Infinite Unknown

California wildfires wreak havoc

Aerial footage of fires across northern Los Angeles

Three separate wildfires in southern California have destroyed hundreds of homes and forced thousands of people to flee the fast-moving flames.

The fires, to the north, north-west and south of Los Angeles have burnt through dry brush and forest in the suburban canyonlands around the city.

California’s governor has declared states of emergency in Orange, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara counties.

A drop in the wind force has given some relief to the hard-pressed fire crews.

The largest of the fires is in the northern Los Angeles suburb of Sylmar, up against the canyons of the Angeles National Forest.

See map of the California fires

Ten-thousand people were ordered to evacuate their homes as the flames raced through the Oakridge Mobile Home Park late on Friday, destroying about 500 of the structures.

Firefighters were braving 50ft flame lengths as they swept across the mobile homes Los Angeles Fire Captain Steve Ruda In pictures: Los Angeles wildfire

“We have never lost in recent times anything close to this number [of homes],” said Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

He blamed the spread of the fire on “absolutely atrocious” winds of up to 80 mph (130 km/h) that pushed the fire out of the forests and into the suburbs, jumping wide highways in the process.

“It was an absolute firestorm,” said Los Angeles Fire Department Captain Steve Ruda of the Oakridge blaze.

“Firefighters were braving 50ft flame lengths as they swept across the mobile homes,” he told the Reuters news agency, adding that heat from the flames had melted his firefighters’ hoses to the road.

The Sylmar fire has burnt through 8,000 acres (3,200 hectares) since it broke out late on Friday. Fire officials said it was 20% contained as of late Saturday.

About 2,000 firefighters are using aircraft, helicopters and bulldozers to beat the flames back from populated areas.

Pillars of smoke

Meanwhile, more than 12,000 people were ordered to leave their homes in Orange County, in the south of the Los Angeles urban sprawl, as another fire flared up early on Saturday in the communities of Yorba Linda and Corona.

That fire has so far scorched 2,000 acres (800 hectares) and damaged or destroyed about 100 homes or other buildings.

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Tags: Arnold Schwarzenegger, California, Environment, firefighters, Los Angeles, U.S., Wildfire

LOS ANGELES: Having lost her job and her three-bedroom house, Darlene Knoll has joined the legions of downwardly mobile who are four wheels away from homelessness.

She is living out of her shabby 1978 RV, and every night she has to look for a place to park where she won’t get hassled by the cops or insulted by residents.

“I’m not a piece of trash,” the former home health-care aide said as she stroked one of five dogs in her cramped quarters parked in the waterfront community of Marina del Rey.

Amid the foreclosure crisis and the shaky economy, some California cities are seeing an increase in the number of people living out of their cars, vans or RVs. Continue reading »

Tags: Foreclosures, Los Angeles, mortgage crisis, Mortgages, Police

Persistent drought and the threat of tighter water supplies prompted Los Angeles’s plans to begin using heavily cleansed sewage to increase drinking water supplies.

(So what comes out of your faucet is what your neighbor flushed down the toilet, but it’s heavily cleansed, with some extra added highly toxic fluoride, maybe iodine….and of course it’s highly chlorinated too - all for your safety.You can trust the government with your life, or can’t you??? To life then….ohhh shit! Los Angeles, another no-go area.
That’s another reason why I told you that you need your own well. - The Infinite Unknown)

Tags: Fluoridation, Fluoride, Los Angeles, sewage, water, water supplies

Airports in New York and Los Angeles have become the latest equipped with body scanners that allow security screeners to peer beneath a passenger’s clothing to detect concealed weapons.

The machines, which are about the size of a revolving door, use low-energy electromagnetic waves to produce a computerized image of a traveler’s entire body.

Passengers step in and lift their arms. The scans only take a minute, and Transportation Security Administration officials say the procedure is less invasive than a physical frisk for knives, bombs or guns.

Someday, the “millimeter wave” scans might replace metal detectors, but for now they are being used selectively.

Los Angeles International Airport and John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York saw their first scanners installed Thursday, each at a single checkpoint. Phoenix Sky-Harbor International Airport got one of the machines in October.

Modest travelers may have concerns about the images.

The black and white, three-dimensional scans aren’t as vivid as a photograph, but they do reveal some of the more intimate curves of the human form, maybe with as much clarity as an impressionist sculpture by Auguste Rodin. Continue reading »

Tags: ACLU, Airport, American Civil Liberties Union, Body Scanners, bombs, concealed, detect, guns, John F. Kennedy, knives, Los Angeles, New York, passengers, Phoenix Sky-Harbor, Privacy, protections, security, security screeners, TSA, weapons