The people that get paid off indirect funds are the secretaries, maintenance workers, security guards, HVAC techs etc. It’s the pool of money that pays for the blue collar stuff, and that’s who they will have to lay off.

Building codes matter. All of SoCal lives on the San Andreas fault, but we have earthquake building codes that mitigate potential losses. WUI building codes only went into effect in CA in 2007, so older homes were not built to resist fire. New homes are much more resistant thanks to better science.

Why am I making this point? Because as usual, the discussion over "letting people live in high fire risk areas" has begun. It's my job to point out that people have lived here for millennia, and because they knew the fire risk, they managed the fuel. Limited fuel = limited fire.

This is not a forest. You can't just rake the leaves. It's a shrubland that used to be a lot more grassland when it was burned by the original Indigenous people and grazed during the ranching era. With climate change, increasing drought that intersects with Santa Ana winds is the recipe for fire.

Over time, vegetation grew. Fires burned, again and again, but not everywhere because we suppressed them. Recreational users liked being in nature with tall shrubs and trees along canyon bottoms to block out the hot sun. Homeowners liked nature and privacy, and they planted landscaping that matched.

Until the 1960s, much of Santa Monica Mountains was still ranched, including what is now Topanga State Park that surrounds Pacific Palisades. Ranching is an active land use where grazing animals consume fine fuels and reduce shrub growth. That stopped when the SMMNRA and Topanga SP were established.

So what's different this time? Why the disaster? Most homes in Pacific Palisades are 40-100 years old, why haven't they burned before? Two key factors: heavy fuel load from changing land use and decades of effective fire suppression, and an extremely strong, very dry Santa Ana and anomalous drought.