To the editor: Regardless that the acute fireplace warnings that preceded the Palisades and Eaton fires prolonged from Santa Barbara to San Diego and included Riverside and San Bernardino counties, the one large-scale lack of lives and property occurred within the Los Angeles space. (“L.A. fire officials could have put engines in the Palisades before the fire broke out. They didn’t,” Jan. 14)
With this stark actuality, and to reduce the potential for additional, wide-scale tragedy, an unbiased fee of consultants must be shaped instantly to research the next:
- Have been the winds that occurred in L.A. a lot stronger and punishing as to make comparability to the outcomes in different counties meaningless?
- Was L.A. County extra susceptible than different areas as a consequence of elements reminiscent of distinctive topography, poorer brush and land administration and homeless encampments close to flammable areas?
- Have been first responders hampered extra so in L.A. than elsewhere by understaffing, poor or unavailable tools, inadequate water and poor advance planning?
Given the regarding details which have already emerged, attending to the underside of questions reminiscent of these must be seen as crucial and never dismissed as finger-pointing.
Russ Swartz, Granada Hills
..
To the editor: I pause in studying the most recent dispatches from smoldering embers. I wrestle to border a coherent response.
Phrases have failed me.
Wordless.
Speechless.
Frederick Miller, Los Angeles
..
To the editor: If the elected and appointed officers of the Los Angeles space had been company workers, they might be terminated.
My son’s residence in Altadena was leveled within the fireplace. There was no warning in any respect, no fireplace equipment in sight, and he was lucky sufficient to flee forward of the flames. He has misplaced the whole lot together with numerous others. Some paid the last word worth, being consumed by the inferno.
We knew this was coming. The Santa Ana winds and rainless winter ought to have been clue for metropolis and county officers to arrange for the worst.
It’s time for a change in management in any respect ranges. We’re hurting and fed up.
Kevin Collopy, Mission Viejo
..
To the editor: I spent 60-plus years in hurricane nation. Disasters have phases:
- Panic.
- Seek for the responsible.
- Punishment for the harmless.
- Reward and honors for nonparticipants.
- Guarantees to repair the causes.
- New priorities.
- Repeat.
Parrish Hirasaki, Culver Metropolis
