this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2025
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Its not the Republican-ism that comes first. You have to sell people on the "I'm exceptional" mentality first, then insist they're being exploited by their inferiors. Malibu celebrities are a target rich environment for this kind of delusional elitism.
Expect a lot more Californians going on Joe Rogan and making up tall tales about how the fire was caused by poors and illegals stealing all the good firefighting water, while the state refused help for some arcane bureaucratic reasons related to The Fairness Doctrine.
Nevermind that there is a legitimate argument that deregulation made the fire as bad as it is.
Because one of the things deregulated in the LA area was the building of homes in high fire risk areas. like the ones currently on fire.
The California water system is a dense web of legal contracts between public and private interests. Bad policy made the fires worse, as the central valley was transformed from an ecological paradise into a dried up scrubland. But the idea that California ever really had regulations to prevent these wildfires is naive.
Fires are running straight up to the Malibu coastline. High risk areas have been expanding with the repetitive droughts and the large agricultural developments of cash crops. You've got buildings going up in flames that were perfectly safe to live in 20 or 30 years ago.
Nothing the California state government had done up to this point was preventing the degradation of the local ecology. They're just at the end of their rope.
Not of the ecology. Deregulation of building codes.
You've got buildings on fire that have been standing for half a century. The high winds and brush fires aren't a result of the building codes. They're the result of perennial drought and the accumulation of flammable materials in the dust-bowls surrounding LA County.
These articles are where I am basing my opinion from. Note that in the 2nd one, the fires originated in and are either in or on the border of state-designated high risk fire zones.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-11/fire-experts-asses-los-angeles-blazes-amid-changing-times
https://truthout.org/articles/how-big-developers-crushed-regulation-that-could-have-mitigated-la-fires/
The Palisades fires alone stretched over 20,000 acres. They weren't confined to a subset of high risk zones. The argument put forward in the article
Is specious at best. 100 mph winds, miles of parched territory, and multiple simultaneous blazes meant these fires were coming even in the relatively safe areas. In the same way that Hurricane Harvey flooded vulnerable and insulated neighborhoods alike, these fires are a bigger problem than the edge cases you're making them out to be.