I don’t know the geography of LA at all so not sure where people are, but hope any area BBuzzers are safe out there — it truly looks frightening.
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I was looking at this on the news today.
Hope everyone is safe.
What causes these big burns?
We are no stranger to big fires in Australia, but they seem to be very frequent in California, specifically LA.
They are big and hot and always do a lot of damage.
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Tree huggers.
Cutting down trees is like murder here in SoCal. If the forest is on a privy land the owner would trim them and thin out create proper fire breaks because if the fire breaks out they’ve liable for it. They’ll be sued out of their existence.
What’s the difference? Well it’s a public land so when mega fires happens it’s just act of god. Death? Whatever, the next person will deal with it. There’s no “one” person responsible only people in charge. Not to mention that they have huge budgets for fire prevention but bureaucrats fluster cluck.
I was actively involved with the city council meeting during my mountain biking days. We brought up the dry scrubs and trees no one did anything and sure enough the fire swept the entire area all the trees were gone and so went our single tracks.
There are tons of privately own lands on the west coast and they have not seen fire damage in the last century. That’s why. They are responsible people.
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This sounds like a problem we share; in some of our States, Victoria is particularly bad, this attitude is very strong.
The Greens Party effectively runs the Govt without a majority.
In addition to this we have local govts who do not allow clearing or back burning and this directly leads to these wildfires.
Where I live in Queensland is it better.
When I was in the Rural Fire Brigade, we lit more fires than we put out, but it was preventative.
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Also often enough the NorCal fires are caused by PG&E lines coming down or sparking or something similar, in a spot where the brush and trees haven’t been cut away adequately.
And then there was the time PG&E blew up Belmont due to incompetence mixed with a gas main.
Like a whole neighborhood. Boom.
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I’m a “tree hugger” myself, so I gotta ask: I know that stupid forrest management makes it easier to spread fires, but is that also the cause?
Even godd@mn green guys like me know that (over here) - you need to create proper fire breaks, and it’s done very rigorously here. The German forest is almost as holy as German cars…
I’m asking about the cause, as I see that fire was started on completely different spots in a matter of days or even hours…
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/08/us/maps-visuals-los-angeles-wildfires-dg/index.html
It would be a very unusual “natural” coincidence, even with the strong winds.
Over here in Europe that means one thing: the fire is caused by people, deliberately.
What do you think?
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This happens in CA too but more often for human-caused fires it’s accidental.
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If fires start around the same time in different locations, it’s unlikely that it’s “accidental”.
It seems orchestrated. But I might have conspiracy paranoia ^^
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I think it’s more “statistical” than “orchestrated”, as things get drier and drier. Then again, that’s usually summer, not January.
But you never know. Arson does happen for sure.
Amen.
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The German forests don’t have anything like the Santa Ana’s to contend with either.
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Still the only non human thing that could start a fire in the region would be lightning. So human origin is the most probable, maybe not arson but at least irresponsible behaviour.
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The Santa Ana’s desiccate an already desert climate. It doesn’t even really take irresponsible behavior. Any kind of spark and ignition and these winds blow up the resulting fire. It most likely does include someone doing something stupid and causing a spark but these winds take it and run from there. The Santa Ana’s are why these particular fires have done what they’ve done.
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Man made? Sure it happens especially with dry dense overcrowded forest, that’s the arsonists wet dream.
Same arsonist can try to set fire on the private forest and it would not yield the same result because the fire can not spread at the mega fire rate and the damage is minimized.
If it’s my forest before thinking of me, I’d think of others first, which in turn putting me first. I’d be thinking about liability before anything else.
It will be managed by knowledgeable competent professionals not activists or politicians. They don’t care about the damage to the environment only their agendas. If they do after each catastrophe they’d have lobbied to get better prevention.
Lemme ask you if you own a forest what would you do?
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Yeah, your winds are stronger than ours, that’s for sure 
I would have my friend Lukas take care of it! He is a hunter and a farmer … and knows everything about forests and fields…
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Man, it’s a mess. And from what I hear, the winds are supposed to start up again today. And most of the fires are still at 0% containment, last I checked.
CA does have a wildfire season, and it definitely corresponds with the Santa Ana winds. Normally it’s not in January though. It’s always possible that a wildfire comes down to people (or a person) being stupid or evil (or stupid AND evil), though. After the devastation these fires caused, I certainly hope it’s not that.
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Man made does happen all the time, it’s just that arson is only a part of that. More can be chalked up to stupidity (chucked cigarettes, unattended campfires, fireworks, hick kids doing stupid shit, urban kids doing stupid shit, etc etc).
Plus, like I said, PG&E and other companies not doing due diligence.
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My heart just sank.
Yeah, I just learned that 2 (so far) of my friends lost their house to the Altadena fire. The Mayor knowingly left for Africa, the governor is begging everyone for money for this state of emergency. They cut the fire department budget by $17M. There’s no water coming out of the hydrants due to poor management. Nobody bother to fill the reservoir.
But, but they are so proud that the closed the dam and was able to save some Salmon. They also divert the glaciers water directly into the Pacific Ocean so that they can save some smelt instead of hydrating the forest and provide for population and farmers.
Now I just received this
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We used to have good management but the luvvies and tree huggers have managed to reduce it, they have this weird idea that you shouldn’t be burning our bush and forests to conserve them or some other rubbish.
The Australian landscape was shaped by fire and evolved to burn, some plants and trees require fire to grow or germinate.
This is because of millions of years of natural fires and thousands of years of Indigenous hunting and land management practices,
There is a saying that if Australia isn’t underwater (flooded) it is on fire.
Our fire brigades have been hampered by budget cuts and environmental ‘concerns’ also, landowners can’t do their own fire mitigation, or they will be prosecuted.
As I said the Aussie bush is meant to burn (I think part of the California problem is that they thought planting lots of eucalypts was a good idea) so all it takes is a lightning strike or a cigarette thrown out a window to start a blaze, yeah we get attention seeking idiots who light them too.
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