Tell you what – it sure helps bump those frightening statistics up if you don’t bother to differentiate how and why the fires started.
Yes, the Los Angeles fires may also have their origins in the burgeoning homeless population roaming and camping in the hills surrounding the area, but not one of the officials is going to tell you that they can possibly avoid it.
It’s inconvenient to the narrative, and they have enough trouble on their hands as it is explaining how they’ve neglected the mitigation measures they should have been utilizing to prevent the fires from the start.
They have a whale of a problem with their hundreds of thousands of fire-bug ‘unsheltered’ as they’ve redubbed them.
Wanna know why LA has fires
-13,909 fires started by homeless last year
-0 forest management
-Mayor cut FD funding by 18mm
-Fired FFs for not getting vax
-Launched DEI bureau instead of training
-No water b/c CA didn’t fill reservoirs
NOT CLIMATE CHANGEpic.twitter.com/hp6G2e5kPU— Carl Higbie (@CarlHigbie) January 9, 2025
So many fires, so few firemen and resources. This story is four years old.
24 fires a day: Surge in flames at L.A. homeless encampments a growing crisis
…As the number of tents, makeshift shelters and campers on Los Angeles streets has surged, so has the scourge of fire. In the three years since the Los Angeles Fire Department began classifying them, fires related to homelessness have nearly tripled. In the first quarter of 2021, they occurred at a rate of 24 a day, making up 54% of all fires the department responded to.
In May of last year, a local LA NBC affiliate did a dive into the fires set by the area’s homeless.
Up in flames: Rising number of homeless fires threatens LA neighborhoods
- There were 13,909 homeless fires in Los Angeles in 2023, almost double the number of such fires in 2020, according to LAFD data.
- Some of these fires are apparently caused by homeless people tapping into city electrical wires under the sidewalk, the I-Team found.
- City officials confirmed that the wires can cause explosions if they’re tampered with.
What are they going to find out about the origin of these devastating events, as much as they are trying to point fingers at the electrical companies right now?
In San Diego County, which experiences Santa Ana winds, too, they are having a tough time fighting fires started by their homeless residents.
It’s gotten so bad that one city councilwoman in La Mesa is proposing the city remove a homeless person from the city limits if they refuse assistance and shelter from the city after a set number of times. Part of her justification is the rising number of fires set by these indigent residents.
That number of offers?
FIFTEEN
…“If you watch the [Homeless Outreach and Mobile Engagement] video on our website, they say, right there, that it takes at least 15 contacts before a person experiencing homelessness is ready to accept services,” Lothian reported during the January 14 City Council meeting. “My feeling is this,” the first-term council member continued. “If the City of La Mesa offers a homeless individual – approaches them – 15 times and offers them help, and 15 times that homeless person rejects that help, I think it’s time for the city to say you need to go,” she insisted.
…“Despite increased spending on La Mesa’s Homeless Outreach and Mobile Engagement program, the 2024 count for La Mesa showed a 47% increase in unsheltered homelessness compared to 2023,” Lothian began. “The program is not reducing homelessness in La Mesa and we keep doubling down,” she went on to say. “If the L.A. fires tell us anything, it’s time we stop wishing for results and start getting them with common sense.”
Lothian’s statement comes amid the ongoing, but now slowing spread of fires in the Los Angeles area. Lothian associated fire risk with homelessness in her remarks.
“According to the news I’ve been reading, 54% of the fires that the LA Fire Department responds to are started by the homeless. NBC 7 investigation showed fire incident calls tied to homelessness is sharply on the rise in San Diego,” she cited.
‘Homeless-set’ fires are everywhere in cities and towns across the county.
This was a bushfire started by a homeless man. Now, two apartments are gone, with injuries to a resident and a firefighter incurred as well. Nothing happens to the guy who set the fire. He’ll go on his merry way once he gets out of the hospital.
On Jan. 21, a brush fire on a hillside across from Fashion Valley Mall in Mission Valley threatened structures and prompted evacuation orders.
The blaze, dubbed the Friars Fire, was reported just after noon on the 7000 block of Friars Road, a densely populated area of Mission Valley that includes the popular shopping destination where Nordstrom is located.
Breaking: The fire across from Fashion Valley started when a homeless man tried cooking with a Bunsen burner, destroying two apartments causing 2 families to now be homeless. He was burned & taken to the hospital. @SDFD confirmed it was started by a homeless man publicly but the… pic.twitter.com/gvH7uC0cjS
— Amy Reichert (@amyforsandiego) January 31, 2025
As if to put extra emphasis on the councilwoman’s words, there were more fires in the tinder-dry brush in the hills surrounding homes and businesses, just as was true in Los Angeles.
Homeless campers are setting fires there, as well, whether to cook, stay warm, or just for the hell of it. And then the brush lights off, and the wildfires race across the hills.
You don’t say?!@houmanhemmati !!!!
Most residents know this has been happening an the climate argument is just to cover up the states negligence and hatred against tax paying Americans
— Wendy O (@CryptoWendyO) January 31, 2025
And yet, the angry councilwoman in La Mesa is being criticized for being insensitive.
Touchy-feely LA County has made a lovely, soothing video in the midst of the fires about what they’ve done to help the 75,000 ‘unsheltered’ and those who were directly in the fire zones for these blazes. They have their priorities straight, you know.
Protecting Our Most Vulnerable Neighbors
The Homeless Initiative is partnering with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), LA County Department of Health Services (DHS), LA County Department of Mental Health (DPH), LA County of Public Health (DPH), Department of Military and Veteran Affairs (DMVA), local jurisdictions, and other agencies to keep people experiencing homelessness safe. We are doing this by working to bring people inside and shielding them from the fires and their aftermath, including by ensuring those in interim housing needed to evacuate are able to safely stay indoors elsewhere.
My question is, who is protecting their vulnerable neighbors from ‘the most vulnerable’ firebugs?
Another climate change induced fire right off a California freeway, next to a large homeless encampment that Gavin Newsom would prefer you ignored for the sake of this conversation. pic.twitter.com/CPDmiBRd4l
— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) January 27, 2025
The Supreme Court has already given its blessing to cities that are in earnest about dealing with the homeless, and yet? These CA cities are refusing to address it, even as the dangers of their unrestricted presence mount for the people who live, pay taxes, and obey the law as residents of those cities.
When does the coddling stop?
🔥 It may not be politically correct to state that homeless individuals are the #1 cause of fires in California, but it’s absolute fact.
This isn’t climate change. And unlike climate change, which we can’t immediately reserve with simple actions, we can EASILY & quickly solve… https://t.co/Q91o7o05mY
— Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD (@houmanhemmati) January 31, 2025
…The Supreme Court has recently declared it absolutely legal to remove homeless from public & private areas. It poses an imminent risk to Californian cities to continue to allow homeless people to camp in any high risk areas or set fires for any reason in urban areas. So let’s do this TODAY:
1. Have a ZERO TOLERANCE policy for homeless camping in high-risk areas that contain fuel for wildfires. Fence areas off, have 24/7 police patrols, arrest & remove. Accept shelter or go to jail.
2. If a homeless person is seen setting a fire, anywhere, for any reason (heat, drug use, cooking, fun, arson), immediately arrest them, charge them, and keep them locked up as much as the law permits. NO EXCEPTIONS.
3. Make arson of any degree or lighting a fire in an inappropriate area that causes meaningful property damage (they love setting fires in apartment dumpsters, for example) or physical harm a felony punishable by mandatory life in prison with no parole & aggressively arrest & prosecute.
4. Given the fact that #1-3 above are cumbersome, simply have a zero public camping policy & legally remove homeless from high-risk areas & urban communities & relocate them compassionately to facilities where they cannot cause others harm while receiving treatment for their individual issues.
We can’t keep living this way. Fire departments are overwhelmed (50-90% of their calls are due to homeless), & people/properties are at constant risk. With a few simple steps that, unlike climate change, require zero sacrifices by citizens, we can solve the #1 cause of fires today by enforcing EXISTING laws.
WE CAN’T KEEP LIVING THIS WAY
BREAKING: Investigators say the three fires that broke out in San Diego last week were all started in homeless encampments.
Build a manmade island a few miles off the coast of California, ship the homeless out there, problem solved.
The three fires were all in different areas… pic.twitter.com/p77gyAK80P
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 31, 2025
WE CAN’T KEEP LIVING THIS WAY
That should be the battle cry of every last sane, rational person left in that state.
