A bunch of news stories in Los Angeles warn this week that there have been 700 fires in the Sepulveda Basin in the last year and a half:
The Sepulveda Basin sits next to the 405 and 101 freeways in the San Fernando Valley, at the intersection of the Los Angeles neighborhoods of Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks, and Encino. It’s a patch of open land in the middle of a bunch of city.
In the context of the neighborhood, it’s big: a a 2,000-acre flood control zone behind a dam, with a recreation area and a wildlife reserve. But mostly it’s a favela, a giant network of homeless encampments with a population that can run to hundreds of people. An enormous homeless population in that now mostly ruined “wildlife reserve” means that there’s a big patch of dry brush that fills up with massive piles of trash, in the middle of which there are people making fires for cooking, warming, and drug use. So here’s one of those news stories from yesterday:
You see, residents of the area are meeting with city officials to “demand action.”
Also, here’s what was in the news in 2018 and 2019:
I walked around the Sepulveda Basin in January of 2018, and these are photographs that I took, including one with a big pile of used butane canisters in the middle of all the trash:
The blue zones are Groundhog Day. Nothing ever changes. No problem is ever solved. No one knows how, anymore. No one is trying to know how.
So.
2018: Neighbors concerned by frequent fires in Sepulveda Basin
2019: Neighbors concerned by frequent fires in Sepulveda Basin
2020: Neighbors concerned by frequent fires in Sepulveda Basin
2021: Neighbors concerned by frequent fires in Sepulveda Basin
2022: Neighbors concerned by frequent fires in Sepulveda Basin
2023: Neighbors concerned by frequent fires in Sepulveda Basin
2024: Neighbors concerned by frequent fires in Sepulveda Basin
2025 Neighbors concerned by frequent fires in Sepulveda Basin
Meanwhile, the idiot mayor of Los Angeles masturbates in public about the ORANGE MAN (this is a screenshot, but click this link to hear her babble her pablum):
Dirty and declining city, same problems year after year after year, endless symbol-performance about calculated distractions. Come back in a few years and watch all the same news stories all over again. They just sit there in a pile of shit and bitch about Trump, over and over and over again, forever. They have no capacity for any other behavior.
The Sepulveda Basin will continue to burn.
I was going to nursing school at LA county hospital and I lived in campus( rent was$85 a month compared to $800 a month in the valley) and I had never really seen homeless people before. Leaving campus, dressed up for dinner, I saw a man lying in the street with his walker. Someone said he was hit by a bus. I couldn't just drive by and no one would help so I loaded him into my car to take him up the drive to the ER. He gets in the passenger seat and lights a cig. I said"please put that out". He said something I didn't quite get but continued smoking. So I bring him to the ER ambulance dock. And I run in and get the nurse. She takes one look and called him by name. She snarkily says" give me your number so I can call you when he's done here sweetie". I was so appalled at her lack of compassion I swore I would NEVER be a nurse like her!
Turns out he wasa movie stars' brother and a frequent flyer for 3 hours and a cot alcoholic. Apparently his brother tried for years to help but finally gave up they said.
I was a young and naive upper middle class white girl and my heart bled for the poor homeless guy. I had never really seen that in my neck of the woods. ( SF valley) Of course I was a liberal.
Fast forward 40 years and now I'm hanging on to middle class by the skin of my teeth, an old white lady that would NEVER put a guy she didn't know in her car who ,some days, has to dig really deep to feel sorry for guys like him. I've spent these years caring for tons of homeless people that treat you like shit on their shoes. ( Not all of them but the vast majority) And most refuse the help you spend hours arranging because , well...." rules". So you discharge them to their imaginary address and see them again in a couple weeks. When they run out of whatever it is they abuse. Or the pity they live on dries up. Or they OD,get infected,beat up, etc etc.
By the grace of God, I never did become THAT nurse but I did become a conservative and leave California about 25 years ago. I work in Washington and it's just a smaller version of Cali. But I live in Idaho and we don't have that problem in our town.It is a resort town and the cops don't tolerate sleeping on the streets. I hear the Dem infested capitol of Boise does though.
Interesting note: when the snow flies, the homeless problem drops way off. I wonder where they go and how they get there.
One thing I've learned from running a soup kitchen and being a nurse: there's a whole lot of homeless people that don't want to be a part of "our"society. They want to do their drugs and have no rules and they expect hand outs to keep them going. There's a lot that are just too mentally ill to function as well. There are some, mostly young, that do want help. But this delusion that if we just did this or that they can all be functioning, happy members of society? That just makes people feel better throwing money at it.
I don't know what the solution is but I think the mentally ill need to be institutionalized, the criminal types need to be locked up and we need to stop ripping the ones that don't want to get better out of the grave over and over again so we can utilize the limited resources on the ones that do. That's my idea of compassion these days.
There's a fire raging through Central Oregon right now, and -- you might want to sit down for this -- it started in the middle of a homeless encampment in the woods.
Climate change is really nasty this time of year.