Pali Fire Plus 6 Months

It’s the sixth month anniversary of the Palisades Fire.

Nine lives and 68 hundred houses were lost in Pacific Palisades and Malibu.

Within Malibu city limits … 720 houses burned … about half of them on the beach.

Add together the three recent fires … that’s 14 hundred houses burned … roughly one fourth of the homes in this city of 10 thousand people.  

Today … Governor Gavin Newsom will be in the area to make news …. Taking credit for what’s been done … and talk about more state efforts.

Politicians are lining up to say more needs to be done.

Developer Rick Caruso was on channel 7 this morning … taking thinly veiled swipes at the recovery effort.

CARUSO 71377

“The whole region is part of my community.

“We had a home in Malibu … we are part of our Malibu community for years, and years and years.

“And Altadena is a big member of our community out in the Glendale community, and so I feel very connected to those communties.

“And they need help.”

Caruso was speaking with ABC7.

And now … comes fire weather. 

The thick weeds and grass in the Santa Monica Mountains are still somewhat green on the Malibu side of the mountains …. waiting for the summer heat to toast them brown. 

That toasting heat is forecast to arrive Wednesday. 

High pressure currently centered will push dry air and heat from the desert to the sea. 

Many areas will be around 5 to 10 degrees above normal. 

Temperatures are most likely to peak at 95-103 degrees for inland valleys and near 90 for inland coastal areas including Downtown LA.

Humidity will be low .. air will be dry.

Winds …. however … will not be coming at us from the mountains. 

Crowd Leaves Early: Point Dume Exit Road Empty At 6pm On July 4th, Missing Laser Show

The Fourth of July was relatively quiet in Malibu. 

In fact … the city was virtually empty to beach visitors by 6pm.

At six o clock on the holiday … there were zero cars waiting to turn up Kanan Dume Road at the PCH signal. 

At Nobu … a typical Friday night crowd of black SUVs jockeying to drop off guests … blocking traffic lanes on PCH

Bit nothing like the wild parties of the years past.

Tye coastal fog crept in and blocked the view of the fireworks shows in Redondo Beach and Marine del Rey.

The talk of the town this years was the weekend laser light show on the coastal horizon. 

For three nights … a set of six bright light projectors sent multicolored beams out to sea from a house on Point Dume. 

Artist Yvette Mattern had applied for a permit to use the Malibu Pier as the rainbow’s end.

But the city did not grant the last minute application. 

Instead … a private house near the tip of Point Dume was used to host the six bright laser projectors. 

Most Malibu residents were enchanted.

City arts commissioner Pamela Conley Ulich called it “precious and sacred.”

In her words … “A visual prayer for a future where love, not fear, leads us forward?”

A lot of people found it very spiritual. 

Some were less than enthralled. 

Bright lasers aimed out to sea can cause death for seabirds … they said.

It’s not illegal to shine laser lights out to sea … as far as we know. 

There were very few guests … so as near as we can tell … it did not trigger a temporary use permit requirement. 

No pyrotechnics … so no fire department permit.

Madre Fire Is Now Largest This Year In California

A huge fire 60 miles north of Santa Barbara has now become the largest fire of the year in California.

Dry grass and weeds … sustained wind … and high temperatures have spread the Madre Fire across 80 thousand acres since it started Wednesday.

It’s burning between Santa Maria and the Carrizo Plain .. generally north of Highway 166.  It’s burning on federal land.

Last night … 15 hundred firefighters reported making made good progress around the outer perimeter of the fire, creating direct and indirect lines, and increased containment to 30 percent.

Fire danger will grow this week in Malibu.

High pressure currently centered over Arizona and New Mexico strengthens and noses into the SoCal region will mean warming will occur across the entire region

This heat spell will peak on Wednesday and Thursday.

Temperatures are most likely to peak at 95-103 degrees for inland valleys, 100-105 across the deserts and near 90 for inland coastal areas including Downtown LA.

Off Road Vehicle Clipped Car’s Bumper Before Fatal Plunge

Sheriff’s traffic investigators say the driver of a small off-road vehicle … which went off a cliff and killed her … was killed as a result off driving too fast down the very steep canyon road.

The crash last Wednesday killed 29-year-old Sophia Hutchins … the business manager and close friend to Caitlyn Jenner … a Malibu celebrity. 

Her Polaris was speeding down the 10 percent downhill grade on Decker Canyon Road … just below Jenner’s clifftop house … 

Above the steep switchback curves …  the Polaris clipped the back of a sedan and then plunged 350 feet down a cliff.

It came to rest on top of an old wreck …. rusted out … from years ago. 

A sheriff’s investigator says “It looks like she may have been speeding and rear-ended the other car, the other party, and then that caused her to veer to the right and go off the cliff.

Hutchins was a Pepperdine University graduate … who had publicly campaigned for Donald Trump in the last election. 

No Cause Yet For SCE’s Embarrassing Power Outage During Ex-President’s Trip

Last week’s embarrassing power outage in Malibu was yet another black eye for Southern California Edison … the electric delivery company that has a terrible service record in Malibu.

This time … former president Joe Biden was among those left in the dark.

The July 3rd outage was the second blackout within a week on the trouble-plagued Cuthbert Circuit.

23 hundred 96 customer accounts in the Point Dume and Paradise Cove area were blacked out at 6:37.

Traffic signals at PCH and Heathercliff were not functioning … the Caltrans batteries apparently failed … cars were observed whizzing thru the alleged three way stop at 50 miles per hour.

That set of power lines is going to be put underground. 

But almost half of it is already underground … and underground wires may be less reliable than wires up on poles.

Electrical engineers say finding malfunctions in underground cables is much more difficult than overhead … and repair is more difficult and well.

And that’s what happened Thursday night.

Southern California Edison workers say they had difficulty finding the bad wires … and it took longer than usual to restore service … 

About half of the customers got their power restored after about 2 hours … and full service came back just before 10.

There was no word of any cause. 

It was just one week ago that the same type of blackout happened in the same place. 

That outage affected about 25 hundred customers … Thursday night … about 24 hundred customers.

City Council Votes To Ask For Power Conservations Measures To Be Shelved

Malibu’s city council has voted to tell the governor that anything smacking of energy efficiency should be stripped from the state building code … as far as it applies to rebuilding fire-destroyed houses.

Malibu asked that requirement for energy efficiency … solar panels and batteries … a ban on natural gas …  all be stripped from the building code for homes being rebuilt after the fire.

Cost council members said it was more important to make rebuilding as cheap as possible. 

The governor has asked Malibu … how the state building code could be changed to make rebuilding fire damaged Malibu easier. 

The Malibu city staff scrambled to come up with a quick answer to the governor’s question.

City planning boss Yolanda Bundy proposed eliminating the requirement for solar panels and batteries on fire rebuilds. 

Also … to reduce energy conservation requirements on rebuilds … again to reduce costs for people who have run out of insurance money to rebuild. 

Council members said they were confused by what the governor asked … and why they were being given a tight response window. 

Bruce Silverstein …

BRUCE DEADLINE 71374

“I don’t know if we are being told we need this by next week, or by two weeks from now.

“We are doing this in the abstract.”

Silverstein also expressed unhappiness that the city building safety official … Yolanda Bundy … made the request to ease the building code.

BRUCE YOLANDA 71375

“I think the world of Yolanda.

“I was one of the biggest supporters of elevating her to the position that she is in now.

“Yolanda focuses on the code that exists and how to comply with it, not on what should the code provide.

“That’s our job.

“The people who are charged with enforcing the code and making sure it is complied with, really are not the ones to be running the show as to what whether the easing should occur or shouldn’t occur.

“Their input is important but the final decision needs to be here. “

Mayor Marianne Riggins … however … argued that the building code changes are really important … right now… to people making plans to rebuild.

She said building code requirements for green energy are wrong … too costly for people trying to rebuild in Malibu.

RIGGINS BLDG CODE 71376

“The high ticket items, that some of the aspirational things are with the photovoltaic backup batteries, heat pumps, the desire to go for all electric homes, those all add costs to people right now when they try to design their homes.

“But I believe this document now is focusing in on ‘the building code.’ ” 

In the end … the city council unanimously voted to ask the governor’s office to jettison everything in the state building code that smacks of green energy … energy efficiency … or anything else that would add to the cost of rebuilding a burned house. 

City Council May Move Meetings To 2pm

Malibu may move its city council meetings to 2 p-m.

The City Council often has very full agendas and has historically had long meetings that cause important items to be considered very late in the evening. 

That’s a problem … says the city clerk … Kelsey Pettijohn.

She recommends some amnjor changes … that go before the city council for discussion one week from Monday …  July 14th.

Now that people may testify via computers … the old logic of having city council meetings at night … to allow people to attend after work … makes little sense. 

The city staff is recommending that the city speed up its hours long meetings by starting them at 2 in the afternoon.

They recommend that people no longer be allowed to show videos or slides during the call to the public. 

They recommend that people continue to be allowed to participate via their computers …. But only if they sign up to speak in advance of the meeting.

And perhaps most controversially … the city staff recommends moving public comment for items not on the agenda … to the end of the meeting.

And eliminate time deferrals.

And those lengthy zoning appeals … which drag on for hours and hours as neighbors and consultants battle it out over who gets to build what?

Move those to special meetings with nothing else on the agenda.

All these possibilities will got before the city council next Monday night. 

KBUU Knocked Off Air By SCE Outage

A note about this radio station.

Last Thursday night’s SCE blackout caused problems with Internet and cellular communications. 

Some routers were scrambled … including the commercial carriers that KBUU relies on to carry our audio up to our transmitters. 

Two of our three transmitters were silent for more than 24 hours due to the outage.   Our batteries and solar panels are useless if communications companies go dark, due to SCE.

The radio station engineers have investigated satellite links … like Starlink …. bypassing the local fiber optic services.

The problem is … there is a satellite delay with Starlink that may be incompatible with KBUU’s equipment. … which relies on three synchronized FM transmitters.

And other radio stations using Starlink are reporting other configuration problems.  

There are other satellite companies than Starlink, that are are proving to be more reliable. 

We are testing a satellite connection to our easternmost Bluffs transmitter … as of now … the results are sketchy.