The Fire This Time

Palisades neighborhood (Swope/AP/WSJ)

Measured on the basis of lives lost (85) and acreage burned (153,000) the 2018 Camp Fire that devastated Paradise, CA is still the most destructive wildfire in California history. However, the ruination of Pacific Palisades, home to the rich and famous, is far more likely to change the future of California.

Pacific Palisades is known for its scenery, with views of the ocean and the Santa Monica Mountains. It is a quiet, secluded atmosphere. The neighborhood sits between state parks and the ocean, offering residents easy access to hiking and the beach.

While it is populated with high-end homes and gated communities, there is also a small, walkable downtown with boutiques and cafes. Celebrities who have bought homes in the area include Reese Witherspoon, Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garnerand Steven Spielberg...

The typical home value in Pacific Palisades is $3.4 million. Sixteen homes on the market are priced at $10 million or more in Pacific Palisades, according to Zillow. In neighboring Brentwood, 18 properties meet that threshold.

When the rich and famous encounter the California government's multi-year delays in granting rebuilding permits, that may well be the proverbial straw that breaks the back of Progressive dominance in government. Add to that the difficulties in finding homeowners' insurance and the incompetence in water management and wildfire prevention, the conflagration that engulfed Pacific Palisades may well start a metaphorical fire in the halls of Sacramento.

Lahaina No Ka Oi, Hopefully Again

As of this writing (4 p.m. HST) there are 53 confirmed dead in the Maui wildfires that started on Tuesday. 1,000 people are unaccounted for, historic Lahaina town is completely destroyed, and basic communications and infrastructure are heavily damaged. Flames are 80% contained.

The videos are similar to those that Californians saw during the 2018 Camp Fire that leveled the City of Paradise. In Maui too we watch residents given only seconds to flee, trees burning on both sides of the road, and winds spreading flames faster than people can run. In California people jumped into rivers and lakes, in Maui they leaped into Lahaina Harbor.

Before the Camp Fire Paradise was a city of 14,000 homes and 27,000 residents. 4½ years later Paradise is less than half what it once was: "more than 1,400 homes have been rebuilt and now nearly 10,000 people call Paradise home again."

Because of the importance of Lahaina to the State of Hawaii, your humble blogger hopes that Lahaina's restoration will be faster and more complete than California's rebuilding of Paradise. And, selfishly, it will raise the probability that I can visit Lahaina one more time before age and infirmity prevent me from doing so.

The Fire Next Time

California is inching its way toward a program for mitigating future damages by utility-caused wildfires. [bold added]

Paradise, 2018 (Chron photo)

[Gov. Gavin] Newsom has proposed extending a Department of Water Resources charge that was originally imposed because of the energy crisis in the early 2000s. The charge could be extended for more than a decade, netting as much as $10.5 billion.

Under the first financing option, known as a “liquidity fund,” the state would be able to provide a line of credit for utilities to pay wildfire claims. But the utilities would have to reimburse the fund.

The second option would work more like insurance, paying out claims directly. If all three utilities [Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric] participated, they would match the $10.5 billion charge by providing $7.5 billion up front and annual payments of $300 million to finance the rest, all with investor — as opposed to ratepayer — money. The insurance fund, which would be managed by the state, could take other steps — including buying reinsurance — to bring its total capacity up to about $40 billion, according to the governor’s office.

Ratepayers, taxpayers, existing bondholders, and stockholders will all have to contribute to the fund. In the 1980's PG&E stock was one of our first investments, using Peter Lynch's investment principles. We got out 15 years ago when the energy industry began to change, and it didn't look like PG&E had a handle on what was happening.

By the way, in the stampede toward solar energy the fire danger may be increasing due to higher geographic dispersion and more exposure to the atmosphere than a traditional power plant. Articles:

Fire Concerns with Roof-Mounted Solar Panels

(Photo from blfirerisk)

One of the many dangers to solar panels is how the panel and its mounting system impact the combustibility of the overall roof system. Some solar panels, for example, include a backing of highly combustible plastic.

In laboratory-based fire tests of roof assemblies, the maximum allowable fire spread is between approximately 20 and 40 ft2 (1.9 and 3.7 m2), depending on whether an A, B or C rating is desired. In actual roof fires with roof-mounted solar panels, fire damage has involved areas of between 1,000 and 183,000 ft2 (93 and 17,000 m2). In the most extreme case the fire spread to the inside and destroyed the entire building.

‘Avian Incident’ Knocks Out 84% of Massive California Solar Farm

An “avian incident” sparked a fire at one of California’s biggest solar farms, affecting 1,200 acres and knocking out 84% of the California Valley Solar Ranch’s [250 megawatt] generating capacity.

A Huge Solar Plant Caught on Fire, and That's the Least of its Problems

On Wednesday, May 25, [2016] Ivanpah's operator, NRG energy, confirmed the fire was indeed caused by mirrors that did not track the sun properly, which focused sunlight onto the wrong part of the tower [in San Bernardino County].

Forest Management Facts and Logic

President Trump's tweet on November 10th, two days after the Camp Fire destroyed most of Paradise, CA, sparked controversy:

There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 10, 2018

Reaction on Twitter was negative, of course. A plurality of responses were of the Trump-is-an-idiot genre, with a subcategory pointing out that, because the Federal Government owns most of the forestland, the President should point the finger at his own Executive Branch. That argument might have some validity if environmentalist lawsuits had not stymied government efforts to clean up the forests.

Sacramento Bee, 2015: Anti-logging lawsuits hurt fight against forest fires, officials say [bold added]

The largest fire ever recorded in the Sierra Nevada, the Rim Fire that began in August 2013, ultimately burned 402 square miles, spanning parts of Yosemite National Park, private lands and the Stanislaus National Forest. In September 2014, the Forest Service proposed a plan to allow logging on 52 square miles of the affected wildlands.

The Center for Biological Diversity and several other environmental groups subsequently sued to stop the Rim Fire plan [snip].

More than 40 percent of the [1,125 environmental lawsuits between 1989 and 2008] challenged the Forest Service’s “vegetative management” decisions, meaning logging and salvage programs, and these were also the lawsuits the agency was “most likely to settle,” the analysts found.

(WSJ graphic)

The destruction of Paradise may be the decisive event that will force environmentalists to withdraw their opposition to government forest management practices. Even before this year's wildfires the sentiment was moving in the direction of thinning trees.

In 2017, California joined with the U.S. Forest Service and other groups in creating the Tahoe-Central Sierra Initiative, which aims to thin millions of trees from about 2.4 million acres of forest—believed to be the largest such state-federal project in the country....The thinning coalition represents a new front. The Nature Conservancy’s Mr. Edelson used to sue to block logging plans in national forests as an attorney for another green group. Now he said he sees the need for limited logging because of the dramatic rise in wildfires.

President Trump's tweets are often crude and disrespectful, but they also give rise to learning. Thoughtful opponents who wish to respond with more than name-calling are forced to counter with facts and logic. Often to their surprise, sometimes the President has facts and logic on his side as well.

Smoky November

On Saturday you could look directly at the sun.

Two days after the fire began 200 miles away, the smell of burning wood permeated the Peninsula.

The sky was hazy, and the sun turned red. Prudent pedestrians perambulated with breathing masks.

The Air Quality Index is over 150 ("unhealthy") and will stay there for quite some time. As of this writing the fire is only 20% contained, and we are running the air filters 24/7.

"The Speed and Ferocity of the Fire Was Too Much"

(Image from Chico Enterprise-Record)

One of the most jarring images to come out of the Paradise fire was that of burned-out vehicles along the road.

The fire came upon fleeing residents so quickly that they had to abandon their stuck cars. In the safety of our living rooms it makes as much sense as jumping out of a burning building. God help everyone who is faced with such a choice.

Another jarring fact: Paradise had a disaster plan: [bold added]

Following those fires — part of what Cal Fire still refers to as the “2008 siege” — city leaders began working on an evacuation plan. They broke up neighborhoods into geographic zones that, in the event of a wildfire, would be cleared one at a time to avoid gridlock. There are few roads in and out of Paradise.

With about 27,000 residents, the town also went through the unusual exercise of holding mock evacuations during morning rush hour, closing some streets and turning a major two-way road into one way to let people practice getting out fast....

Bill Stewart, the co-director of Berkeley Forests, a wildfire and forest research department at the University of California, Berkeley, said Paradise had “about the most advanced level of planning I’ve heard of,” but the speed and ferocity of the fire was too much.

“It overwhelmed the town,” said Stewart.

The pictures told us with absolute certainty that a reported fact on Thursday night was not true: the death toll was five (5).