#palisades-fire

#palisades-fire

Commander Helen Flanagan stated, 'At this stage last night's arson is not being linked to other incidents in the north-west London area over the last week or last month's arson in Golders Green but counter terrorism officers are leading due to the similarities of each attack.'

Minden Hills has been under a state of emergency since Tuesday, with flooding affecting homes and roads, and the local arena being converted into an evacuation center.

PG&E confirmed that a gas leak had occurred near that location. A spokesperson, Tamar Sarkissian, told us that a PG&E crew was on-site by 11:15 p.m. the night of April 9 and after working for about two hours, stopped the flow of gas as 'safely and as quickly as possible' - by 1:32 a.m. Friday morning.

Research from the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety consistently identifies wind-borne embers, firebrands carried well ahead of the fire front, as a dominant cause of residential structure loss in wildfires.

What I observed was not simply a difficult fire under extreme conditions, Butler said. It was the predictable outcome of a breakdown in leadership, preparedness and command discipline. Firefighters were forced to improvise without adequate resources, unified command or consistent safety oversight. This was not a failure of effort by firefighters. It was a failure of leadership above them.

One year ago, Nancy Ward, then the director of the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), petitioned the Federal Emergency Management Agency to spearhead the cleanup of toxic ash and fire debris cloaking more than 12,000 homes across Los Angeles County. Although Ward's decision ensured the federal government would assume the bulk of disaster costs, it came with a major trade off.

A week later, powerful Santa Ana winds arrived, picked up some bits of rubber from one of the tractor's scorched tires and carried them over the containment area into dry vegetation, bringing the fire back to life, according to investigators. The subsequent blaze, the Mountain fire, burned nearly 20,000 acres and destroyed roughly 250 homes and structures in Camarillo Hills and nearby communities in western Ventura County.