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California's Wildfires: Livestreams from Burning Homes and Dire Text Messages - Sometimes Erroneous (msn.com) 46

Posted by EditorDavid from the sad-news dept.
As the ecological disaster continues, CNN reports the Palisades Fire near Malibu, California has burned at least 22,660 acres, left 100,000 peope under evacuation orders, left at least 11 people dead and "destroyed thousands of homes and other structures." From the last reports it was only 11% contained, and "flames are now spreading east in the Mandeville Canyon area, approaching Interstate 405, one of LA's busiest freeways."

But the Atlantic's assistant editor wrote Friday that "I have received 11 alerts. As far as I can tell, they were all sent in error." My home is not in a mandatory evacuation zone or even a warning zone. It is, or is supposed to be, safe. Yet my family's phones keep blaring with evacuation notices, as they move in and out of service....

Earlier today, Kevin McGowan, the director of Los Angeles County's emergency-management office, acknowledged at a press conference that officials knew alerts like these had gone out, acknowledged some of them were wrong, and still had no idea why, or how to keep it from happening again. The office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but shortly after this article was published, the office released a statement offering a preliminary assessment that the false alerts were sent "due to issues with telecommunications systems, likely due to the fires' impacts on cellular towers" and announcing that the county's emergency notifications would switch to being managed through California's state alert system...

The fifth, sixth, and seventh evacuation warnings came through at around 6 a.m. — on my phone.
At the same time a Los Angeles-area couple "spent two hours watching a live stream of flames closing in on their home," reports the Washington Post, and at one point "saw firefighters come through the house and extinguish flames in the backyard." At around 4:30 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, the camera feeds gave out and the updates from their security system stopped. About four hours later, [Zibby] Owens's husband got an alert on his cellphone that the indoor sprinkler system had gone off and the fire alarm had been activated. They do not know the current status of their home, Owens said on Tuesday.

Real estate agent Shana Tavangarian Soboroff said in a phone interview Thursday that one set of clients had followed their Pacific Palisades home's ordeal this week in a foreboding play-by-play of text alerts from an ADT security system. The system first detected smoke, then motion, next that doors had been opened, and finally fire alerts before the system lost communication. Their home's destruction was later confirmed when someone returned to the neighborhood and recorded video, Tavangarian Soboroff said.
Soboroff also lost her home in the fire, the article adds. Burned to the ground are "the places where people raised their kids," Zibby Owens wrote in this update posted Friday. But "even if my one home, or 'structure' as newscasters call it, happens to be mostly OK, I've still lost something I loved more than anything. We've all lost it... [M]y heart and soul are aching across the country as I sit alone in my office and try to make sense of the devastation." [I]t isn't about our house.

It's about our life.

Our feelings. Our community. Our memories. Our beloved stores, restaurants, streets, sidewalks, neighbors. It's about the homes where we sat at friends' kitchen tables and played Uno, celebrated their birthdays, and truly connected.

It's all gone... [E]very single person I know and so many I don't who live in the Palisades have lost everything. Not just one or two friends. Everyone.

And then I saw video footage of our beloved village. The yogurt shop and Beach Street? Gone. Paliskates, our kids' favorite store? Gone. Burned to the ground.

Gelson's grocery store, where we just recently picked up the New York Post and groceries for the break? Gone...

The. Whole. Town.

How? How is it possible?

How could everyone have lost everything? Schools, homes, power, cell service, cars, everything. All their belongings...

All the schools, gone. It's unthinkable....

I've worked in the local library and watched the July 4 parade from streets that are now smoldering embers...

It is an unspeakable loss.
"Everyone I know in the Palisades has lost all of their possessions," the author writes, publishing what appear to be text messages from friends.

"It's gone."
"We lost everything."
"Nothing left."
"We lost it."

California's Wildfires: Livestreams from Burning Homes and Dire Text Messages - Sometimes Erroneous More | Reply

California's Wildfires: Livestreams from Burning Homes and Dire Text Messages - Sometimes Erroneous

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  • Sad stories everywhere (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EditorDavid ( 4512125 ) Works for Slashdot on Saturday January 11, 2025 @02:36PM (#65081271)
    One more story shared by a climate report who lives in the Pacific Palisades [nymag.com]:

    ___________________________________________________
    It finally hit me that we might not have a home to go back to and that I was going to be pregnant and homeless. My partner and I started remembering things we had left behind — my grandfather’s chain and a pre-digital picture of my partner and his dad that he’d never be able to get back. Then we watched our neighborhood burn to the ground, live on TV... The following morning, I had a call from my neighbor, who told me that amid the ashen remains of multimillion-dollar homes, our little group of condos had survived. It was then that I started sobbing. We decided to go back home and retrieve a few keepsakes left behind, hoping my press pass would allow us to get into the danger zone.

    Driving up Sunset Boulevard, we saw firefighters. “Oh my God,” I said, “they’re here.” Blocked off by trucks, my partner tried to take the back route through an alleyway, only to find another fire engine parked in the way. Taking another run down Sunset, we finally saw our home, now a pile of embers, still burning. We parked and got out for a closer look. A group of firefighters told us they were sorry.

    Going around back again, on foot this time, I made it closer and doubled over in pain at the sight — all of the other homes were destroyed too. ____________________________________________

  • Even with a grid independent pump and water storage (pool works) it's a rounding error in the yearly maintenance budget of many of the people whose homes are burning.

    • With the kind of heat a wildfire brings, I'm not sure how long a pool full of water could hold off the flames. Obviously longer than NOT using the pool, but with the scale of these things you just can't defend a single home, you have to fight large sections with backburning and such.

    • Many of those people are not really rich and have only that one pile of embers and a mortgage that still needs to be paid. I own multiple properties in multiple countries and I am not rich either - I just learned long ago that it is wise to diversify.

      • >Many of those people are not really rich and have only that one pile of embers and a mortgage that still needs to be paid.

        Well, if your uninsured home is all you had and it's mortgaged (Really? Banks allow you to have a mortgage without insurance?)... seems like declaring bankruptcy is appropriate. You're already fucked, might as well take the credit hit and escape a large pile of unrecoverable debt.

        • Mortgage lenders require borrowers to have insurance. It is in the contract. Also, majority on home loans are non-recourse meaning that lenders cannot go after you for the remainder of the balance if home value is below loan amount.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Temkin ( 112574 )

            Mortgage lenders require borrowers to have insurance. It is in the contract.

            And the insurance is separate from the mortgage. Lots of insurance companies are pulling out of California. Thousands of policies were not renewed 4 months ago in the Palisades area. Did they all manage to find new coverage by Jan 1st? Or did they get the state emergency insurance plan?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sfcat ( 872532 )
          The insurance companies pulled out of this neighborhood about 6 months ago. All policies were cancelled. They said the state wouldn't let them raise the premiums to a level required to offset the risk. Before you say, greedy insurance companies, 1) they were right, and 2) if they did write these policies, the rest of us end up subsidizing their much more expensive homes. Just though everyone should know this before piling on about insurance.
  • Losing everything in a fire really is no fun at all. Many/most of the people have no insurance and they are not necessarily particularly rich either. The house may be their only big asset.

  • Here in the UK (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Saturday January 11, 2025 @03:01PM (#65081313) Homepage

    We learnt in the fire of London in 1666 that buildings built out of wood close together is a Seriously Bad Idea. But it's a lesson the USA doesnt seem to have learnt yet. I'm not saying brick or concrete buildings would have prevented the fires but they sure as hell would have mitigated them in the urban areas.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      US culture is kinda against learning lessons. People would rather go back to 'normalcy' which means doing the exact same thing and pretending nothing ever happened since that causes anxiety.

      • Japan knows they have earth quakes. The government mandates a certain level of earthquake resistance on buildings. Why does this not happen here?

        The USA spends trillions of dollars on military, why is this not something they can assist with? why are fires treated as "natural" in an era of everything being man made. It should be one more battle in the war against nature.

        • US culture has different values. Bigger risks are ignored and working to mitigate them at public expense is 'socialism'. Saving a buck now is generally considered worth risking losing ten later.

          Until they lose the ten, of course. Attitudes have been known to change, at least temporarily, in affected individuals.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Khyber ( 864651 )

          "why are fires treated as "natural" in an era of everything being man made."

          Because before man was there the fires were there and continue to occur with or without human intervention.

        • Had this discussion earlier. In a sum codes aren't retroactive. California could have the toughest code but only applies to new construction. Guess the situation that leaves. Right now, all we can do as a society is help those in need BUT demand a change for anyone who wants to rebuild in the same place.

    • You can't build with brick in earthquake zones or you'll have what happened during the Northridge quake. Most of the building codes are based around earthquake tolerance.

      Yes, we have fires and wind on yearly basis and mistakes were made, but there were excessively, unusually high speed wind gusts that set the two bigeest fires off in a record pace. The winds made it difficult to get helicopters and other vehicles in the air, and in some cases ground support can't get anywhere near either..

      • Use concrete and steel then. The skyscrapers survive earthquakes right?

        • The skyscrapers survive earthquakes right?

          There is no building material that would have prevented the spread of the fire. Steel and concrete structures burn down like anything else. The shell sometimes survives, but the insides will still be a total loss. And then the shell will need to be demolished anyway. Steel and concrete structures resist smaller fires much better than wood, but there are limits that are far exceeded by this type of fire.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by sinij ( 911942 )
      Embers [frontlinewildfire.com] cause most of house fires in wildfire situations. Regular roof shingles burn, so when embers land on the roof you end up with a fire. Similarly, for many types of house siding materials. You don't have to go all out with masonry to make a house A LOT more fire resistant to exterior fires. If you look at rare surviving houses - most of it is exterior materials, like stucco and metal roofs.

      • Has no one over there ever heard of roof tiles? They're made of fired clay or a rock like slate. They wouldnt burn under a blowtorch never mind embers.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sfcat ( 872532 )
          Considering the heat in this fire is twice most blowtorches, I fail to see how that means anything. Please understand these fires are hot enough to melt structural steel. They are also hotter than the kiln where those clay tiles would have been made.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sfcat ( 872532 )
      One, stone isn't a great building material. Sure its still standing, but you wouldn't want to live in it. Second, there are tons of building regulations in the US and especially in a place like this. There isn't much that can withstand the kind of heat a forest fire makes. It isn't like the fires in a city, they are much bigger and more intense. There are several causes of this fire, one is climate change, another is not putting in the effort to clear brush. Building out of stone wouldn't have made mu
  • Unfortunately, fire is only the first step of this tragedy. Dealing with insurance for compensation and rebuilding and trying to get insurance again will be worse. There will be a lot of bankrupt people as the result of this fire.

    At the very least, as a consequence of these fires, California should update building code to require more fire-resistant exterior construction.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ve3oat ( 884827 )
      I hope that insurance companies (worldwide) will raise the rates of everyone (worldwide) who is a contributor to global warming. That is, everyone who burns fossil fuels or otherwise adds to atmospheric reflection or retention of surface heat by the production or combustion of fossil fuels.

    • Already do, but not retroactive (most codes aren't). With that being said there's nothing but economics preventing one from renovating to a higher standard.... or building a new one.

      As for again and again...

      This [amazon.com] and this. [amazon.com]

  • James Woods said that the destruction and loss of his home had nothing to do with climate change, but everything to do with ‘diversity,’ because the LAFD is helmed by a lesbian. And Jesse Wattersports parroted this line on Fox. And then Woods has since posted on Xitter that his home did survive. So the lesbian saved it after all. He owes her and the LAFD an apology.
    • Days ago, he cried on television about how his house burned down. 5 hours ago, Actor James Woods says his house in Pacific Palisades has survived the Los Angeles wildfire that had devastated much of his neighborhood.

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