Based on my own experience, this is how most cities handle their PD/FD funding, unfortunately. The fire department is just not important.. until it is.
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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Can confirm. source: Am Australian.
I suspect Scott being a doomsday death cult evangelical made those cuts deliberate instead of just being a standard short sighted git. Especially when he decided to take a vacation during your crises.
That's not really how it works in Australia though.
Every property owner pays an Emergency Services Levy which pays for the fireys. State governments pay for the police force. So there's no organisation that chooses whether police or fire gets whatever money - funding is procured separately.
That said, I take your point that the fireys don't get a lot of attention until there's a disaster. That's just human nature I guess.
In my area, if there's a bushfire that looks like destroying someone's house, the volunteers, fire service, and bombing planes are on to it in minutes.
I don't have "data" but from my anecdotal observations they don't seem to be hamstrung by a lack of funding.
That's karma. The longer we seek instant gratification, neglecting doing the hard, dirty necessary work that yields no immediate discernable benefits, the more severe the bite is, when it comes back around and bites us in the backside. As a collective, we stay on the wheel of suffering, figure out we need to do something differently, figure out necessary changes, then implement them... Then a few generations, the wealthy overlords convince us we're spending too much on very sensible investments that yield no immediate discernable benefits and we repeat the cycle. It's like Groundhog Day over centuries (which add up to millennia,), rather than days, weeks, years. Because they plan family fortunes for centuries, rather than days, weeks and years, because they can afford private communities, with private police and fire departments, and comprehensive health. The rest of us are means that justify their ends, and the sooner we, as a collective, wake up and smell the roses and love each other enough (which preserves our own arses) to figure out ways to fix this mess, for centuries that turn into millennia, the better off we and the rest of our ecoweb will be. Or not. 🤷♀️
This is incorrect.
the updated budget in November saw a $53 million increase over the previous year once the council took into account the department's unappropriated balance calculation, which provides funds after the budget is approved.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/los-angeles-mayor-karen-bass-pushes-back-criticism/story?id=117512817
"No they didn't, it was only a budget cut until the unions fought them and forced them to hand over more budget' isn't exactly the win you think it is here.
Even worse, despite call numbers increasing over 5x from 1960, the fire program has been completely unable to expand since 1960 and was basically completely at the mercy of people doing brutal amounts of overtime to keep things going... until they lost the ability to pay them overtime too! The fire department is absurdly understaffed and underfunded. Imagine still making the same salary as 65 years ago, while having to do 5x the work!
While the 53 million budget increase the unions managed to grab is a good improvement, along with the ~200 more trainee firefighters it allowed them to hire but aren't yet ready to deploy, it's the definition of too little and too late.
High winds preventing firefighting planes and copters, low water levels since the city has let nestle steal all of it for free, electrical problems to prevent pumps from sending water from afar, and not enough man hours to manage and prevent fire conditions in the first place- as it says in the article you posted, no amount of budget could have prevented this, because there was more to play here than just the budget. But enough people and man hours to properly manage things would have done a lot to limit the scope of the disaster.
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From my understanding the water towers had completely ran out of water and pumps couldn't keep up. There's was no issue with volume through the existing water system, there's just no way to contain a fire that big. They should be taking preventative measures such as raking the forest.
Can't tell if this is idiocy or peak satire.
Well done.
Oh it's even better than that. They're referencing a direct quote from trump.
I was aware of that, but thank you for providing context!
I was not. Sounded reasonable except the raking part, from someone who knows fuck all about forest fires or building in fire prone areas.
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Meh, same thing with healthcare. Who needs a medical professional to help a person with a mental health crisis when you can have a guy with highschool and six months of "training" put a few bullets in em?
America: Funding cops to shoot black people, defunding actual helpful social needs since 1864.
At least a bunch of rich fucks in Malibu and Pacific Palisades are paying the price for it.
Doesn't help the lungs and bronchial passages of people with asthma and other breathing issues though. A lot of people will die who were nowhere near the fires.
LAPD cops can shout and order the fires to freeze!
They could also shoot it if it does not obey!
I have to do other people's jobs. Slap some tin foil on em and throw them in to help.
Maybe if they all shoot the fire in the back when it's sleeping?!
They cut ~2% of the budget. Anyone spewing this funding cut bullshit is a partisan hack.
Quit being reactionary.
Why do you think it's okay to cut funding to the fire department while keeping the police(gang) force that is notorious for not actually doing anything to help it's citizens?
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I suspect they could have doubled the budget and they still wouldn't be able to control those fires.
Still it looks like it's affecting rich people, so something will probably get done about it.
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Just give firefighting responsibility to the cops! Then they can show up to your kitchen fire, put it out, shoot your dog, and arrest you for complaining all in one trip!
Given the history of wildfires in California, someone has anti-survival traits.
Fire is a natural part of the ecological system. You can by time, but eventually, it will happen. Building in wildlands is a recipe for disaster, if you don't create breaks, or defencable zones. It's not a simple problem, with a simple solution. A big part of the problem, is building all those homes there, but if you're gonna build, then you should protect. A lot of people build in forested areas and don't create defensible zones, because, that's why they move there, for pretty trees.
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