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Los Angeles residents hiring private firefighters are drawing scorn online

Posted on by Gerres
Los Angeles residents hiring private firefighters are drawing scorn online

Fire update: So far, 24 people are known to have died in the fires that burned in and around Los Angeles, and at least 16 people remain missing. Over 38,000 acres burned down, more than two and a half times the size of Manhattan. Although winds died down for part of the weekend, they are expected to pick up again this week, making it even more difficult to contain the Palisades and Eaton fires, which are 13% and 27% contained, respectively. Meteorologists predict winds will decrease by Thursday, but fire crews are still struggling to contain the flames. The water system continues to struggle to meet demand.

At Pacific Palisades, “water is collected in a reservoir that is pumped to three high-elevation storage tanks, each with a capacity of approximately one million gallons.” notes New York Times. “The water then flows by gravity into homes and fire hydrants.” However, given the scale of the disaster, storage tanks were depleted quite quickly, and extreme winds repeatedly prevented helicopter or plane drops.

Much of the damage could have been prevented if it had been addressed in advance. “As you examine the damage in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, pay attention to what did not burn — unburned tree canopies adjacent to completely destroyed homes” – Jack Cohen, wildfire expert he said the Los Angeles Times. “The sequence of destruction is commonly assumed to occur as an organized, spreading flame front – a tsunami of superheated gases – but this does not happen. In dense buildings, scattered burning houses spread to neighbors and so on. Ignitions downwind and across streets are usually caused by rain of embers from burning buildings.”

The newspaper explains that this means that proper management is not really about preventing fires, “but instead about preventing flashpoints in communities by using ‘hardening at home’ strategies – proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding – and encouraging neighbors to joint efforts such as clearing the bushes.”

Private Firefighter Controversy: Some Angelenos saw something like this coming and paid for private fire services or called them when the fire escalated. Now these people, who used private services to free up limited fire department resources to work on other homes, are being ridiculed all over the Internet. What exactly should they have done? They waited for their houses to burn, sitting on their hands?

Developer (and failed 2022 mayoral candidate) Rick Caruso is one of the people who called the fire department. He owns the upscale Palisades Village shopping center and sent private Arizona firefighters and water trucks to save his property. There were other Palisades residents as well they use With this service too. Contempt occurred:

In 2018, when Kim Kardashian and Kanye West used such services to protect their $50 million Hidden Hills mansion, an angry online mob condemned them. The family refrained from criticism, noting that the private fire crews they hired also saved their neighbors’ homes.

This was the case in London in the 18th and 19th centuries type of practice was common: each insurance company maintained its own fire crew whose job it was to protect the property the company was supposed to insure. Crews sometimes moved to other buildings that were not insured by their own company and were later paid for their services. The same model was replicated today: “Some private fire companies, including Wildfire Defense Systems, are known as Qualified Insurance Resources and are paid by insurance companies to protect their customers’ homes.” reports the Los Angeles Times.

For what it’s worth, said founder David Torgerson Times to which Wildfire Defense Systems responded 62 total wildfires in California in 2024 without losing a single property.

Back to business: Remember this Round-up about Meta abandoning its fact-checking tools and changing many of its hate speech policies in favor of a more expansive, free-speech-friendly approach? Now it has two employees he said New York Times that immediately after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced such policy changes, facility managers removed tampons from men’s bathrooms (presumably designated for transgender employees?) on Meta campuses. Zuckerberg just dropped some juicy clips from Joe Rogan’s podcast: “I think male energy is good and obviously society has plenty of it, but I think corporate culture has really tried to get away from it,” he said. he saidcalling many such companies “culturally neutered.”

“The U.S. government should be defending its companies, not being at the tip of the spear attacking its companies,” Zuck said later in the same episode. There, he addressed the Biden administration’s approach to moderating Covid-19-related content, which he said involved federal officials shouting and cursing at Meta employees for not bowing down enough.

As you watch this late-game shift toward fostering a company culture that is much less woke, you can’t help but wonder about the disconnect between what Zuckerberg purports to believe and how he has operated for many years. Did he get caught up in the cultural moment and now change his mind? Did he always think that many of these decisions were bad, but went along with them because he thought it was too risky to leave the herd? Or maybe he’s just afraid of risk Nowwith the new administration coming to power? Either way, this man was an extremely influential tech magnate for the better part of 20 years; when it comes to free speech, I wonder why he didn’t stand up to the Biden administration sooner.

Scenes from New York: President-elect Donald Trump is trying to gain favor with upper-middle-class New Yorkers by promising to raise the SALT cap (the amount of state and local taxes that New Yorkers can deduct from their federal taxes) and lower Manhattan congestion pricing.

QUICK HITS

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