They cut ~2% of the budget. Anyone spewing this funding cut bullshit is a partisan hack.
Quit being reactionary.
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Has it? Because LAFD had $17,553,814 reduced from its budget and LAPD had a $126 million increase in budget. Clearly some money moved around. Would love to see your source.
Yeah, I don’t think taking $17m from $837m results in this. If anything, it might have something to do with those cat 1 hurricane level winds.
America: Funding cops to shoot black people, defunding actual helpful social needs since 1864.
I have to do other people’s jobs. Slap some tin foil on em and throw them in to help.
From my understanding the water towers had completely ran out of water and pumps couldn’t keep up. There’s was no issue with volume through the existing water system, there’s just no way to contain a fire that big. They should be taking preventative measures such as raking the forest.
Can’t tell if this is idiocy or peak satire.
Well done.
Oh it’s even better than that. They’re referencing a direct quote from trump.
I was aware of that, but thank you for providing context!
I was not. Sounded reasonable except the raking part, from someone who knows fuck all about forest fires or building in fire prone areas.
This is some pure bullshit right here. Never let a tragedy go to waste, gotta get those clicks. No amount of budget would have prepared the city for this. They would have needed literally 10x to contain the fires fast enough.
High winds prevented the use of air based equipment. The same winds drove burning embers for miles into absolutely bone dry foliage.
It’s been way to dry here for too long to do any controlled burns, so no way to effectively get rid of the fuel.The FD could always use more resources, but the extent of this fire has nothing to do with a lack of resources and much more to do with climate change.
You don’t understand wildland fire mitigation very much, do you. Every penny helps you troll. And by the way, I have my red card, and a minor in forest fire management.
I mean, yes, but also fuck the cops and fund the fire department
The main problem is that the houses are made from wood and cardbord, and are placed in and/or surrounded by dry-as-a-fart forests and brushwork. Which is a stupid idea in an area that is known to regularly hve forest and brushwork fires. More now with global warming, which makes the plants even dryer.
LA has some some of the most pain in the ass building codes and inspectors. A permit is needed for just about damn everything specifically because of fire risks. Set backs and spacing are strongly enforced as well as the use of fire resistant materials. So even if the house were made of ‘cardboard’ they are wrapped in concrete siding or stucco.
The winds were 60-80 Miles per hour, blown in from the desert. This is a fire in the center of the city, not some remote urban wild interface.
Nonetheless, all the houses I have seen burning in the news were surrounded by dry trees and shrubs. And those houses burned as well as any other American cardboard houses. Somehow, I see no difference between them and houses with not as strict building codes. So either they only show homes that have been grandfathered in, or those building codes make no serious difference.
My understanding of the situation is the fires are currently burning the historic districts and grandfathered homes. The newer buildings have not been touched yet.
At least a bunch of rich fucks in Malibu and Pacific Palisades are paying the price for it.
Doesn’t help the lungs and bronchial passages of people with asthma and other breathing issues though. A lot of people will die who were nowhere near the fires.
The rich fucks are insured. The old timers living there before prices blew up will be fucked.
Apparently not insured enough to not be fretting about it.
LAPD cops can shout and order the fires to freeze!
They could also shoot it if it does not obey!
Based on my own experience, this is how most cities handle their PD/FD funding, unfortunately. The fire department is just not important… until it is.
Can confirm. source: Am Australian.
I suspect Scott being a doomsday death cult evangelical made those cuts deliberate instead of just being a standard short sighted git. Especially when he decided to take a vacation during your crises.
That’s karma. The longer we seek instant gratification, neglecting doing the hard, dirty necessary work that yields no immediate discernable benefits, the more severe the bite is, when it comes back around and bites us in the backside. As a collective, we stay on the wheel of suffering, figure out we need to do something differently, figure out necessary changes, then implement them… Then a few generations, the wealthy overlords convince us we’re spending too much on very sensible investments that yield no immediate discernable benefits and we repeat the cycle. It’s like Groundhog Day over centuries (which add up to millennia,), rather than days, weeks, years. Because they plan family fortunes for centuries, rather than days, weeks and years, because they can afford private communities, with private police and fire departments, and comprehensive health. The rest of us are means that justify their ends, and the sooner we, as a collective, wake up and smell the roses and love each other enough (which preserves our own arses) to figure out ways to fix this mess, for centuries that turn into millennia, the better off we and the rest of our ecoweb will be. Or not. 🤷♀️
Meh, same thing with healthcare. Who needs a medical professional to help a person with a mental health crisis when you can have a guy with highschool and six months of “training” put a few bullets in em?
