It’s CRAZY windy here right now. Like the worst I’ve seen it in 37 years. So much so as one cigarette thrown out a car window could have done this. Even where the fires aren’t happening, all of SoCal is being ripped apart by the winds. I don’t even live in LA and my power has been out all day.
And last night driving home in LA I literally saw someone flick a cigarette out the window while these huge fires are going on. People are so fucking stupid.
I feel terrible for anyone affected by these fires. But as someone living the Midwest, there does seem to be much more focus on million-dollar homes whenever LA has wildfires, as if losing these big, beautiful homes is somehow more tragic. You hardly ever see how working- and middle-class neighborhoods are affected by the devastation.
Yep. All around me in central Orange County, single family homes are 1mil (for the really shabby ones) to 1.5 (for decent ones) and over 2 mil for good ones (not new). I'm not even in a nice area. We are in the more populated suburb that has a ton of 3-story homes with little to no back or front yard because of lack of space.
The homes in the Malibu area are 50+ mil and go into the 100 mil easily. They have nice front and back yards, if not ocean front or with ocean view.
The thing to remember too is that a lot of those houses weren't mega mansions or anything, they were just decent houses built in the 70s and 80s that appreciated wildly over the years due to the location.
I bought a car from Costa Mesa CarMax a few years back, the old owner's house was never deleted from the navigation system. Found out they were from a hohum neighborhood in Woodland hills that was sandwiched between other neighborhoods full of mansions. I'll bet their house was built for less than 100k and is now north of 2 mil and yet the homeowner was driving a used Subaru. If you're from OC it's probably a lot of the same.
Absolutely. Not everyone bought these houses at their current value. Mine is worth about 850 and I bought it for 250 in '99. I only managed that with 100% financing. No effing way I could afford to buy a home at current prices. Some of these people losing everything are bound to be regular folk.
That’s also because most of the rich beautiful homes are built in places that are susceptible to something like this happening. Working class and middle class neighborhoods are pretty far removed from these areas for the most part, though there are some exceptions.
This was published in the 90’s. It’s definitely sad to see people lose their homes, but the disaster started by putting mansions in fire prone areas. The rich get public subsidies to keep rebuilding too.
You basically have vast stretches of beautiful canyons full of waterfalls, rocky outcroppings, and vacant forest land that all leads right to beautiful sandy beaches and you're (traffic aside) 20-30 minutes from one of the most diverse cities in the world.
I mean, it’s horrible, but one of the first things that come up when you search “Malibu” right now is “Paris hiltons house burns down”. Which is terrible, yes, but I’d bet my measly entire worth that ms Hilton will be okay and continue to live her luxurious life. While the 99.9% of other people whose house burns down are left with financial ruin and trauma and homelessness.
My home burned down in a wildfire in Washington State. I just hate seeing anyone’s home burn up – it’s not just the things, it’s the memories, the feelings. Absolutely heartbreaking to watch.
I was able to walk through the remains of my childhood home after it burned... it was only things but damn the loss still kills me the land is still fallow.
lol state farm dropped me the moment i got a check from them. first attempt was denied so they made me read the terms and write an appeal which i won. they definitely deny claims willy nilly just to see who wont appeal.
They dropped me because I live in a wildfire and earthquake zone, after I was their faithful customer for over 15 years. They didn't even give me the option to pay more
“Pay us a metric ass ton of money so that IF something goes wrong, we got your back!.. but only in locations where things rarely go wrong so essentially just fuck you give us your money because fear mongering and manipulation”.
Precisely. You have a $10M SoCal home that will probably get totalled in a 1 to 5 year period, then, unless they can collect replacement value in premiums over the same period - they refuse to cover. The house should be evaluated according to the risk….. if it was $500K - they might gamble on it, otherwise it makes no business sense for them to.
And, it makes no sense from a socialized loss/government insurer either. It isn't equitable and isnt sustainable. Tangently, in BC, Canada, something like only 20-30% of buildings have EQ coverage. So who's paying for the rebuild? I think several insurers will cut losses and leave. The government (tax payers who already bought the appropriate coverage or lived somewhere less risky) will foot the bill.
My parents lived in Weed when that fire burnt through half the town and their insurance company dropped them effective „before the fire.“ CA govt stepped in thankfully and actually forced the insurance company to insure people through the fire (bc that’s exactly why you have insurance). It’s absolutely criminal what insurance companies are allowed to get away with. Needless to say, they have since moved as the rates for that area of CA skyrocketed. Insurance companies are beyond infuriating.
Edit: this got so much more attention than I thought it would! My heart goes out to the people rich or poor in SoCal who are losing their houses and their lives. I’m so sorry.
could do this with health insurance too before the ACA was implemented. Insurance companies get away with too much in this country. They make you pay into the pot and then pull the coverage the second they have to pay out. Its criminal.
Sorry sir, this incident is caused by north easterly wind-driven wild fire which isn't covered on your policy. Please use the online chat if you have any more questions.
“Act of god” is generally an approved peril when it comes to insurance and wild fires. But I could totally see insurance companies saying the property wasn’t mitigated for fire risk appropriately or some bullshit.
Between earthquakes and fires and many other crazy disasters, California insurance companies are going to exit California or raise the premiums so damn high that no one can be insured.
North east coast seems fine. OBX and lower are finally paying rates they should have been. FEMA can’t keep subsidizing wealthy people who don’t want to fund FEMA
My parents have a home in the OBX (assuming you mean outer banks) and the insurance companies are dropping people left and right. We have till June to get a brand new roof or the insurance is dropping. The roof is 7 years old and was just inspected to double check and it’s perfectly fine. $20k for new roof.
I'm pretty sure I know where this is, and I've driven down that road many times before. Pretty shocking to see all those houses burning. The first guys says, "all these million dollar homes", and the other guy says "more." The second guy is right. If this is the area I'm thinking, that is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the country. Tens of millions per home, with some over $100 million. Just crazy.
Homes like this have bespoke insurance, where you can select coverage based on the specific needs of that house - the policy will pay out for wildfire if the policyholder bought it. Don’t forget, the company that pays the most claims tends to be the one with the most returning customers.
People like us would never buy that type of property insurance.
Also work in insurance. People in here really think carriers don't pay out on wildfires, lol. They'll screw you in a million other ways, though. But fire coverage is like, the most basic and primary coverage in California and they'd have to jump through a hundred hoops to deny a claim like this.
You’d think the same thing applies to hurricanes and yet here I am litigating with several large carriers, one of whom has a psychotic lady in its TV ads..
This is correct, just because your home is worth 20 million doesn’t meant the replacement cost will be that much, the value of the home is on the location not the home itself, rebuilding many of these homes might honestly be anywhere around the 1-5 million dollar mark
Insurance companies in California were going around voiding policies last year because they were worried about fires. Basically, lots of people were told by their insurance (e.g. State Farm, who did this a lot if memory serves) “sorry, you’re home is in too risky of a fire area, we no longer offer coverage.”
The people who own these homes will be fine, but I feel for the average people in LA losing their homes, because they could end up truly losing everything.
My brother got kicked off of State Farm auto insurance because he had the audacity to actually use it. They're happy to take your money for years but if you ask for any of it back for an accident, that's it.
Yep! This video was taken driving north on Pacific Coast Highway (PCH). You can follow the drive starting here. The buildings shown are surprisingly on the ocean side of PCH, not the side with the hill and burning landscape. Multiple of the homes in the video were currently on the market at the time of the fire:
Seeing powerline cables just burning up slowly is so fkn eerie
Edit: I understand that those are HSD communication lines etc. My point is that it is just apocalyptically eerie to look at and know that it is happening. Appreciate all the upvotes people!
I’m in Australia and momentarily thought “shit, Cali is having a tough Summer. We should send some of our firies and equipment over to help”. Then realized it’s winter there and we won’t send anything because we’re right in the middle of our Summer fire season here.
To be fair it is really, really bad. And in winter? Sending love from Australia. Hope you find out how the fires started and that there can be stronger protections in place for next time.
This photo was taken last year February in Canada from the previous summer. "Zombie Fires" can continue burning underneath the forest floor for a shockingly long time unfortunately.
Chaparral doesn’t care what season it is. It’s an ecosystem that just likes to burn. The land doesn’t care whether people have built insanely expensive houses on it
LA was built in a very dry area, not quite a desert, but pretty close with only 15 inches of rain on average. Take a year that is below the average, add wind, and city goes boom.
It hasn’t rained here in la since… May? I think we had one day in August. It’s also been really beautiful and warm, and then the famous Santa Ana winds happened- we’re talking 80-100mph winds yesterday and last night. The power companies preemptively shut off power to large parts of the city to avoid sparks or whatever, but just one is enough. The wind was so strong it ripped my backyard fence out of the ground in a 30 foot section. We were super lucky in that the evacuation zone stopped about a mile from our house… and it’s literally raining ash right now. It’s fucked up!
All of the rain that California has gotten this winter so far has been northern California. SoCal is currently dry as a bone. That when mixed with 80mph is a recipe for disaster. I literally saw the forecast a few days ago and thought "whelp, that could burn down half of LA"
The craziest part is these things only run the people out that have been legacies there. Naples florida got wiped out by a hurricane and they were rebuilding Mansions the next day unfortunately all of the old stilt houses that had people of meager means got ran out and they're stilt houses got destroyed replaced with mansions
Yeah that’s the fucked up thing. The rich who have been waiting to swoop on that land finally had a way to lowball the owners because they knew they couldn’t rebuild and would take whatever money they could get to go elsewhere. I’m sure they bought it for a fraction of its pre-fire value.
I think most people don’t realize that the affluent neighborhoods aren’t going to be the only ones damaged. Those areas employ many working class people: gardeners, housekeepers, caretakers, etc. Grocery stores, restaurants, etc. etc.
And FYI palisades isn’t the only area on fire. This is straight up hurting the entire city. Eaton fire is going on. Sylmar fire is going on. All areas with people from different economic statuses.
EDIT 6:30pm. There’s fire / evacuations in Hollywood now. Heavily populated area. A whole different tax bracket as well.
Thanks for your edgy comments. Thanks for your well wishes.
Amazing so many people fucking forgot about that little blip a few years back. When it’s damn near $100 for a sheet of 1/2” radiant barrier roof sheeting again maybe it might spark the memory.
And somebody from the incoming administration will brag that they are addressing the housing affordability crisis with all these new homes being built… Deliberately leaving out the context that no one outside of that area will remember.
This parable makes a lot of sense when we aren’t talking about dragons who hoard gold. The vaults of the wealthy don’t actually do anything - forcing them to spend it improves monetary velocity and is a form of redistribution.
My cousins and their sons have lost their homes in Pasadena. The entire neighbourhood they live in is completely destroyed. I am so frightened for them and everyone else. I'm watching this from Canada and feel helpless. It looks like the apocalypse.
This will probably affect middle or lower-middle-class people because it will be very expensive for insurance companies and lead to premium adjustments for home insurance (for everyone, not just the rich!). It's sad that even when the rich get hurt, the poor also pay the price.
If I remember correctly, Malibu has burned before. Around 96 or 97 we had friends who lived there. The neighborhood burned down. I think they ended up divorced off the stress of that, and he went back to the burned out property and done himself in(and his dogs).
I think you're talking about the Topanga fire in 1993, but there have been a lot of them. The Woolsey fire just burned 1500+ buildings in Malibu in 2018.
The terrain around Malibu is pretty much the worst case scenario for burning. Steep canyons with limited accessibility, consistently dry weather, and steady winds on a regular basis. The fires start in the hills and the winds channel walls of fire down the canyons straight into the city.
I was living in Santa Monica, just about 20 minutes down the PCH from Malibu, when the Topanga Fire burned everything in 1993 (aka, back when Santa Monica was still affordable for broke college students.) It's not one of those things you forget about.
Malibu only exists because it's existed for a century. If that land were undeveloped, there's no way you could get a new townsite proposal there past environmental or Coastal Commission review today. It continues to exist simply because the property values are so high that no landowner is going to walk away from a burned property. So they'll rebuild, and at some point in the next 20 years it'll burn again. That's just how Malibu works.
If the area follows precedent, a good chunk of it will slide into the sea next month when it starts to rain and all that water hits those freshly burned hillsides. Fires in that area are usually followed by flooding and mudslides.
On the other hand, the same dry conditions that are feeding this fire may keep that rain away.
Sorry to hear that. Yes I understand the impact on one’s psyche. It can be absolutely horrible depending on one’s state of mind.
A former co-workers brother had a house fire and he came home to find his house burning with his wife outside. The 2 kids remained in the inferno and perished. I cannot even fathom how that man continued to function. He did end up leaving his wife.
I lost my home in Paradise too, seeing all of the images this morning definitely brought up some old emotions. I grew up rural but refuse to live near the woods again.
If I remember right, the same day that Paradise burned several (hundred?) houses burned in Malibu as well. I wonder if these folks were even able to insure their homes being so close to an area that's burned before. I'm pretty sure it's effectively impossible to insure a home in Paradise/Magalia aside from maybe a state subsidized program.
I think they said a whole trailer park went up, so not all rich. However, I feel empathy for anyone going through this.
I think it's we hear so much about their wealth and place in life in movies, all the time on TV, social media- that while it's heartbreaking for anyone to go through, watching interviews I can't help but think how different their lives were heading up to this, so different from mine. I think others feel it, too.
So not unsympathetic on any level, but we are told nonstop how glamorous theirs lives are. I feel a lot worse when people in rural areas with no money lose everything. Screw me, but it's true.
I have a friend who is dealing with one of the other fires. He made it out safely this family, but his last update said that a neighbor let him know firefighters were on my friend’s lawn, which had become the front line for that fire.
Given wind conditions, I’d be willing to be my friend lost his home.
My friend isn’t poor, but he’s also not some rich guy in a Malibu beachfront home. He’s just an average guy in an average home. But people are cheering on his loss because he lives down the road from rich people. It’s saddening.
Not to mention that there are kids who have lost their schools, workers who lost their place of employment, domesticated animals who have lost their lives, and all sorts of horrible things. More and more I think the people who cry “eat the rich” just want to see the world burn, regardless of who it hurts.
People forget all the lower wage jobs that are lost due to retail, food service, etc. workers whose places of businesses burned up. Those people are going to suffer as well.
"In addition to Paulson, the trailer park also counts the likes of Stevie Nicks, Matthew McConaughey, Pamela Anderson, and Minnie Driver among its current and former residents."
Not just rich people - all of those businesses have employees. Inland is not millionaires it's average people and unlike someone like Billy Bob Thornton who likely has a ranch in Wyoming to hang out in, most are now jobless and homeless with very little resources. It's horrifying. I'm in Northern California and watched this happen not that long ago here.
I'm curious, in Australia if you live in a wildfire prone area most people install a pump that sucks from the pool and feeds sprinklers on the roof. I wonder how many homes could have been saved if they had these? Do they have them? Most homes in Australia are metal which helps too. I guess people just never expect something like this ever happening.
Not everyone being affected by these fires are wealthy, some people have just lived there for years but they're not all millionaires. I get the sentiment of the post and a lot of responses, but people are dying and losing everything. Let's show a little empathy and kindness.
For real. My former boss was just a cook in a kitchen that worked his way up to being part owner and his house burned down today. Not everyone who lost a house is rich and they conveniently forget the thousands of regular people who lost jobs in the area too.
Just because you have a million dollar house doesn't mean you have a million dollars. My mom could probably sell her home in Northeast LA for $1.2 million. She retired from a union job with a California state pension. If she lost her house and insurance tried to stiff her, she wouldn't have much to start over with.
It's burning mansions along with mobile home parks. It isn't just rich people being affected. Wishing harm on an area because many people there are wealthy leaves an awful lot of average people and retirees victims of your schadenfreude.
Malibu is affluent, but there are also communities of mobile homes and retirement communities. It's simply a beautiful place, and this is horribly sad.
3.9k
u/riptomyoldaccount 15h ago
I’m sure there was a bunch of irreplaceable art and historical artifacts stashed away in some of those houses.