What’s Wrong With a Private Firefighter?
An update on the fires: So far 24 people are known to have died in the fires burning in and around Los Angeles, while at least 16 people remain missing. Over 38,000 acres have burned, more than two and a half times the size of Manhattan. Though the winds calmed for a portion of the weekend, they are expected to pick up again this week, making it even harder to contain the Palisades and Eaton fires, which are 13 percent and 27 percent contained, respectively. Meteorologists predict that the winds will recede by Thursday, but fire crews continue to struggle to get the blazes under control. The water system is still struggling to keep up with demand.
In the Pacific Palisades, “water is collected in a reservoir that pumps into three high-elevation storage tanks, each with a capacity of about one million gallons,” notes The New York Times. “Water then flows by gravity into homes and fire hydrants.” But the storage tanks were depleted rather quickly, given the scale of the disaster, and the extreme winds have repeatedly prevented aerial drops by helicopter or plane.
A lot of the damage could have been prevented with proper management ahead of time. “When you study the destruction in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, note what didn’t burn—unconsumed tree canopies adjacent to totally destroyed homes,” wildfire expert Jack Cohen told the Los Angeles Times. “The sequence of destruction is commonly assumed to occur in some kind of organized spreading flame front—a tsunami of super-heated gases—but it doesn’t happen that way. In high-density development, scattered burning homes spread to their neighbors and so on. Ignitions downwind and across streets are typically from showers of burning embers from burning structures.”
What this means, the newspaper explains, is that proper management is not really about preventing wildfires “but instead preventing points of ignition within communities by employing ‘home-hardening’ strategies—proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding—and enjoining neighbors in collective efforts such as brush clearing.”
Private firefighter controversy: Some Angelenos anticipated something like this happening and paid for private firefighting services or called them in as the fires escalated. Now those people—who, by using private services, freed up scarce firefighting resources to go work on other houses—are being skewered all over the internet. What exactly should they have done? Waited for their houses to burn down while sitting on their hands?
Private firms to the rescue in LA:
Private firefighters. pic.twitter.com/1Q4WJh1wQ3— The Alex Nowrasteh (@AlexNowrasteh) January 11, 2025
Developer (and failed 2022 mayoral candidate) Rick Caruso is one of the people who called in firefighting services. He owns Palisades Village, an upscale shopping mall, and deployed private firefighters from Arizona, as well as water trucks, to save his property. Other Palisades residents have been availing themselves of this service too. Scorn has followed:
“private firefighters” it’s been nice knowing everyone but there truly is no hope for the future https://t.co/60fD1aTSKZ
— madison (@altmadaf) January 9, 2025
Back in 2018, when Kim Kardashian and Kanye West used such services to protect their $50 million Hidden Hills mansion, angry internet mobs condemned them. The family staved off the criticism by noting that the private firefighting crews they had hired also saved the homes of their neighbors.
In London, in the 18th and 19th centuries, this type of practice was commonplace: Each insurance company kept their own firefighting crew, which would be deployed to protect the p
Article from Reason.com
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