Not Arson, PG&E Related
Mandatory Evacuations
5% Contained
First Ever Extreme Fire Warning
CNN reports Fire conditions near LA prompt the National Weather Service to issue its first-ever extreme red flag warning
It’s one word the National Weather Service in Los Angeles doesn’t want Southern California residents to overlook — extreme.
As in, this isn’t just another red flag warning — meaning winds, temperatures and humidity are ripe for fire danger. It’s an extreme red flag warning.
The weather service in using the term for the first time to convey that the fire conditions expected this week “have not been seen in recent memory.”
Hurricane-force winds — the kinds that knock down power lines and trees — are expected to blow across bone-dry vegetation on Wednesday, and the weather service is warning there is a danger of very rapid fire spread.
Kincade Fire
Companies Plan to Turn Off Power Again
- Pacific Gas & Electric said it intends to interrupt power to about 596,000 customers in 29 counties in central and northern California by Tuesday night, with some outages starting in the morning.
- In Southern California, 205,000 customers in seven counties are under consideration for possible power shutoffs, Southern California Edison said.
Hurricane-Force Santa Ana Winds
The LA Times reports ‘Extreme’ warning issued ahead of hurricane-force Santa Ana winds, the strongest since 2007
A total of 43 counties in California are experiencing red-flag warnings or historic wind events, said Gov. Gavin Newsom, who also attended the news conference. “It’s been a long week,” he said.
Newsom declared a statewide emergency Sunday as wildfires spread throughout the state, burning tens of thousands of acres and forcing evacuations of more than 180,000 people. They include the massive Kincade fire in Northern California, which has destroyed at least 124 structures and threatens an additional 90,000.
Hopelessness of Wildfire Season
Please consider the Hopelessness of Wildfire Season
Fires are roaring across California again. Last week, the Tick Fire engulfed the Santa Clarita Valley just north of Los Angeles, forcing the evacuation of about 50,000 people. On Monday, the Getty Fire broke out along the western edge of Los Angeles in the early hours of the morning, quickly enveloping 600 acres. In Sonoma County—wine country—nearly 200,000 people had to evacuate over the weekend due to the Kincaid Fire, which doubled in size between Sunday and Monday and now is burning a swath of land more than twice the size of San Francisco. It is only 15 percent contained, with thousands of firefighters working around the clock. Officials haven’t determined the cause, but a jumper cable connecting PG&E equipment to a transmission tower near Kincade Road failed just minutes before officials say the fire began in the same location.
An investor-owned utility, PG&E provides power to most of California, servicing more than 16 million people. It’s also been found responsible for at least 17 of the state’s 21 major wildfires in 2017, not to mention last year’s Camp Fire in which 87 people died, making it the deadliest fire in California history. Several times this month, PG&E has cut the power on more than a million customers for fear of winds sparking a fire. Schools have closed. The lights went out in high-traffic tunnels. Residents on assistive medical devices were told to evacuate. PG&E owns these power lines and is supposed to trim the trees around them and keep its equipment in working order, but it has failed to keep up with these duties for decades. A number of factors, including climate change and patterns of settlement and development, have conspired to bring California to this point. But season after season, after the flames are out and the damage is tallied, Californians all too often learn that the fire started with a PG&E line.
Right now, PG&E would rather pull the plug on hundreds of thousands of people across large areas of the state for a few days—often on short notice—rather than risk another fire. It’s still not clear how the company will account for the more than $30 billion it’s estimated to owe due to destruction caused by the wildfires for which it’s been found responsible. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year, freezing its debts as it continues to offer service to Californians. It’s now in the middle of a reorganization that will likely prioritize the interests of the creditors who are owed money over the fire victims who were displaced or lost loved ones, many of whom continue to pay a monthly bill to the utility.
Raging Fires
How big are the California fires? See the size and shape of dozens of blazes on NBC’s Map of California Fires.
Blackouts a Way of Life
PG&E now says “blackouts are a way of life”.
Time to Move?
Fires, earthquakes, mud slides, taxes, insane property prices: I am not trying to be cynical and I wish the best for those affected, but is living in California worth it?
We are escaping Illinois, but it will be to Utah, not California.
Escape Illinois: Get The Hell Out Now, We Are
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
“… is living in California worth it?”
Yes.
Yes.
Will not let me edit.
Yes… but living in San Fran or LA is not.
I’m not so sure anymore….
Just got evacuated, smoked out and ashed out by the Getty fire. I’m holed up in the butt cold Rockies now. If I didn’t suffer so badly from pressure change induced migraines, I’d probably do like Mish, and move to into the Mountain time zone as well.
But as it is, two weeks of constant low-pressure to high-pressure swings, sometimes near an inch in a day, will have me popping painkillers like a Limbaugh in no time. As it is, I’m thinking of Hawaii. Or perhaps Spain, Portugal or some other Mediterranean country.
Maui just about the only place I’d move to. Or Scotland. Probably Maui. But probably not. For all the wind (I’m not in a fire zone), the other 350 days a year are just too damn nice.
This website is possible resource for moving overseas:
https://internationalliving.com/the-cheapest-places-in-the-world-to-live/
‘global warming’ some say….well, maybe, but the biggest problem on our clod of earth is ‘human breeding’, without a shadow of doubt …..from 2 bln to 8 bln(and ruthlessly ticking) in just a century…Gullible if we think that everything is gonna be fine… economically, socially, environmentally….it is IMPOSSIBLE !
Yep. Actually it has risen by 4B in the last 40 or so years. We are headed for 10B easily by 2050.
With most growth occurring in Africa
“Many Native American tribe had actually deliberately started fires in order to free up the land for agriculture, or promote the growth of certain plants that would attract deer and other animals they could hunt.”
Slash and burn–still happening world-wide.
What they did was not slash and burn.
Also the TV weather have been forecasting 50-60-70-80 mph wind gust when actually they are more like 20mph. They are putting fear into peoples heads.
What you hear on the national news isn’t whats really happening as it appears. The wind this time of year is normal what is not is heavy brush growth over a decade and lots of tree plantings and home construction in those canyons. Powerlines and careless people are to blame. The Mayor said it was an act of God and these fools will blame it on climate change.
This is media driven BS. We have always had strong dry winds this time of year. Fires are VERY common all summer long. The area near the Getty seems to burn every other year.
What has changed is after the loss of life over the past two years and the associated lawsuits the utility companies are now turning off the power. No other recent changes.
Jerry Brown says this is global warming…
That’s the story in southern California. The story here in the northern California is different. When we moved here in 2009 it use to start raining in October. That got pushed into November in recent years and is now moving later and later and extending fire season. This has been a contributor to fires in northern California in addition to the other factors.
My local area uses goats to eat up the dry brush. We’ve had one wildfire in my city the last 8 years and that was from an area where the brush had not been cleared. It has since been cleared and going to be turned into a strip shopping mall.
2008 & 2009 had wet October and November (relatively). Since then the pattern has normalized. Check average inches of precipitation per month going back 20 years. Its actually more normalized now with spring being the coldest and wettest months.
A new fire this morning, in Simi Valley, just west of the San Fernando valley, just north of the Reagan Presidential Library.
It is windy in Simi Valley right now, but maybe 20 miles east, where i live, not a leaf is stirring on the trees outside. Last year it was windy where the Woolsey fire blew down through to Malibu, but simultaneously, wind was mild in Griffith Park where a brush fire occurred, allowing that one to be knocked down quickly.
The power line that the branch fell on which started the Getty Fire is owned by Los Angeles Water & Power, not PG&E or SoCal Ed. I have talked many times with the crews that trim growth around power lines and they tell me a lot of people get mad at them for cutting back the greenery, and some refuse to let them on their land. They love it when I ask them to cut back as much as possible.
Neighboring states to California get the same rain (or less) and the same snow melt in the spring. But they have far less problems compared to California.
Then again, neighboring states have controlled burns. Neighboring states do a better job managing water supplies and try to capture some of the snow melt. Neighboring states don’t overbuild like CA does. Neighboring states don’t have landscape lighting on their McMansions. And neighboring states don’t prohibit electrical generation plants from being built in their state — they sell electricity to CA crazies over long distance transmission lines.
Despite the Enron fiasco that highlighted CA’s dependence on out of state generation / long distance transmission lines… despite the increased need for electricity to power Tesla chargers and landscape lighting and central A/C McMansions… California voters voted, again and again, to prohibit power generation in their state. California refused to build water storage, or fix their ridiculous water usage laws. That isn’t mother natures fault, nor Putin’s fault or any of the long list of excuses Californians use to deflect blame from themselves.
It wasn’t one bad vote in California, it was dozens. And unlike states with more balanced politics, left wing extremism had no check and balance in California.
California voted to have problems, and they got what they voted for.
This BS might make you feel good, but it is total nonsense. Electricity consumption has been going down in CA in recent years (Teslas and landscape lighting??? are not increasing the demand, try to get some facts into your hate rants at least) and imports are pretty stable.
Growth in California has been mostly in large cities on the coast, and with the exception of the expensive parts of L.A. most of the fires are in Republican leaning parts of the state, not that politics has anything to do with it, but you brought it up. The main problem with the water laws is that (mostly right wing) ranchers won’t give up their claims on public water supplies. There is plenty of water for 5x the number of Californians, but not if the ranchers insist on feeding all the states and countries that can’t grow their own food.
California is doing very well. It is getting so rich that most people can’t afford to live here. Not the best problem to have, but not the worst either. I went to Switzerland a couple of months ago and thought it was cheap. My sister from the U.K. had milk coming out her nose when I told her that. I also recently visited Spain, France and Hungary and again found everything to be really cheap compared to coastal CA.
I’m all for more people moving out of CA, and for fewer people coming in, but unless we get independence, that isn’t under our control. Perhaps the moron in the White House can be persuaded to build a wall around California, har har.
I think you will enjoy South Utah Mish, and it is on my list of places to live if I move from NorCal, but for now, NorCal is the best place to live, and I’ve lived in Europe, Africa, and other parts of N. America.
Good grief you are out of touch with reality.
The federal government (not me) says there is not enough water in California. And the EPA of California agrees with their federal counterparts.
Ranchers own the aquifers under their own land, and have no obligation to bail out CA. You are just selfish.
California is a basic 3rd would sh!t hole, with homelessness, disease, poverty and corruption. Without the IPO “miracle”, no one would know the difference between Caracus and San Francisco.
Bail yourselves out.
Please dont move to Utah. The last thing we need is a bunch of clever minded Californians ruining the state.
As always, global warming is a contributing factor. It doesn’t rain for 6 months in California. That’s what happens in a Mediterranean climate. Has always been true. But that isn’t what causes everything to dry out. It’s the summer temperatures being a degree warmer than normal. And if you disagree, you don’t understand science.
Global warming is a fraud. Thoroughly discredited by actual scientists. Still pushed by political extremists who want more and more taxes, but are politcally savvy enough to know the public won’t accept higher taxes unless the extremists manufacture a new excuse.
It was also fraud when the same pseudo “scientists” screamed about a new ice age a few decades ago, going so far as to get the UN to issue a “scientitific report” warning about said ice age. Same inept “scientists” who are now pushing global warming were pushing new ice age… and their solution for the ice age? More taxes!
Why don’t you grow a pair and just admit you don’t care about the environment (which if you live in CA you are actively destroying)? Why don’t you just admit you want higher and higher taxes, and you don’t care why? Why don’t you admit you don’t want to pay those higher taxes yourselves, you want the other guy to pay and your extremist political friends to spend the other guys money?
Stop trying to blame mother nature for your own extremist policies.
Higher taxes, higher municipal corruption, endless wars — big government in general is a made disaster!
Discredited by actual scientists? + the usual denial shibboleths.
Sceptical scientists are far and few between, usually retired, old, senile, eccentric, or corrupted by money from the think tanks and the fossil fuel industry. Most real publishing scientists have been convinced over the course of decades against their initial impulses, by data and arguments. A good example is Richard Muller (who literally wrote the book on the Milankovitch cycles,@Berkely ), initially sceptical, was paid money by the Koch brothers to assemble a team of physicists to finally lay the whole thing to rest, but after trying all kinds of other hypotheses was forced to reaffirm earlier conclusions stating that the influence of CO² is necessary to explain the climate correlations found in the data.
Actually webej (not based in the USA as I recall) — very few geologists or meteorologists believe humans cause climate change. Almost none. People who actually study climate know it has always been changing, and raising taxes won’t stop the change from continuing.
Its mostly anthropologists and gender studies academics who push climate change taxes. In short, losers who can’t hack the real world and are barely able to survive the fantasy land of academia.
BTW — its time for academia to start paying taxes like everyone else. This already happened in Massachussetts, at the behest of now deceased Ted Kennedy. Boston was about to go bankrupt because the largest land holders and largest investment funds in Boston (MIT, Harvard, BC, BU) were all tax deadbeats
Who is John Galt?
Screw that, WHERE is John Galt?!
If I was John Galt, or knew where he was… I sure as heck wouldn’t tell the asshats in California where I was.
Having run their own state into the ground, Californians now want to move to other places and run those other states into the ground as well.
I talked to John Galt 🙂 He says Californians should stay put and think before they vote. Maybe if CA stops their extreme left wing nonsense and moves toward the political center, CA won’t have their self created environmental mess, won’t alienate the rest of the world, won’t default on debts, and you won’t have to flee your own state policies.
Until then, please stay put and enjoy the fruits of your own votes!!
” the probable cause of the #GettyFire was a tree branch that broke off “
No The cause of the fire was a monopolistic greedy corporation refusing to trim it’s right of way. In NC Duke Power has the same contempt for their customers. They’ve found it’s WAY more profitable to just let the limbs crash. Then they text their captive customers “The power outage was caused by trees falling on our equipment”.
PS In Europe the power lines are underground. Duh. (regardless of the distances, 30-60 billion in losses every time the Santa Ana winds blow is insane).
Wildfires are a problem throughout the west and will be for decades. You won’t escape in Utah Mish. Mark my words on this.
The best way to deal with these wildfires is to let them burn and evacuate people. It turns out the biggest fires in California are the best fire breaks for future fires.
Most of the west that doesnt have underground power will need it.
See here for western fire map. California isnt alone but its more affected because 40M people live in the state.
Cinder block house, tile roof
The state is basically ungovernable. There isn’t any will, any common sense, and no real funds to do the basic functions required of state and local governments.
It will only get worse from here.
It’s still OK living here. Especially away from the fire zones.
Yep. I live in largish city that has it’s own power and things are booming.
The solution will be to break up PG & E and let local communities manage their own power. Over time public utilities need to come back. Cities can manage their infrastructure better than state or large private organizations.
Californians make deliberate and conscious decisions, again and again, to spend the money elsewhere.
And that is when they aren’t looking down their arrogant noses at the rest of the world, telling everyone else that we aren’t woke like California.
But 100% agreement that CA is ungovernable. Its the people in the state (maybe not all of CA, but enough of a majority that they have voted for this again and again and again)
Here in California we stopped doing controlled burns in the spring to burn off the vegetation some years back to “protect” the environment when the native americans had been doing them for thousands of years. We had a wet year and the wild grasses grew in thick. Stuff is like gasoline when its dry
–> PG&E now says “blackouts are a way of life”.
California’s radical democrats have finally succeeded in turning their state into real 3rd world sh!t hole, complete with homelessness, medieval disease, rampant government corruption, man-made ecological disasters (water mismanagement, wacky forest policies, etc), and now the banana-republic of California has intermittent and unreliable electrical power.
Can’t wait to hear when some hollywood airhead figures out the electricity in the wall that charges their Tesla does not just spontaneously materialize there… where electricity comes from isn’t covered in gender normative studies class.
California got exactly what they voted for, and f#ck them for trying to force their stupidity on the rest of the country and the world
You’re talking about real people, experiencing real tragedy here, Bob. Do you think fire and ecological disaster differentiate between Democrats and Republicans living there? Grow the fuck up dude and ditch this obnoxious left vs right mindset, because you sound like a real fucking douchebag.
Harry, did you try to think before you wrote that?
Who do you think opted to have acres of landscape lighting and central A/C in their McMansions? Was it the Californians doing it to themselves?
Who ran all over the place bragging about their environmental awareness, because the power plants behind all that lighting, central A/C and Tesla chargers were mostly located in other states? Was it the Californians doing it to themselves?
What state arrogantly keeps trying to impose all sorts of extra costs on the rest of the USA… from poorly thought out environmental gadgets on cars to a fraudulent insurance scam jammed into law by a corrupt b!tch from San Fransisco?
What state re-elected that corrupt b!tch, fully aware of her bribery?
What state was fully aware of its dependence on out of state power and long distance transmission lines?
California’s arrogance is what caused this mess. They voted for it again and again and again. It is a self inflicted wound
And BTW Harry since you are apparently in low-tax Ireland…. guess what US state has the highest taxes in the USA, but still runs massive deficits and has defaulted on its debts twice in the last two decades? The deadbeats of California.
What state produced both the dot-com scams 20 years ago, and the WeWork scam of this year? What state got its wealth from IPO’ing those scams? What group of “left wing activists” kept that IPO wealth for themselves, while their state defaulted?
And what group of so-called “environmentalists” have been mismanaging their water usage from rivers even more than they mismanaged their forest kindling?
And what group of pompous@sses got on their high horses, went on TV and talked down to the rest of the country?
Its the same state getting their come-uppance now
class struggle
If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Looking around me I don’t see any evidence that our culture is building with any consideration of permanence or legacy.
If we are remembered at all, I fear it will be as object lessons of the folly of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Than enslave them as the Romans did to the Carthaginians
In this case… the Carthaginians (Californians) are doing it to themselves, having spent the last few decades lecturing the Romans about our lack of environmental woke-ster-ness.
Even now, the arrogant voters of California are trying to impose even more taxes on the rest of the world, as though CA has it all figured out. They did this to themselves
I do not rejoice that I am not “they” for they are part of me too
What about the millions of fellow Americans who’s hours were cut from low 30s down to (max) 28 per week, to make sure the restaurants / bars that employed them wouldn’t be wrecked by the desire to provide “free” health care costing 3x as much as the crazy expensive stuff before it? Where was your humanity then?
What about the millions more put out of work by environmental policies that are more political platitudes than environmental improvements?
Why do Californians want “free” health care and “free” education for illegal immigrants, paid for by US taxpayers who don’t get free anything? Why does California hate the rest of America, and treat us like we are dirt?
F#ck California. They did this to themselves, and they have been nothing but nasty to the rest of America for decades.
Country Bob…too much bitterness, man. Take a chill pill.
Nope. Fuck you and fuck all the asshats in California.
No one asked you to destroy jobs and small businesses with your insurance scam Obamacare.
And if you were half as smart as you think, you would have anticipated lots of blow back from your crime. You have the intelligence of W Bush (who also figured no blow back from his Iraq war…. you are two peas in a pod, no brain cells between you)
my fellow Americans Reagan Nixon Hoover
Three dead white men who lived in California back when it used to pay its bills and not preach at the rest of the country.
The California that was Reagan Nixon Hoover hasn’t existed in years
The past is always attractive because it is drained of fear
Country Bob jumped the shark when he accused Trump voter Mish of TDS. Completely ignorable now.
Yup — you and the rest of California don’t like being called out on your bullshit
If I was where I would be
Then I’d be where I am not
Here I am where I must be
Where I would be, I can not
Wow. What a terrible situation. And no, I’m not even going to suggest anything as stupid as the usual internetcomments about California and its inhabitants. It’s just a terrible waste of nature, resources and property. Utah is beautiful Mish. Good choice and best of luck!