Despite all that is happening.. I see Best Friends and Wings of Rescue are both busy fundraising off this disaster. We know that Wings of Rescue has a long history is flying animals out of disasters FAST (hurricanes, tornados, floods and fires) to overcrowded HIGH KILL SHELTERS. And raising millions in the process. Please donate to actual organizations who are on the ground before, during and AFTER the fire.
I agree, Christine. I'm beginning to see all the usual organizations seeking to fundraise off this effort and not all of them have proven to be doing anything truly significant to help with rescue, treatment, or safer placement. I'm familiar with the Lange Foundation, and I also see Pasadena Humane Society and Wildlife Care of SoCal doing some great work.
First, a comment relayed from the Normal Fire Department in Normal, Illinois, which, speaking as a former firefighter in both Alaska & Quebec, strikes me as much better informed than anything coming out of the Los Angeles area or political offices lately:
"By now, you have undoubtedly seen the devastation of the wildfires in California this week. It's hard to imagine the situation that they are facing, but this may help put it in perspective.
"The last estimate of the Palisades fire shows more than 31.2 square miles completely destroyed. That's 2.40 times the size of the Town of Normal.
"The systems needed to fight a fire on this scale do not exist. No municipal water supply is designed to handle the kind of strain that the firefighting efforts in California are putting on it.
"When a fire hydrant is opened, it takes a large volume of water out of the system rapidly, which affects the remaining supply and lowers the available pressure elsewhere. Eventually, the pumps that refill the tanks won't be able to keep up with the water that is being pumped out and pressure will drop.
"This is an area larger than the corporate limits of the Town of Normal with thousands of structures burning simultaneously. That's what they're fighting with out there... Not to mention the 80+MPH winds creating a firestorm through homes and dry vegetation.
"Firefighting on the ground is virtually impossible in this scenario, and the aerial tankers (planes and helicopters that drop water and retardant) initially couldn't fly due to the high winds.
"This fire is eight times larger than the Great Chicago Fire. It's a disaster on a scale that is just hard to comprehend. We are thinking of all of the firefighters, and everyone trying to mitigate this disaster, and our sympathies go out to the lives lost, and those that have lost everything."
Second, a journalistic fact of life, paraphrased from a leading academic journalist:
"Some years ago, we co-hosted a journalism workshop on campus during which there was a hypothetical scenario presented involving a catastrophic wildfire hitting a major city. With the exception of two science writers in the room, the overwhelming majority of the 30+ reporters spent their time for questions looking under rocks for villains and scurrilous politicians. Only the science reporters were asking about the facts
of the wildfire situation."
My 2¢ about why this was, and is now in Los Angeles:
1) We are great apes, and great apes will always watch a fight more readily than study a problem. Of the other great apes, orangutans are most likely to study a problem; chimps, one of our two closest relatives, are more likely to study ways and means of winning a fight; bonobos, our other closest relatives, will study a problem only if they don't have the opportunity to either have sex or watch someone having sex.
E.g., conflict & sex are what our readers/viewers most want, and what interests most reporters most, too.
2) Most reporters break in covering politics or sports, i.e. in win/lose situations.
3) If we do succeed in getting a story about complex issues on page one or the top of the TV news, the editor or anchor person will demand (sometimes on camera, live), "Who's to blame?"
Someone has to be blamed. That's rule #1 of great ape behavior in a crisis. If no one can be blamed, you get social disorder, because if leaders can't blame someone, they get deposed.
And now to the realities of the blaming.
What Beth & I are seeing, in days of combing social media for updates on the animal aspects of the Los Angeles fires, are zillions of posts denying that either global warming, weather, or geography had anything to do with any of it, that it was/is all the fault of (pick one) the Jews; Gavin Newsom; a gay female fire chief; lack of logging in the Angeles National Forest, which never had any timber to begin with; the snail darter (a tiny fish that lives only in Tennessee); the Delta smelt, another tiny fish, now believed to be extinct in the wild, whose conservation status never did have anything to do with the Los Angeles water supply); liberals, actually seldom seen in southern California; Mexicans; the homeless; & practically any other possible target except Mickey Mouse.
Mickey still seems to be in favor. But telling people not to rebuild on heaps of cinders that have already burned over multiple times in the past 70 years is not, let alone telling them how to rebuild, for example using rooftop solar for electricity instead of rebuilding overhead high voltage power lines that have already fallen down X-number of times in strong winds, producing showers of sparks.
Mickey was already telling folks to go solar 63 years ago, when my brother Ted & I visited Tomorrowland. But Goofy still seems to be governing energy policy.
And now, finally, a word about "controlled burns." I helped to put out several wildfires caused by "controlled burns" that got out of hand when the wind unexpectedly picked up or changed direction. "Controlled burns" in dry, windy habitat are at best a theory, not a safely executed reality on any but the smallest, most confined scale.
What is a reality, easily visible from the fire maps, is that the major source of the Los Angeles catastrophe is fire spreading house-to-house, because houses are not constructed with preventing fire risk in mind. Preventing fire risk means no open flame sources indoors, i.e. no gas stoves or water heaters or fireplaces or woodstoves; steel or ceramic tile roofs, not tar & gravel or wooden shingles; stucco or flame-resistant siding, not vinyl; and no vegetation overhanging roofs; and no vegetation right up against exterior walls. Much of this has been known at least since Roman times, & is why Nero didn't succeed in burning all of Rome.
Nero did succeed in blaming Christians for his catastrophic fire. But it wasn't really Nero to blame for the fire, though he could & should have been blamed for quite a lot. It was Romans more interested in circuses than in building with intelligent respect for their natural environment, exactly as we have seen in Los Angeles for 200 years.
Last, from Harold Meyerson:
"Chapter Three of Mike Davis’s 'Ecology of Fear,' published in 1998, is entitled 'The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.' It begins by noting that L.A.’s pre-European residents, the Chumash and Tongva Indians, annually set small fires in the hills of Pacific Palisades and Malibu to clear out the brush that would explode if left in place. [Note that this was before any nearby cities existed.] Davis notes that Richard Henry Dana wrote in his seafaring classic 'Two Years Before the Mast' that when he first sailed up the California coast in 1826, he saw a fire engulfing Topanga Canyon. Davis then documents the thirteen fires that had burned at least ten thousand acres in the Santa Monica Mountains just west of the Palisades between 1930 and 1996. Davis makes a compelling case that the dry hills surrounding Los Angeles, running from Pasadena in the east to Malibu in the west, will regularly ignite when the Santa Ana winds blow, and that building houses in those hills all but guarantees that many of those houses will burn, particularly when those winds soar above fifty miles per hour."
The Normal Fire Department’s observations underscore the immense challenges of combating California wildfires, from overwhelmed water systems to high winds grounding aerial support. Their perspective highlights the scale of destruction, but the issue runs deeper than firefighting capacity. Decades of inadequate preparation—poor land use planning, insufficient fire-resistant building codes, and failure to adopt Indigenous fire management practices—have left communities vulnerable.
Similarly, journalists’ focus on blame misses the larger systemic issues. Fires spreading house-to-house, fueled by flammable building materials and poor vegetation management, reflect long-standing neglect of fire-resilient urban planning. Controlled burns, though challenging, could have mitigated risk if properly executed, and transitioning to safer infrastructure, such as underground utilities, has been ignored for decades. Criticism is valid, but the solution lies in addressing these root causes with long-term strategies rather than reactive measures.
For instance, the Getty Museum is a prime example of effective fire-hardening strategies. Its design incorporates non-flammable materials like travertine stone, concrete, and steel, along with fire-resistant landscaping, creating defensible space. Sophisticated air filtration systems protect the interior from smoke, while a dedicated water reservoir ensures firefighting capabilities. This proactive approach starkly contrasts with the flammable building materials and vegetation common in many Los Angeles neighborhoods, which have exacerbated wildfire damage.
Also, had Los Angeles invested in desalination technology similar to Israel’s, the region could have bolstered its water supply, alleviating strain on municipal systems during fire emergencies. Desalinated water could be stored in dedicated reservoirs for firefighting, reducing dependency on overstretched infrastructure. This would also have supported controlled burns and reforestation efforts by ensuring a steady water source, further mitigating wildfire risks. These missed opportunities highlight the need for long-term resilience planning, integrating fire-safe infrastructure and sustainable water management.
Despite all that is happening.. I see Best Friends and Wings of Rescue are both busy fundraising off this disaster. We know that Wings of Rescue has a long history is flying animals out of disasters FAST (hurricanes, tornados, floods and fires) to overcrowded HIGH KILL SHELTERS. And raising millions in the process. Please donate to actual organizations who are on the ground before, during and AFTER the fire.
❤️In LA , here are 2 super
reputable organizations
🐾 WAGS and WALKS
🐾 LANGE Foundation
Both boots on the ground NOW!
Stay safe.
I agree, Christine. I'm beginning to see all the usual organizations seeking to fundraise off this effort and not all of them have proven to be doing anything truly significant to help with rescue, treatment, or safer placement. I'm familiar with the Lange Foundation, and I also see Pasadena Humane Society and Wildlife Care of SoCal doing some great work.
First, a comment relayed from the Normal Fire Department in Normal, Illinois, which, speaking as a former firefighter in both Alaska & Quebec, strikes me as much better informed than anything coming out of the Los Angeles area or political offices lately:
"By now, you have undoubtedly seen the devastation of the wildfires in California this week. It's hard to imagine the situation that they are facing, but this may help put it in perspective.
"The last estimate of the Palisades fire shows more than 31.2 square miles completely destroyed. That's 2.40 times the size of the Town of Normal.
"The systems needed to fight a fire on this scale do not exist. No municipal water supply is designed to handle the kind of strain that the firefighting efforts in California are putting on it.
"When a fire hydrant is opened, it takes a large volume of water out of the system rapidly, which affects the remaining supply and lowers the available pressure elsewhere. Eventually, the pumps that refill the tanks won't be able to keep up with the water that is being pumped out and pressure will drop.
"This is an area larger than the corporate limits of the Town of Normal with thousands of structures burning simultaneously. That's what they're fighting with out there... Not to mention the 80+MPH winds creating a firestorm through homes and dry vegetation.
"Firefighting on the ground is virtually impossible in this scenario, and the aerial tankers (planes and helicopters that drop water and retardant) initially couldn't fly due to the high winds.
"This fire is eight times larger than the Great Chicago Fire. It's a disaster on a scale that is just hard to comprehend. We are thinking of all of the firefighters, and everyone trying to mitigate this disaster, and our sympathies go out to the lives lost, and those that have lost everything."
Second, a journalistic fact of life, paraphrased from a leading academic journalist:
"Some years ago, we co-hosted a journalism workshop on campus during which there was a hypothetical scenario presented involving a catastrophic wildfire hitting a major city. With the exception of two science writers in the room, the overwhelming majority of the 30+ reporters spent their time for questions looking under rocks for villains and scurrilous politicians. Only the science reporters were asking about the facts
of the wildfire situation."
My 2¢ about why this was, and is now in Los Angeles:
1) We are great apes, and great apes will always watch a fight more readily than study a problem. Of the other great apes, orangutans are most likely to study a problem; chimps, one of our two closest relatives, are more likely to study ways and means of winning a fight; bonobos, our other closest relatives, will study a problem only if they don't have the opportunity to either have sex or watch someone having sex.
E.g., conflict & sex are what our readers/viewers most want, and what interests most reporters most, too.
2) Most reporters break in covering politics or sports, i.e. in win/lose situations.
3) If we do succeed in getting a story about complex issues on page one or the top of the TV news, the editor or anchor person will demand (sometimes on camera, live), "Who's to blame?"
Someone has to be blamed. That's rule #1 of great ape behavior in a crisis. If no one can be blamed, you get social disorder, because if leaders can't blame someone, they get deposed.
And now to the realities of the blaming.
What Beth & I are seeing, in days of combing social media for updates on the animal aspects of the Los Angeles fires, are zillions of posts denying that either global warming, weather, or geography had anything to do with any of it, that it was/is all the fault of (pick one) the Jews; Gavin Newsom; a gay female fire chief; lack of logging in the Angeles National Forest, which never had any timber to begin with; the snail darter (a tiny fish that lives only in Tennessee); the Delta smelt, another tiny fish, now believed to be extinct in the wild, whose conservation status never did have anything to do with the Los Angeles water supply); liberals, actually seldom seen in southern California; Mexicans; the homeless; & practically any other possible target except Mickey Mouse.
Mickey still seems to be in favor. But telling people not to rebuild on heaps of cinders that have already burned over multiple times in the past 70 years is not, let alone telling them how to rebuild, for example using rooftop solar for electricity instead of rebuilding overhead high voltage power lines that have already fallen down X-number of times in strong winds, producing showers of sparks.
Mickey was already telling folks to go solar 63 years ago, when my brother Ted & I visited Tomorrowland. But Goofy still seems to be governing energy policy.
And now, finally, a word about "controlled burns." I helped to put out several wildfires caused by "controlled burns" that got out of hand when the wind unexpectedly picked up or changed direction. "Controlled burns" in dry, windy habitat are at best a theory, not a safely executed reality on any but the smallest, most confined scale.
What is a reality, easily visible from the fire maps, is that the major source of the Los Angeles catastrophe is fire spreading house-to-house, because houses are not constructed with preventing fire risk in mind. Preventing fire risk means no open flame sources indoors, i.e. no gas stoves or water heaters or fireplaces or woodstoves; steel or ceramic tile roofs, not tar & gravel or wooden shingles; stucco or flame-resistant siding, not vinyl; and no vegetation overhanging roofs; and no vegetation right up against exterior walls. Much of this has been known at least since Roman times, & is why Nero didn't succeed in burning all of Rome.
Nero did succeed in blaming Christians for his catastrophic fire. But it wasn't really Nero to blame for the fire, though he could & should have been blamed for quite a lot. It was Romans more interested in circuses than in building with intelligent respect for their natural environment, exactly as we have seen in Los Angeles for 200 years.
Last, from Harold Meyerson:
"Chapter Three of Mike Davis’s 'Ecology of Fear,' published in 1998, is entitled 'The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.' It begins by noting that L.A.’s pre-European residents, the Chumash and Tongva Indians, annually set small fires in the hills of Pacific Palisades and Malibu to clear out the brush that would explode if left in place. [Note that this was before any nearby cities existed.] Davis notes that Richard Henry Dana wrote in his seafaring classic 'Two Years Before the Mast' that when he first sailed up the California coast in 1826, he saw a fire engulfing Topanga Canyon. Davis then documents the thirteen fires that had burned at least ten thousand acres in the Santa Monica Mountains just west of the Palisades between 1930 and 1996. Davis makes a compelling case that the dry hills surrounding Los Angeles, running from Pasadena in the east to Malibu in the west, will regularly ignite when the Santa Ana winds blow, and that building houses in those hills all but guarantees that many of those houses will burn, particularly when those winds soar above fifty miles per hour."
The Normal Fire Department’s observations underscore the immense challenges of combating California wildfires, from overwhelmed water systems to high winds grounding aerial support. Their perspective highlights the scale of destruction, but the issue runs deeper than firefighting capacity. Decades of inadequate preparation—poor land use planning, insufficient fire-resistant building codes, and failure to adopt Indigenous fire management practices—have left communities vulnerable.
Similarly, journalists’ focus on blame misses the larger systemic issues. Fires spreading house-to-house, fueled by flammable building materials and poor vegetation management, reflect long-standing neglect of fire-resilient urban planning. Controlled burns, though challenging, could have mitigated risk if properly executed, and transitioning to safer infrastructure, such as underground utilities, has been ignored for decades. Criticism is valid, but the solution lies in addressing these root causes with long-term strategies rather than reactive measures.
For instance, the Getty Museum is a prime example of effective fire-hardening strategies. Its design incorporates non-flammable materials like travertine stone, concrete, and steel, along with fire-resistant landscaping, creating defensible space. Sophisticated air filtration systems protect the interior from smoke, while a dedicated water reservoir ensures firefighting capabilities. This proactive approach starkly contrasts with the flammable building materials and vegetation common in many Los Angeles neighborhoods, which have exacerbated wildfire damage.
Also, had Los Angeles invested in desalination technology similar to Israel’s, the region could have bolstered its water supply, alleviating strain on municipal systems during fire emergencies. Desalinated water could be stored in dedicated reservoirs for firefighting, reducing dependency on overstretched infrastructure. This would also have supported controlled burns and reforestation efforts by ensuring a steady water source, further mitigating wildfire risks. These missed opportunities highlight the need for long-term resilience planning, integrating fire-safe infrastructure and sustainable water management.
Thank you for addressing the totality of loss including biodiversity and impacts to wildlife.