"The fire-prone areas of Malibu, he noted, might have been a publicly owned and managed park, had Frederick Law Olmsted Jr had his way. The architect had proposed turning much of the Santa Monica Mountains into public land. Instead the area remained privatized and isolationist, a playground for developers and homeowners’ associations.
And each new house built higher into the hills further socialized the risks and privatized the area’s gorgeous benefits. The one morsel tossed to the broader public – typical for the region – was the Pacific Coast Highway, which
“gave Angelenos their first view of the magnificent Malibu coast”.
As Davis noted, it also “introduced a potent new fire-fuse – the automobile – into the landscape”.
,"his essay pairs Malibu – “the wildfire capital of North America and, possibly, the world”, as Davis remarks – with Westlake, which led the rest of America in “urban fire incidence”.
In an essay called Dead Cities: A Natural History, Davis pointed to the role that arson played in remaking many of the urban centers further east.
But LA didn’t need arsonists. It had lax fire codes,
homeowners’ associations constitutively hostile to apartments and apartment dwellers – and the Santa Ana winds."
"This week, nearly 800 incarcerated firefighters battle the deadly flames for a daily rate ranging from
$5.80 to $10.24 (plus $1 for active emergencies, apparently).
All this while billionaires use social media to angrily demand why their water is running out and where their tax dollars have been going.
Private firefighters have been protecting their clients’ houses using public hydrants.
Other services are sent out by the large insurance companies. "
"What do you do with a region that has long fixated on the apocalypticism that slumbers in its everyday, at a moment when the apocalypse becomes normalized the world over?"
"Joan Didion and Mike Davis understood LA through its fires. Even they couldn’t predict this week"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/11/joan-didion-mike-davis-los-angeles-fires
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https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/11479099/9223322547978034463
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/11479099/9223322547978034463
Path 65
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In the 1950s, blacklisted actor Will Geer had to sell his large Santa Monica home and move his family to a small plot in the canyon where they could grow their own produce.
Geer's friend Woody Guthrie had a small shack on the property.
They unintentionally founded what became an artists' colony. Since its founding in 1973, the Geer family has continued to operate the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum.
It has grown into an Equity theater, and occupies a natural outdoor amphitheater. It features Shakespearean plays, modern classics, and original productions, as well as musical concerts. Performers have included
Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Della Reese, and Burl Ives. Odetta was part of the early music scene in the 1960s."
'Topanga is the name given to the area by the Native American indigenous Tongva tribe and may mean "where the mountain meets the sea"
or "a place above."
The name in the Tongva language, Topaa'nga, has a root topaa'- that likely comes from the Chumash language.
It was the western border of their territory, abutting the Chumash tribe that occupied the coast from Malibu northwards. "
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“I’m going to give you more water than almost anyone has,” he said.
There would be plenty of water for lawns at big houses in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills, for farmers and to dampen the hills where forest fires burn, he said."
https://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/article292941189.html
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