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Which of those decisions turned out to be mistakes?

Palisades fire from PTZ Camera on roof of high rise in Downtown. Wikimedia Commons
As with most enormous disasters, there wasn’t just one simple mistake that led to the Los Angeles fires. There appear to be many decisions, made over the course of many years, by many different people, that led to our present circumstance, in which something like this was possible. Interestingly, all of them were decisions made by leftists, in the interest of advancing leftism. For example:
- Emphasizing diversity rather than competence in fire department hiring practices.
- Declining to add fresh water reservoirs and desalination plants, for environmental reasons.
- Firing established firefighters who chose not to get their COVID vaccines.
- Reducing brush-cutting and controlled burns of forests for environmental reasons.
- Spending their energy budget on solar and wind development rather than maintenance of conventional electric lines and plants, leading to fire risks.
There are many other factors to consider, of course. But let’s start with those. It would be fascinating to share this list with a Democrat voter, and ask them the following question: “In retrospect, after seeing the destruction of the Los Angeles fires, which of those decisions turned out to be mistakes?”

Daniel Hernandez-Salazar via Shutterstock. Image ID: 2187943721
Ask California Democrats who just lost their homes. Ask California Democrats who live elsewhere, but saw what happened. Ask Democrats anywhere in America, who have been watching the news.
What would they say?
What could they possibly say?
It’s difficult for a devout believer to see flaws in his/her religion, even when staring evidence right in the face. I suspect that they may not even understand the question.
But for Democrats who voted for Biden, and comfort themselves with faith in racism and climate change, but have become concerned with things they can see, like inflation or potential world wars – these people may be starting to wonder about the impact of leftist policies.

Source: Wikimedia Commons
And then they see this. This is hard to ignore.
I wonder if you asked them which of those policies turned out to be mistakes – VERY VERY COSTLY MISTAKES – I wonder what they would say?
I’m not sure.
But I am sure of one thing. Our media will devote itself, night and day, to be sure that no one EVER asks those questions in a public forum.
After all, that’s their job.
They need to make sure Democrats stay in power. After all, Republicans are dangerous.
Published in General
I can say with certainty that a large cohort of California voters will say it was a failure to address climate change sooner.
yes, and failure to use the existing reservoirs like the 117 million gallon Palisades reservoir, which was closed for “cosmetic” repairs.
Also, regulating the insurance companies out of offering policies.
When you fail to plan…you plan to fail.
Psyops are executed because they work. Mostly.
The interesting question is: to whom did the water district divert the water that previously went into that reservoir? The feeder system had to be changed pretty significant, wouldn’t you think? It didn’t go nowhere.
a) Global Warming.
b) It’s all Trump’s fault.
This is what has to happen. They need to bury all the electric lines. I don’t see why they haven’t been doing this since the 50s. I just saw a video that said that you can’t afford the infrastructure to constantly have water pressure to fight this type of fire. Fox News had a guy on that saved multiple houses just by having a pump, hose, and a sprinkler working with his pool and his neighbor’s pools. Everybody has to have that. I just heard that when fire dangers were really high one of the prior administrations constantly had planes full of water in the air at all times. It makes sense to me. Obviously, they need big fire breaks and cleaning of the underbrush constantly. It’s absolutely nuts that they don’t do that. This is probably too much to ask, but I know that the Sierra Nevada can have 5 to 9 more dams, feeding Southern and Northern California plus the electricity.
They need to print more money. We also need more regulations. lol
https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1878430130839978126
acTUaRIaL sCIenCE iS bOrInG
pRIvAtE mONeY wOuLD bE TErriblE sO iTs ILlegAL
cEntRal pLAnNing MakEs oUr liVEs beTTEr
gOVeRnmENt forCE maKEs OUr LivEs bETteR
lIbERtaRiAns dOn’t lIVe iN tHe rEAl woRld
Environmentalist Whackos, to use a Rush-ism. And it’s not just a single Environmental Impact Statement etc. They would require one for each piece of burying.
Question for our engineers: Is this something that’s even feasible in an environment prone to both earthquakes and mudslides?
As opposed to hanging lines from utility poles? Yes. Much more expensive, though. I don’t know about high voltages lines, though. I think there are probably limits to what can be underground without building significant infrastructure.
Well, if they can’t put the high-voltage lines underground, people can’t live there anymore. lol
I thought I read that there were major problems in Christ Church, NZ with buried lines where the ground just liquified.
Why? Why in that kind of terrain and geological subsurface, of all places?
Sounds like a good subject to ask the internet about.
What would happen to lines hung from utility poles when the ground liquifies? At least the underground ones started near ground level.
I live in Hilton Head. All of our utilities are buried, except the main trunk line for electricity going down the middle of the island.
The idea is to minimize Hurricaine damage. And to look more natural, with no unsightly power poles etc.
It’s great. But you’re right. It’s expensive.
And complicated. You can’t dig a post hole for a mail box without calling for multiple inspections.
I found this list of cons on the website of an electrical utility coop that does some of each:
The website lists pros and cons of both overhead and underground lines.
At this point you just know someone, or many, in CA are salivating over all that bare land. You know, where people used to live. And, due to new building codes will never live again. Time to plan utopia.
What’s interesting in my Twitter feed is all the people who blame Trump and MAGA for the wildfires because they are opposed to the politics of global warming, but think it’s just terrible for Trump to blame California politicians and politics for the problem. He should be helping, not making it a political issue.
Occasional fires are natural. Constantly putting out every fire is not natural.
I seen an older gentleman on Fox and Friends this morning. He used to do fire management. They would divide the brushland into squares and occasionally do controlled burns. They had to stop because some mouse habitat was disrupted.
You can’t stop managing burns and then be surprised when you have this inferno. It will burn sooner or later under any circumstance.
I feel bad for everyone that lost their homes. Even the wealthy, and crazy, lefties.
Or maybe, like in the Elon Musk video above, “they had it coming.” Eventually, no matter how “rare” it might be.
Or put in modern terms, FAFO.
It went to sea. The delta smelt is an endangered fish that requires salinity to be in a specific range. That salinity is maintained by fresh water draining out into the Pacific. During a drought, not enough fresh water is present to ensure the survival of the smelt so the water is being diverted because little silver fish are more important than human beings.
More important than those in the California celebrity industry, sure, but more important than any and all human beings?
The lines are all buried in my neighborhood here in New England. The biggest problems we have are rodents chewing through them. The Verizon and National Grid vans practically live in our neighborhood year round. :) :)
Above ground lines will have a problem where the ground liquefies too.
EDIT: Tex929rr got there first.
Not that I want to see people hired simply to fill in the spaces on a pie chart, but have there been reports that these wildfires are partly the fault of incompetent firefighters?
They thought the ocean was looking a little low.
Why don’t they use nuke plants and desalinization? lol Never mind.
Did you know that all of the freshwater that the world would ever need rolls off the mountains and into the ocean in British Columbia? It seems to me that buying it would be a good idea.
Yes, this is the magic of the whole “climate change” con: they can use it to deflect any and all malfeasance, corruption, and incompetence by their administrations of government, and a credulous populace will just let it all go on and on and on, while, this time literally, their whole world goes up in flames.
I suspect they could have hired another 50 incompetent firefighters, with little impact in outcomes. Maybe even 75?
Why not try 100? Just see how it goes? I mean, honestly.
After all, the whole reason we have a fire department is to promote alternative sexual lifestyles.
Right wing fascists will try to suggest that firefighters are there to fight fires. We should cancel them.
Sorry. I got a little carried away…
You may be right. Competence of firefighters may have been unimportant in this particular case, as I’m sure CNN will try to suggest.
Or perhaps their competence mattered. Hard to say. Does it really matter that firefighters & cops are competent?
I guess I don’t know for sure. But I still think that they should consider nothing else in hiring.
All other hiring criteria create just all sorts of problems, for all sorts of reasons.
Many of the decisions you cite are “luxury” priorities that might be plausible for the extremely wealthy, as long as nothing goes significantly wrong.
Many of us as Americans (who are almost inevitably wealthy by world and historical standards) indulge in luxury priorities that would baffle many of our own ancestors or even most of the world’s population today.
But, Californians have for several decades been able to indulge in some extraordinarily luxurious priorities in a place to which people who were willing to come and invest regardless of risk because the opportunities and attractions were so large.
My own personal assessment (I lived in southern California from birth (1956) until 2000) is that the consequences of decades of luxury priorities accumulated sufficient to reveal that there’s a limit to the ability to afford luxury priorities, no matter how wealthy you think you are. There’s a limit to what wealth can do. Neglect reality long enough in favor of your luxury priorities, reality has such big influence that you can no longer ignore it in favor of your luxury priorities.