Fire in the LA canyons; an analysis beyond the news

I’ll keep it simple because it is

The LA fires. This is a stellar example of Big Government claiming their prime ability is PLANNING…and then getting the plan completely wrong.

Many years ago, I lived in a tiny annex next to a house at the north end of Bel Air. I did work around the place in exchange for rent.

One day I was taking some leaves out of the pool, and I heard cracking sounds from a small wooded area at the edge of the lawn. I walked over there, and found two guys from the house next door hacking away at brush and tall weeds with long knives.

They looked up and saw me, and one of them said, “Fires. We have clear this stuff away.”

That’s the story in all of Bel Air, and in all the other canyons of the city. There are many canyons.

It’s not just brush. It’s thick forest, too. Trees.

As I wrote in a previous article citing an authentic assessment, you need to do controlled burns of trees in every canyon of the city every year—throughout a million to two million acres.

It creates necessary fire breaks, to keep fires from spreading.

It’s never been done adequately in the history of LA.

So you therefore have an untenable situation. You can’t prevent fires from moving through the city.

And fires are frequent.

Today, in 2025, there is only one make-do solution. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best strategy you can come up with: