wife, Christina, told the San Jose Mercury News that Skaggs is a vegan and ultra marathoner and that he ran from the helicopter to where the dogs were. Skaggs was familiar with Rottweilers because his first dog was a Rottweiler, she said.

Once he found the dogs, Skaggs sang to them and was able to persuade the mother, and then the puppies, to trust him, his wife said.

Skaggs gave the animals water and fed them a few bites of his granola bar and then got the animals to follow him back more than a mile to the helicopter.

Video provided by the Sheriff’s Office shows the puppies and the mother trailing behind Skaggs as he led them back to the helicopter.

[darkmaga-returns]

Why do so many people insist on living in the state of California?  Today, it has the highest population of any U.S. state by a very wide margin.  Approximately 39 million people live in California, and Texas is number two on the list with a population of about 30 million.  I just don’t get it.  Those that live in California have to deal with relentless crime, the worst traffic in the western world, a historic homelessness epidemic, hordes of drug addicts, endless earthquakes, giant landslides, and insane politicians that do some of the stupidest things imaginable.  On top of everything else, wildfires have been ripping across the state with alarming frequency, and now we are witnessing a “hurricane of fire” that is unlike anything we have seen before.  According to the latest update from Yahoo News, the Palisades Fire is now more than 15,000 acres in size…

According to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, there are four wildfires currently scorching Los Angeles County: the Palisades Fire, at more than 15,800 acres; the Eaton Fire, at 10,600 acres; the Hurst Fire, about 500 acres; and the Woodley Fire, at 30 acres. Officials said the Olivas Fire was burning in Ventura County. All of the fires were 0% contained.

The Palisades Fire is already being called “the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history”.  At this point, Accuweather is projecting that the total damage from this cluster of wildfires will exceed 50 billion dollars…

A preliminary estimate of the total damage and economic loss from the cluster of wildfires ravaging Southern California, according to one report, has been put at $52 to $57 billion. The report was released by AccuWeather on Wednesday, Jan. 8, as the Eaton Fire, Palisades Fire and Woodley Fire continued to burn parts of Los Angeles County, spurring the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents and resulting in the deaths of two civilians.

In 2025, our first “billion dollar disaster” has come very early.

[uegub]

Harnessing Technology and AI to Prevent LA Wildfires

Wildfires are now a highly growing concern, especially in areas like Los Angeles (LA), where the destruction of lives, property, and the environment is at stake. Advances in technology and AI are opening promising avenues to prevent and mitigate these devastating events. This article delves into how technology and data science can be used to avoid LA wildfires, with real-life applications and the role of specialized education in this field. Early Detection through AI-Powered Camera Networks Early detection can help prevent fires from becoming big wildfires. An AI-powered camera network has been deployed across Southern California to observe vast areas of the region for signs of a fire. Machine learning algorithms within these systems process real-time video feeds to automatically identify anomalies indicating a wildfire. For example, the ALERTCalifornia project uses over 1,140 cameras installed statewide to help quickly detect and respond to the onset of emerging fires. Predictive Analytics for Proactive Measures Predictive analytics, empowered by AI, is an area of critical concern in the sense that it could predict the exact behavior of wild fires. Given historical data and weather patterns with vegetation indices, these models may predict the exact trajectory and intensity of fires, which will inform resource allocation decisions, evacuation plans, and preventative measures. In this regard, IBM has pioneered AI-based fire detection systems along with forecasting wildfire paths to empower communities in advance disaster management. Integration of Drones and Remote Sensors Drones embedded with AI functionalities and remote sensors have become integral in the fight against wildfires. Such devices can gain access to otherwise inaccessible areas and provide real-time data on the fire's movement, temperature differences, and other atmospheric conditions. Such technologies have been integrated by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection in order to create situational awareness and inform strategic decisions during active wildfires.

Public Engagement Through Technology Public education in timely and accurate information is critical during a wildfire event. Applications such as Watch Duty have become useful tools for citizens, allowing for real-time active fire coverage, evacuation zones, and air quality. These applications are provided by volunteers who aggregate data from varied sources into concise and actionable information that helps improve community preparation and response. Challenges and Considerations While AI and technology offer significant advantages in wildfire management, they also present challenges. The energy consumption associated with AI operations has raised concerns about environmental impact, particularly in regions already strained by natural disasters. Additionally, the reliance on data centers for AI processing can lead to increased water usage, further complicating resource management during wildfires. The Role of Data Science Education The application of AI and data science in wildfire management particularly underlines the importance of specialized education. Institutions, for example, such as the Boston Institute of Analytics offer depth courses in Data Science and Artificial Intelligence relevant to developing technological solutions for complex challenges like wildfires. Their programs offer in-depth knowledge and practical experience that prepare students for delivering a tangible contribution to disaster management and other critical domains.

[odnewsin]

Los Angeles engulfed by new wildfire, burning over 8,000 acres

California: A fast-moving brush fire erupted in Los Angeles County, expanding to 8,096 acres (32.76 square km) with zero containment, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). The blaze dubbed Hughes Fire broke out around 10:30 a.m. local time Wednesday in the area of Lake Hughes Road near Castaic Lake, about 80 km northwest of downtown Los Angeles, the…

[follow-up-news]

California firefighters made progress Wednesday battling a Malibu wildfire that exploded under high winds this week, although more than 6,000 people remained forced from their homes, officials said. The so-called Franklin Fire destroyed at least nine structures and damaged six others as it churned through hills in the seaside community, coming close to Pepperdine University, fire authorities said at a news conference Wednesday. But better weather helped firefighters reach 7% containment of the fire, which as of Wednesday evening has burned around 4,035 acres, said Dusty Martin, an incident manager for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.