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LAist is part of Southern California Public Radio, a member-supported public media network. For the latest national news from NPR and our live radio broadcast, visitA hilltop near the Eagle Rock fire road burns in Topanga Canyon State Park from the Palisades Fire on May 15, 2021 in Topanga, California.Today in How To LA: First responders prepare for disastrous wildfires, speed cameras are coming to some cities in Los Angeles County; plus, sustainable fashion in L.A.
Mary Price, the founder of the Ocean + Main clothing company in L.A., says there is no single use plastic in her company, for example. She also says the company only makes what it can sell and doesn’t overproduce items. The Waldo Canyon Fire burns the mountains above Colorado Springs, Colorado in June 2012. The blaze destroyed more than 300 homes.of losses in 2017, a record surpassed in 2018 when blazes burned through $29 billion, while 2020 and 2021 took third and fourth place in the echelon of damage. Those are just direct costs;found the indirect costs of 2018’s wildfires alone — things like health care costs and disruption to the broader economy — cost almost $150 billion.
Pratt’s mortgage requires her to have homeowners insurance, putting her at risk of eventually defaulting. She tried to find another private insurer to no avail. Eventually, she turned to the, a state-backed policy that covers people who have been denied private coverage at least three times.
Technological advances have made it possible to predict hazards not only in your part of town, but also for the exact parcel of land you call home. “We’re entering a new era where you can get at the root cause of mitigating risk, as opposed to just transferring that risk,” said Attila Toth, co-founder and CEO of start-up, which uses artificial intelligence to assess properties.
Unlike most other states, California’s insurance commissioner prohibits insurers from passing on these reinsurance costs to the consumer. The goal of measures like this, according to Harvey Rosenfield, an advocate who founded the nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog, was to make insurance available and affordable. During the last insurance crisis in the 1980s, the industry claimed that higher losses and, which passed in 1988.
Last winter, Pratt’s property was without power for a week, and she stayed warm hauling wood for her stove in a sled over record snowfall. Last summer, she was sweating in an“We are learning to adapt to what it’s going to take to live in this time of climate extremes,” Pratt said, noting that while she ultimately found a California FAIR plan, it doubled her cost. “Rethinking the insurance industry — in this new regime of climate disruption — is going to be needed.”Fires. Mudslides. Heat waves.
“we may have a sort of stable, relatively rosy picture when it comes to our regulatory world in terms of air-quality trends,” said Vijay Limaye, a climate and health epidemiologist at the Natural Resources Defense Council , a nonprofit advocacy group.Matt Cowdrey, Mark Paiz and Kyle Ortega get ready to paddle out and surf Ocean Beach in San Francisco under an orange-red sky caused by wildfires on Sep. 9, 2020.
Critics say the growing use of the exceptional events rule for wildfires is of deep concern. “You need to level with the public about the number of days when the air quality was unhealthy,” said Eric Schaeffer, a former regulator who directs the Environmental Integrity Project. At first, the rule was used most successfully in a handful of south-western communities where high winds created a recurring problem of dust pollution. Over time, local regulators have turned to exceptional events for wildfires more and more often to reach air-quality goals.
We analyzed data recorded at air monitors nationwide. For every U.S. county, on a day where the EPA excluded any data, we counted that day. Our analysis found that the total number of wildfire-related bad air days erased from regulatory consideration in counties nationwide was nearly double that of bad air days related to high winds: 236 compared to 121.
Stevens remembered doctors and nurses moving among patients under the menacing amber skies, N95 masks snug on their faces to protect against COVID-19 — and wildfire smoke. Officials at the California air resources board stress that state law works toward mitigating the effects of climate change, and state policies are supposed to minimize the risk of catastrophic fire.
Afterward, “I was starting to sense the emotional drain, from everyone having to go through this,” she said. She searched the internet with worry about how smoke could harm her children, then three and seven years old. “It would not be unreasonable” to boost spending significantly to manage public and private lands to minimize smoke, “something like what we think is reasonable when it comes to coal-fired power plants, which is billions of dollars per year,” he said. “Because the harms that are being created by the smoke are large.”
Walke of the NRDC agreed: “The worst possible outcome is lying to the American people about whether the air they breathe is safe orIn the early years after the exceptional events rule was added to law, the South Coast Air Quality Management District applied to remove some events from the record, including related to wildfires, winds, and fireworks.
Data obtained from the EPA show that the use of the exceptional events rule every year since 2016 has helped Imperial County meet its air quality goals. “I would not be surprised,” Smith told me as we stood atop a helipad looking across the Transverse Ranges. “We are training for that.”With only a few arteries in and out of the canyon, Smith warns that a fast-moving wildfire could trap people on the canyon’s narrow roads, consuming everything in its path.“That’s one thing that keeps me up at night,” he said. “That worst-case scenario fire with our residents at home with limited options. It’s terrifying.
Even with water drops from helicopters, containing a fire in nightmarish fall conditions can be all but impossible. The 69 Bravo helipad sits at about 2,600 feet in the Santa Monica Mountains. It offers views of the Transverse Ranges, the San Fernando Valley and the Pacific Ocean. A critical spot for firefighters battling flames nearby.The four, 8,000 gallon tanks at 69 Bravo have open tops so that firetrucks and helicopters can draw directly from them. They automatically refill.It’s quite likely that many fires will be started – all by people – in the coming months.
First pushed through by the Republican senator and climate denier Jim Inhofe, the"exceptional events" rule has become a"regulatory escape hatch" for states that want to meet federal air-quality standards.The increasing use of the rule for wildfires, experts say, not only obscures health risks to people across the U.S., but undermines the goals of the landmark Clean Air Act.
“EPA’s had a stake in this problem for a long time. States have had a stake in this problem for a long time. Private companies have had a stake in this problem for a long time,” Leonard said.
“The purpose of the amendment was deregulatory, to be sure,” said John Walke, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council , a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.The exceptional events rule functions as a regulatory escape hatch. When soot and ozone drift in from “natural” sources like wildfires, regulators can ask the EPA for an exception. If the federal agency grants it, that air pollution is erased from the regulatory record and disregarded in regulatory decisions.
Local regulators are turning to the exceptional events rule for wildfires more and more often to reach air-quality goals. In 2016, 19 wildfire events were submitted to the EPA. In 2020, 65 were. “We’re just pretending like it’s just not happening,” said Sanjay Narayan, the managing attorney for the Sierra Club’s Environmental Law Program. “The pollution is not in the air from sort of a regulatory perspective, which is the way in which things become invisible. All of this is invisible unless you trawl through all of these reports.”
Scientists and activists worry that the exceptional events rule can be exploited to avoid the costly efforts needed to address this growing crisis. Lobbyists for the fossil fuel industry have told the EPA the exceptional events rule will be a key part of meeting ozone standards. States themselves say any moves to tighten particulate or ozone limits will be met with a greater reliance on the exceptional events rule.
Somers was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000. Earlier this year, she revealed on Instagram that the cancer had returned.Somers began her acting career in the 1960s — many people first remember as the blonde in the car in 1973'son ABC. Her ditzy character — with her blonde hair often in pigtails — was critical to the show's success.
The law, effective January 1, 2024, nixes the use of the “first-generation” coagulant poison — those that are made before the yearL.A.’s beloved mountain lion, P-22, is arguably the most well-known victim of unintended rat poisoning.Lisa Owens Viani directs the organization Raptors Are the Solution, a supporter of the moratorium. She points to the danger diphacinone poses to the over 30 wild species that can consume the poisoned rats or are able to access bait boxes that contain the poison.
The re-evaluation will focus on addressing how diphacinone affects an animal, both on its own and when used in conjunction with"second-generation" poisons.
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