By kvdkz @Adobe Stock
High Chaparral: Crisis and Chaos Visit the Hollywood Hills
The hills surrounding Los Angeles are dry and bone dry, making them ripe for ignition of high chaparral. The unrelenting fires are being driven by the unrelenting force of the Santa Ana winds. Discrimination? As the sun rose Wednesday, the daunting question was, just how long it will take the city to control the blaze? Nearly every corner of sprawling Los Angeles – from Malibu mansions to low-income housing in Pasadena – was smothered by a sky of smoke and ash, write JIm Carlton, Sara Randazzo, and Katherine Sayer for the WSJ.
The LA Fire: Likely to be the Costliest in U.S. History
And after more than a day of historic tragedy, the reality was setting in that it isn’t even close to over.
The multiple Los Angeles fires burning out of control are striking one of the most iconic swaths of the nation—including the Sunset Boulevard and the route of the Rose Bowl parade in Pasadena. In Malibu, hot embers riding unpredictable, swirling winds fell like hail onto the Pacific Coast Highway, lighting on fire in mere hours a renowned stretch of multimillionaire-dollar properties that were stacked side-by-side along the ocean.
In Beverly Hills, the fires accelerated at an unforgiving pace that upended lives, destroyed property and, as the sun rose Wednesday, … burns dotting the northern contours of the city connected parts of Los Angeles that rarely meet, joining the beach-adjacent world of movie stars to neighborhoods many miles inland where families just try to make ends meet. Nearly every corner of sprawling Los Angeles was smothered by a sky of smoke and ash.
LA Water System Can’t Keep up with Demand
At oil tycoon J. Paul Getty’s 1976 museum built in the Pacific Palisades to evoke a Roman country home that now houses at least 40,000 antiquities, the museum averted disaster. … its buildings, staff and art collections remained safe, thanks to its fire-mitigation efforts including clearing brush from its grounds, said Katherine Fleming, president and chief executive of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Another enormous feature is the museum maintains its own water supply in the form of enormous tanks—”including a 50,000-gallon tank at the villa and a one-million-gallon tank at its main campus located a half-hour’s drive northeast.”
The fires accelerated at an unforgiving pace that upended lives, destroyed property. As the sun rose Wednesday, still unanswered: just how long it will take the city to control the blaze?
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