Culture of Failure, Geography of Reality

it's grab bag theme night

Many thoughts and new pieces of information on the fires.

First, if you’re in Los Angeles, or if you’re interested in wildfires, or if you just like hearing interesting people discuss a topic they understand in a way that gives you new insight, spend some time with the extremely low-key YouTuber at The Lookout. He delivers a tremendous amount of information in an easy-to-process style, using video and maps to show you what he means as he describes the progress of the fires and the tactical decisions that go into the effort to stop it:

He argues tonight, showing map overlays for context, that the Eaton Fire that started above Pasadena and Altadena has become less dangerous because of an accident of history and geography: it burned into areas in the Angeles National Forest that burned in other fires, Bobcat and Station, putting the fire into a place where it starts running low on dense, dry, old brush. I found the entire discussion remarkably calm and clear, after a pointless day of doomscrolling and listening to meaningless TV news interviews with politicians.

Second, turning to the Palisades fire, a bunch of places that were threatened last night are threatened tonight, which means that firefighters mostly held the two important lines to the north and east of the fire. Mandeville Canyon almost burned a lot today, and then burned a bit, and then went on almost burning, as they fought and fought and fought to hold it back. So far, so good. Winds picking up, but still.

As to the meaning of Mandeville Canyon in Los Angeles, firefighters called police today because the owner of a property there refused to evacuate as the fire rolled down the hillside (ADDED LATER: I’ve since learned that the owner did evacuate, well ahead of the fire, with officials being given access to the property to stage firefighting resources. The person on the property who interacted with firefighters was an independent contractor):

This is the old real estate listing for 3099 Mandeville Canyon Road:

I quite enjoy the phrase “robust amenities,” and will be using it in future discussions with my wife about the condition of our own elegant suburban estate. But this is what a fire at the edge of Mandeville Canyon is about: really expensive real estate.

Third, as you keep reading about Los Angeles being burned because of prolonged drought and a desperately dry landscape from climate change, notice what’s happening thirty miles to the south, as the beachfront City of Rancho Palos Verdes pumps up to a million gallons of groundwater a day into the ocean. They’re doing that because a piece of land with a long history of chronic landslides has turned into a place with a very recent history of acute landslides. Why? Here’s an explanation from local public radio in the summer of 2024:

Entire neighborhoods are being threatened by land movement that increased to one foot per week in some locations, following two years of heavy rains. The land movement has not slowed, but the city is hoping that by draining some of the water, they can help alleviate movement.

So, again, Southern California is burning because it’s so desperately dry from a long drought caused by climate change, and it’s also pumping and dumping tens of millions of gallons of excessive groundwater from “two years of heavy rains.” Here’s a recent update on the project from the city government:

Dewatering Wells Update

During the meeting, the Council allocated another $1.1 million toward maintaining the City’s network of 11 deep dewatering wells, which have extracted approximately 83 million gallons of groundwater from the toe of the Portuguese Bend Landslide. The wells are running on costly, fuel-powered generators due to the SCE electricity shutoffs. The Council is scheduled to consider the potential of deprioritizing other City capital projects to expand the network of wells, on January 21.

A terribly parched landscape, clearly.

Fourth, a movement is spinning up to demand the resignations of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom, but I doubt it’ll work. If Newsom quits, which sociopathic vampires rarely do, he would be replaced by Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, who has led such important political efforts as…yes, an attempt to bar Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot. Replacing Newsom with Kounalakis would be like, let’s pick a comparison completely at random, replacing Andrew Cuomo with Kathy Hochul. It would be distinctly lateral.

If Bass resigns, the Los Angeles City Council fills the vacancy — they appoint an interim mayor. About the Los Angeles City Council, if I may borrow a line: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. You don’t want to find out who they would appoint to be the mayor. Karen Bass probably isn’t going anywhere, and would probably be replaced by someone worse if she did. She’s up for re-election in 2026, and that’s the most realistic moment to replace her without ending up with [even more dangerous fool to be named later]. In the meantime, with some luck, Bass will be hated, hounded, and boxed in, forced in the wake of disaster to do things that go against her nature, like providing adequate funding for basic city services instead of blasting free cash to grifter NGOs and social justice projects.

And finally, a thought about the counterarguments. A bunch of people are arguing that none of it would matter:

The mayor was in Ghana when the fire started, so there was a delay in signing a declaration of emergency, but so what? Mayors don’t fight fires.

The reservoir in the Palisades was empty when the fire started, and has been empty for a long time, after maintenance failures that no one bothered to address, but so what? The wind-driven fire still wouldn’t have been stopped by the mere presence of an extra 117 million extra gallons of water, so it doesn’t matter.

And so on.

These arguments are becoming more insistent as it becomes critical to protect Blue Team against Scary Orange Hitler. The Democrats who govern Los Angeles, and California, can’t be blamed in any way, because nothing would have made a difference in the scope and power of the fire. Things just, ya know, happen. Sometimes you just lose five or ten percent of a city, but let’s not get bogged down in blaming. That’s being political!

But beyond the tediousness of the predictable tribalism and excuse-making, my answer to the so-what stuff is so what? So what if Karen Bass couldn’t have made a difference by being in town, because there’s no reason for the Mayor of Los Angeles to ever take a city-funded cultural outreach trip to Africa. It’s stupid, performative, meaningless, and wasteful. So what if the reservoir wouldn’t have helped? It fell into disrepair, and no one fixed it. Make all the excuses you want. When infrastructure breaks, a government that doesn’t bother to fix it is useless. Fix the fucking reservoir, or stop taking your $750,000 government paycheck.

We’re going to hear SO MUCH, in coming weeks, about the impossibility of putting out fires, and the mere accident of nature of the city burning. The excuses are coming, and they’re coming in volume. Los Angeles is governed poorly. It doesn’t have to be.

I’m tired of the argument, because the argument is dishonest and manipulative. California is failing. Stop making excuses.