1. Forced evacuations by LA County Sheriffs: Homeowners are not being allowed to stay and defend their homes.

2. Much of Canyon Country is gridlocked with people fleeing the fire zones. Reports of fist fights at blocked intersections.

3. Fire fighters are unable to get to all the homes. Some homeowners in Canyon Country are watching their homes burn up with no fire fighters on scene to fight the fire. Homeowners are pleading with sheriffs to call fire fighters but the fire fighters are too few and too late for many homes to be saved.

4. Some of the fires in Malibu are confirmed arson. Witnesses report a car throwing liquid plastic bags out the window that burst into flames on ground impact. Other fires are of suspect origin.

1. Last night in Canyon Country about 8 residents were on the fire line defending their neighborhood. Sheriffs did not interfere and in fact supported the homeowners efforts. Sheriffs were active in helping to direct water drops to hot spots.

2. A rumor of two looters in the area was reported but there is no confirmation of this.

3. More fire origin points have been determined to be arson by investigators.

4. All roads into evacuated areas are blocked by sheriffs. Once evacuated residents are not being allowed back into their neighborhood until it is deemed safe.

In many cases, crews couldn't begin to fight the fires because they were too busy rescuing residents who refused to leave, fire officials said.

"They didn't evacuate at all, or delayed until it was too late," Metcalf said. "And those folks who are making those decisions are actually stripping fire resources."

Sounds like the methyl alcohol and peroxide mix the Germans used to power the cute little Komet rocket planes.
I sure hope they have an accident.

Here we have a local issue that is affecting thousands of people. And this is precisely where local IMC's should step in. Where are the individual stories, videos, photos? reports from shelters?reports from the field?
Why are the people at this site more interested in events 10,000 miles away than what is going on in their own neighborhood?

.......it's all Bush's fault

fiddling while rome burns, eh, Nero?

I am a member of the L.A. Indymedia collective, and this is my response to the above comment about Indymedia's responsibility to cover local issues.

People need to understand something. Indymedia doesn't operate the way typical media operates, sending reporters out to cover issues. We have literally no budget. Everybody who works on this site is a volunteer, and everything that anybody covers, is done voluntarily by people using their own time and resources. This is a grassroots, democratic forum for the community. We maintain this site for you to utilize; to cover issues yourselves that you think are important to the community. So when you are calling for a response to an issue, for something to be covered more in depth, you are calling to yourselves. When you think something is important and others need to know about it, post it. When you see something that you see others need to see, take pictures on your cell phones and post it. Don't wait for somebody else to do it. You are that somebody.

Anybody who wants to get more involved with the site is welcome to attend our meetings which are posted on the site in the calendar. Look for one the 3rd week in November.

I

You're right. The problem is that the critics are 10,000 miles away and therefore not likely to be on the spot reporters. Just snipers.

yeah yeah, everyone's a critic. Me too.

here's a quick suggestion- get rid of whoever it is that acts as an echo chamber here- like the above poster. You don't need the noise.

get rid of all the stuff culled from the commercial press.

and leave your computers and go out into the field- be a good example- we want to know whats happening out there- almost half a million people evacuated- it must be like a war zone. Are there people stranded? Are there shelters? Whats happening with animals? Are people being feed? There is so much that isn't being reported in the mainstream media- I felt for sure this would be a center column item and there's nothing. this is a chance to shine, LA IMC. lets see it.

Some other factors that were not mentioned by either the corporate media OR by Democracy Now;

Fires are NORMAL for SoCal foothills region! Since before the beginning of human (indigenous) habitation in this region, periodic fires have moved through the hills of SoCal, reducing fuel, adding nutrients and cleaning the hillside of excess litter. Many of the indigenous plants are dependent on seasonal fires for their seeds to open up..

Fire suppression in the SoCal foothills from recent (post-Columbus) human habitation (ie., multi-million dollar mansions) has led to an increase in fuels and thus more severe (hotter) fires when they eventually appear..

background info;

"Firebugs: Build it in California's foothills, and it will burn.

Mike Davis

Following last autumn's disastrous wildfires in Southern California, Governor Pete Wilson warned of "an army of arsonists lurking in our foothills." The governor was right. The arsonists are the developers and homeowners who built in a tinderbox, and the policymakers who allowed them to do so.

Southern California is a fire ecology in exactly the same sense that it is a land of sunshine. Its natural ecosystems — coastal sage, oak savanna, and chaparral — have coevolved with wildfire. Periodic burning is necessary to recycle nutrients and germinate seeds.

The indigenous Californians were skilled fire-farmers. They used the firestick to hunt rabbits, cultivate edible grasses, increase browse for deer, thin mistletoe from oaks, and produce better stalks for basketry. Their careful annual burnings usually prevented fire catastrophe by limiting the accumulation of fuel.

But aboriginal ecologists also understood that some areas are spectacularly prone to regular conflagration. What is now Los Angeles, for example, they called "Valley of the Smokes." Malibu Canyon is a huge bellows that seasonally fans hot, dry Santa Ana winds to near-hurricane velocities. Major fires here are frequent (five since 1930) and, as the board of inquiry into the disastrous 1970 Malibu blaze acknowledged, "impossible to control."

Modern Southern California, however, built on the belief that even the most elemental forces can be mastered, refuses to concede anything to the laws of nature. Yet as Stephen Pyne emphasizes in his magisterial pyrohistory, Fire in America (1982), Southern California's deadly foothill firestorms of the 20th century are, in fact, the ironic consequence of massive expenditure on fire suppression.

In a famous study, geographer Richard Minnich once compared the fire histories of eastern San Diego County and adjacent Baja California. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on fire suppression in San Diego's increasingly urbanized backcountry, while a natural fire-cycle has been tolerated in Baja's wild hill areas. As a result, only San Diego County has experienced out-of-control firestorms."

article cont's @;
http://www.radicalurbantheory.com/mdavis/firebugs.html

So now that the fires are taking their natural course, people on the left and right are up in arms in a panic. So far only one person has died as the evacuations are being taken seriously. Those who remain in their homes to spray them down are playing with fire..

The real "problem" these fires are causing is for the economic sector; insurance companies and real estate tycoons who cannot promise safety of foothills properties and will see a decrease in mansions follwing the blaze..

The real estate tycoons can be thankful for the amnesia of most North Americans, as within a few months people will be rebuilding their multi-million dollar mansions atop the SoCal hills in the path of the next fires as if nothing ever happened. All this at the expense of taxpayers and the rest of us regular folk who have enough common sense not to build mansions in fire prone foothills..

Score one for Madre Tierra!!

Did you hear what Anna just said?

This your news wire. Get of your butt and out there and get some news and post something on the newswire yourself if you want more about the fires.