Devil Winds Return to Southern California
If the United States of America doesn’t take care of its own citizens, wherever they live and whatever their politics, we should drop “United” from our name.
On Sunday, California Governor Gavin Newsom warned residents that the fire crisis isn’t over.
The National Weather Service has issued “Particularly Dangerous Situation” warnings four times in the last three months.
The first preceded the Mountain Fire (Ventura) - 243 structures destroyed.
The second preceded the Franklin Fire (Malibu) - 20 structures destroyed.
The third preceded the Palisades and Eaton Fires - Thousands of homes, gone as we continue to battle blazes.
The fourth, starts tomorrow.
Gov. Newsom has issued an executive order for the fire areas to suspend the state’s environmental laws and its strict rules for building along the coast. President Biden has signed disaster declarations and committed the federal government to reimbursing all of the disaster costs for six months.
The State of California’s fire fighting team (--still fighting the 11% contained Palisades and 27% contained Eaton fires) consists of
15,000+ Personnel
2,500+ California National Guard Members
1,390+ Fire Engines
80+ Aircraft
160+ Water Tenders
170+ Dozers
The Legislative Analyst’s Office says CalFire’s total funding for fire protection, resource management and fire prevention has grown from $800 million in 2005-06 to an estimated $3.7 billion in 2021-22.
California has 78 more annual “fire days” — when conditions are ripe for fires to spark — than 50 years ago. Los Angeles, in particular, is suffering from hydroclimate whiplash worsened by human-caused climate change.
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We were warned. Here’s a clip from Brendan Dentino’s Mike Davis was right about L.A.'s wildfires - so what?
[Quoting historian Mike Davis]
“Stand at the mouth of Malibu Canyon… for any length of time and you eventually will face the flames. It is a statistical certainty.” That’s because the Santa Monicas, more than any other range in Southern California, align with the Santa Ana winds. Factor in a lot of fuel—dense and dry vegetation—and add a spark and you get explosive wildfires.
Richard Henry Dana, for whom Dana Point in Orange County is named, sailed past a blaze on the Malibu coast in 1826. It’s no different two centuries later. “The speed and heat of the fires is so intense that firefighters can only attempt to prevent lateral spread of the fire while waiting for the winds to abate or the fuel to diminish,” Davis quotes a report from the Environmental Protection Agency. This description leaves out the homes. Defending and extinguishing them one-by-one in difficult terrain is an altogether different challenge.
“Welcome to the “Pyrocene,” coined by fire scientist Stephen J.Pyne
Already, Southern California fires have decimated areas with a footprint larger than several major American cities. In less than a week, the devastation is projected to be among the most expensive natural disasters in U.S. history.
Historically, Americans have united to express sympathy for victims of disasters, and there is, indeed, some miracle work being done in Southern California. Businesses have donated product, assistance, and money to assist displaced residents. Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen is feeding both firefighters and displaced residents. Celebrities have offered up donations. And the FEMA hotline has already been a conduit for aid for individuals.
It would be nice to think we were seeing this kind of unity, or neighborliness nationally. But incoming President Donald Trump and his cronies have a track record of treating national disasters as opportunities to sow division, to demonize and immiserate enemies, and to blackmail opponents.
Trump has been threatening Gov. Newsom, saying that if he doesn’t submit to his demands on water delivery and forest management, he will withhold federal dollars. “If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires, and if we don’t give him the money to put out his fires, he’s got problems.” Trump’s demands are based on fictional lore, native to the climate-change-denying set and corporate farm entities.
As NYTimes columnist Jamelle Bouie noted on Bluesky, “the all but official position of the Republican party is that voting for Democrats disqualifies you from federal disaster assistance.”
There is a HUGE disinformation campaign underway, flooding social media and less-reputable legacy media with falsehoods laden with accusations based on cherry-picked data so loaded with nuance that fact checking can be an exercise in futility.
This MAGA “flooding the zone” with disinformation crap for imagined gain is becoming a significant impediment to disaster response by state and federal agencies. Disinformation not only sows confusion, it corrodes trust between victims and rescuers. It causes victims to delay in seeking assistance or claiming benefits that will speed recovery.
A Fox news host has even called for a federal takeover of California. Literally every headline in the New York Post is misleading. And social media maven Elon Musk has liked and reported a firehose of falsehoods, to the point where even his AI enabled GROK has seen fit to issue corrections.
Perhaps the most repugnant of the claims coming from MAGA land are the ones associating disaster response to diversity programs. Only minds completely rotted with racism could conjure the sort of accusations aimed personally at those public employees rising to the severest of demands. (BTW-Next up on the haters’ agenda is getting rid of sign language interpreters.)
From Arwa Mahdawi at The Guardian:
On Wednesday, for example, Musk took some time out from obsessively tweeting about whether the US should “liberate” Britain to proclaim that the Los Angeles fire department (LAFD) “prioritized DEI over saving lives and homes”. He has continued to post spurious claims about diversity initiatives (for example, “DEI means people DIE”) for days now, along with posts insinuating that if LAFD’s fire chief weren’t a woman, then things would be very different.
Musk is not the only one trying to link wildfires to “wokeness”: all the usual suspects are at it. Donald Trump Jr has also been busy making uninspired jokes about DEI meaning DIE. The rightwing actor James Woods and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly have railed about the fire department promoting diversity. Even CNN commentator Scott Jennings blamed the wildfires on DEI policies.
Various social media accounts posted pictures of non-white people claiming they were looting, while the real story was covered Adrian Florido on NPR’s Morning Edition:
As the wildfires consumed entire neighborhoods earlier this week, L.A.'s firefighting resources were strained to the limits. In Altadena, homes and structures burned without firefighters nearby. While many residents obeyed mandatory evacuation orders and official warnings that they risked their lives if they didn't leave burning areas, others stayed behind to try to save their homes. Then there were the crews of Latino immigrants who rushed in from elsewhere to help.
What is happening in California will impact the country as a whole, especially insurance companies pulling back everywhere, since it’s pretty obvious climate change is fostering significant risk to property. This will set up a chain reaction, since insurance is required for most mortgages, mortgages are required to keep the housing market going, and the housing market represents the main store of savings of most Americans.
The potential for reverberating negative impacts becomes clearer when you understand that Los Angeles County alone accounts for 4% of the US Gross National Product. The economy of LA County is greater than the combined economies of Alaska, Maine, Vermont, Delaware, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
Climate change is a threat multiplier affecting every single other human and economic priority, from the air we breathe to the food we eat to how much we pay for a house.
Economist Paul Krugman’s analysis of California’s importance to the nation is a good place to finish with today’s posting.
So how should we think about the disaster in Los Angeles? As far as I can tell, there’s nothing either the city or the state could have done to prevent it. There’s a good case to be made that we should never have allowed a huge metropolitan area to emerge in a place that was vulnerable to Santa Ana-fed firestorms even before climate change vastly increased the risks. And of course we should have begun acting to limit climate change decades ago.
But this is all hindsight, with no relevance to where we are now — which is that an American city and an American state desperately need all the help we can deliver. It shouldn’t matter whether they’ve earned it. If the United States of America doesn’t take care of its own citizens, wherever they live and whatever their politics, we should drop “United” from our name. As it happens, however, California — a major driver of U.S. prosperity and power — definitely has earned the right to receive help during a crisis.
Unfortunately, it looks all too possible that essential aid will be held up or come with onerous strings attached. If so, shame on everyone responsible.
‘Filthy’ and ‘deplorable’: San Diego jails fall short of minimum health standards, expert says in lawsuit by Kelly Davis at the San Diego Union-Tribune
“This is not a matter of a little dirt — these are wholesale violations of minimum standards that expose incarcerated class members to a serious risk of substantial harm,” Grunfeld said. “Rather than let these unsafe conditions continue unabated, we hope that the County will promptly agree to a remedial plan designed to bring San Diego’s facilities up to constitutional standards.”
Multiple people who have been incarcerated in San Diego jails provided sworn declarations in support of the lawsuit.
Photos included with the original filing show feces-covered walls in a cell intended for people at risk of suicide, mold caking a ceiling tile, a dead rat in a medical examination room and piles of trash and human waste in a unit reserved for psychiatric patients.
During her jail tours, Graham spoke with incarcerated people who described vermin infestations, widespread mold and broken toilets that went unfixed. Two men told her they had to scrape feces out of their cell’s toilet.
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Donald Trump Jr.’s Ridiculous Greenland Trip Just Took a Dark Turn by Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling at The New Republic
Danish media reported Thursday that a series of photos featuring Kirk and Greenlandic residents in MAGA hats was staged. The MAGA cohort reportedly rounded up homeless people from the area—including one person from under a bridge—promising them a meal at the Hotel Hans Egede in exchange for their participation in the pro-Trump photo circuit.
Videos of the trip that circulated on X describe the Greenlandic participants as “the local community in Nuuk,” but several local sources that spoke with DR News described the photographed individuals as “homeless and socially disadvantaged” people who are often outside the supermarket directly across from the hotel where the Trump event was held.
“All they have to do is put on a cap and be in the Trump staff’s videos. They are being bribed, and it is deeply distasteful,” Tom Amtoft, a 28-year resident of Nuuk, told the Danish news outlet.
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Who built Europe’s first cities? Clues about the urban revolution emerge by Emma Maris at Nature.com
Despite the organized urban design of Cucuteni–Trypillia megasites, there were no palaces, no grand temples, no signs of centralized administration and no rich or poor houses. There were no special graves for high-ranking people. A bestselling 2021 book by anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything, brought wider attention to these sites, which the authors describe as “proof that highly egalitarian organization has been possible on an urban scale”.
At the centre of every Cucuteni–Trypillia megasite is a mysterious void: a large area with no buildings at all. According to Graeber and Wengrow, these could have been used as a place of assembly for debates or instant referendums — an arena for direct democracy. They could equally have been used to pasture cattle. Without any artefacts, it is hard to know.
It is precisely because there’s no evidence of ruling elites, centralized bureaucracy or special economic structures that some scholars hesitate to call these megasites cities, even though they were undeniably large population centres. Cucuteni–Trypillia villages also have an open central space, just on a smaller scale.
