Hardware

Drove past BHFD headquarters today and saw LAFD's shiny new Battalion 14 suburban parked in front for a visit. Also saw an EMS captain cruising by the other day (maybe EMS 2, but don't hold me to it) in a Suburban. Guess the EMS Crown Victoria's are getting phased out. The LAFD is also rolling out its new Ford E-450 ambulances around the city with the new LED lightbar packages. Pretty cool-looking beasts.

Pursuits Reality

So after the rash of highly publicized pursuits in the past month or so, the LA Times tasked a reporter to investigate this trend. Reporter Carol J. Williams comes up with a jumbled, rambling and slightly confusing story.

The upshot: Pursuits in L.A. (and statewide via the CHP) are actually down year-over-year. Go figure.

So Long Capt. Myers**

One of the LAFD's three Public Service Officers (PSO) who sit in the bowels of City Hall East (until the new OCD is fitted out at the new FS 4) has been promoted to Captain I. The indefatigable Brian Humphrey posted the news on the LAFD blog that his colleague Ron Myers on the "A" Shift is going to see daylight again as a Captain at FS 90 out by the Van Nuys Airport.

So that leaves Brian ("B" shift) and d'Lisa Davies ("C" shift) as the permanent PSO's as they look for someone to fill the vacant spot. The LAFD is unique in that they have a permanently assigned PSO attached to the dispatch center 24-7. The LAFD staffs its dispatch center entirely with sworn personnel and they work on the same 24-hour modified Kelly platoon schedule as the field units. The dispatchers work, sleep and eat four stories underground for 24 hours at a go (there's even a cook* who makes fire station-worthy meals).

Not only do the PSOs field routine calls from the public and the media, but they maintain the LAFD blog and for the past few years have been sending out increasingly more helpful and useful incident alert email/pager notifications. Mr. Humphrey, who has basically become known throughout the country, if not the world, as the "voice of the LAFD," has been at it the longest and Ms. Davies replaced longtime PSO Jim Wells** after he retired a couple years back. It's quite a good gig they've got going and Mr. Myers was an excellent part of the team.

Code6Charles wishes him luck at 90's.

* As a commenter pointed out, the cook rotates as part of the daily dispatch crew in the same way they do at typical LAFD stations, so there's no extra personnel assigned as a so-called "permanent cook."

** Jim Wells retired as the former LAFD PSO. Jim Hill is a local, longtime sportscaster for KCBS. Total brain melt on my part.

Airplane Threes

So, if you believe things come in threes, then maybe we're done with the February aviation drama--all within 24 hours. First, of course, was the Colgan Air tragedy in Buffalo last night that claimed 50 lives. The aircraft in question, believed to be N200WQ (sn 4200) can be seen in the pic. Taken at Port Columbus International (KCMH) on June 1 of last year.

This is the plane--operating as Continental Express 3407--that iced up on final approach to KBUF and departed controlled flight shortly after the approach flaps were extended. Plane dove directly into a home just inside the Outer Marker on approach to Rwy 23 and killed everyone aboard and one man in the home (his wife and daughter escaped the wrecked home with injuries).

The crash has re-ignited the old debate about de-icing boots vs. electric de-icing systems. First indications are that the de-ice system was in the "on" position, but it's unclear whether the boots were working and/or what phase of the cycle they were in at the time of the crash.

Incident number two happened a few hours later and would have been a MAJOR tragedy if it led to a crash. Air Pacific's nightly B744 KLAX to Nadi, Fiji run departed the Southland last night sometime after midnight and about an hour outbound the pilots discovered some sort of fuel transfer issue. They wisely returned to KLAX without incident and the 441 souls aboard were likely highly inconvenienced, but escaped unscathed. Buried in the garbled news reports about the incident was the idea that the plane itself may have been overweight. That leads the mind to spin all sorts of terrible scenarios about a runway overrun or some other horrible outcome of an overloaded 747-400.

The third incident occurred on Friday evening at London City airport as a British Airways commuter BAE-146 had a nosewheel collapse on the landing rollout. Passengers deplaned via slides and only a few minor injuries resulted.

So that's three in quick succession. January had Captain Sully and US Airways 1549, which in itself was at least three plane crashes wrapped into one.

photo: richillini via Opshots.net

Wet N' Wild in Beverly Hills

So the latest rainstorm (first of three, says the NWS) has created a mess of things in Beverly Hills. I guess because it started pissing rain midday everyone got all confused. A bunch of signal lights up on both Santa Monica Boulevards shorted out around 2 p.m., snarling things. Then the accidents started.

Seems there was a major smash-up at Sunset and Alpine that requires all sorts of crime scene unit callouts and other shenanigans.* Apparently it's not going to be a major crime, per the Sgt. on scene, but clearly there was a head-on crash with fire and significant injuries; a crash on Olympic and Clark in the south end and some other bang-up at Rexford and Lexington. A second head-on wreck just went down on the nasty S-curve just west of Whittier on Sunset and traffic is backed up for miles.

Ugly start to a wet weekend. Slow down on the drive home, idiots. Slow down.

photo: Wilshire and Rodeo, courtesy of rivenrock.com

Whole Lotta Everything

Sometimes there seems to be a whole lotta shit going on in Scannerland, but none of it seems that interesting. That's a high-class problem that comes with listening to the constant patter of emergencies in a major U.S. city. Lots of scannermonkeys would give their left (and right) nut to catch a few shootings, structure fires, extrication and rollover traffic collisions, possible plane crashes and a major gas leak within a six hour period, if not an entire month.

Yes, between the LAFD, LAPD and Santa Monica FD, all of the above went down at some point this evening. But it all felt sorta blah. Like I said, a high-class problem. For the past year or so, I've listened exclusively to the LAFD, LAPD, BHPD/FD, SMFD (with short bursts of Santa Monica and El Segundo PD's mixed in for specific reasons). I've stayed far away from LA County Fire and the LA County Sheriff's. As rewarding as some of the LA County FD calls can be (the sheriff system is way too painful for prolonged listening), I just can't take the constant tones and simulcast dispatches. They interfere way too much with the controlled flow of the LAFD. Even LAPD Hotshots gets on my nerves, but I've decided that it's worth keeping on to catch the good LAPD capers, which go down like clockwork.

That is all.

Pursuits

I had noticed an uptick in pursuits even before the LA Times pointed it out this morning. Last night, I caught about 10 minutes of the slow-speed Bentley chase that dragged on for hours. Went to bed at about 2300 while it was still going. Heard CHP call for LAPD backup about 30 minutes later once the dude exited the 101 Freeway at Lankershim (apparently a block or so from where the whole thing started hours before as the result of some sort of domestic).

By the time I awoke this morning, Mustafa Mustafa (really) had shot and killed himself. The folks over at LAist took it upon themselves to live-blog the whole thing, which is slightly more interesting than the paint-drying spectacle that was this lame pursuit. Rumors were flying that the driver was either Chris Brown--the 19-year-old music star who beat up on his girlfriend Rhianna two nights ago--or some random DJ of Palestinian-descent who appeared to resemble screen captures of the Bentley driver.

Must be something in the air as it's officially pursuit season.

photo: MashGet via Flickr

Odds, Ends

-- A few nights ago, LAPD caught the rare West LA division shooting. Call went out around 11 p.m. for a shots fired with a possible victim screaming for help in the far western and southern fringes of Brentwood. A bunch of units bought the call as two other "vicinity calls" went out in short order. Pretty soon, it was upgraded to an Ambulance Shooting with Engine and Rescue 37 (Westwood) attached. Since the LAPD has a bad habit of not trying to sort out vicinity calls until after units arrive, they had three separate primary units going Code 3 to a 2-block area and a bunch of other backup units bought in, as well. That included the basic car from way out in the Palisades, which was responding code from deep Sunset Boulevard.

So the first unit went Code 6 at San Vicente and Wilshire and unsurprisingly didn't find anything, while another primary car went out at an address on Barry Avenue right around the corner and found some dude shot in the stomach. The two white guys who were the alleged shooters had fled in a beat up Buick to parts unknown. Sounds like a shady drug deal gone bad.

--Meantime, across town in Beverly Hills, a "suspicious circs" call went down on an otherwise silent night. The dispatch was at a building on Wilshire that basically straddles the L.A./Beverly Hills city line on the southeastern end of the city at a joint called Sparkle Networks. Spark Networks--a quick Interwebs search reveals--is the parent company of such online dating sites as JDate, militaryconnections.com and interracialsingles.net. Well, it seems that some chick called the 877 customer service line around 11 p.m. and whoever answered the phone--likely in some town in central India or the Philippine archipelago--told the caller she was being stabbed and then hung up.

So Susie Good Samaritan must have been online or subsequently went online and found a biz address for Spark Networks that put the headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard in BH. So the 911 call was that someone in the office was being stabbed. Fair enough (leaps of logic aside, at least the dispatcher didn't hang up on her).

Basically every on-duty patrol unit in BH bought into the call and one of the field sergeants rousted himself from HQ to respond on down to Wilshire and San Vicente. The dispatcher (one of BH's most competent) tried a number of times to call back the 877 number and kept getting hung up on after it picked up--though she said there were voices in the background. At this point, I'm giving it a 20% chance of being legit and a heavily 80% chance of being total bullshit. But BHPD went through the whole fire drill: Units posted on all sides of the big office building; four coppers and the Sgt. rallied up in the lobby; Engine 3 and Rescue 1 staging a block out; K9 unit in the rear parking lot obtained master keys from the cleaning crew; confirmed no one was supposed to be up there at 2300 hours; perimeter set.

So entry team then requests the shield from the trunk of one of the patrol units in case of a crazy stabber awaiting them on the 8th floor. So...once entry was made via janitor keys the office was swept and no sign of a victim and definitely no suspect. It was Code 4 and everyone went home. Another solid exercise for the BHPD.

--A small barelysortascratched traffic accident outside my office building last week brought a visit from an LAPD West Traffic unit and shortly thereafter, Rescue 102 rolled up for some bullshitneckbackneckandback pain. Nice to see South Van Nuys' finest playing way over in Carthay Circle.

End of Watch: Sgt. Curtis Massey

Culver City PD lost a 17-year veteran Wednesday morning when Sgt. Massey was killed in a head-on collision with a 21-year-old wrong-way driver on the Santa Monica Freeway. Sgt. Massey was driving into work at around 0530 when the collision occurred. You'd be surprised at how often people actually drive the wrong way on four and five lane freeways. You'd think it'd be a once-a-year occurrence, but it's often every few months. And these things almost never end pretty.

L.A. drivers are assholes, by and large. I was pondering this about 14 hours after Sgt. Massey was killed as I drove past the accident scene going the opposite direction. It was dark and I was clipping along at about 70 mph, so there wasn't really anything to see, other than a sea of headlights going the other way.

I was on my way to celebrate a friend's birthday in Santa Monica and was dealing with the various boneheads who were also traveling at high rates of speed westbound on the 10 Freeway that evening. Tailgating, no signal lane changes, high speed braking--all the usual symptoms of asshole freeway drivers in L.A.

I've found that when people are driving home from work they drive like total dickheads (especially on the freeway), which is in stark contrast to how they drive on the way to work. In the mornings, it's slow as molasses, commuters purposely taking their time to accelerate and making sure to stop for every yellow light. Nothing like the dread of actually arriving at work to organically create traffic jams.

Anyway, RIP Sgt. Massey.

SMO Crash Update

So it appears that one of the two fatalities in last night's crash at KSMO was the general manager of the Airliners.net Web site. I've long been a casual fan of the site, which depicts pretty pictures of commercial airliners in all manner of flight and ground ops.

Sounds like Paulo Emanuele was at the controls of the red Marchetti SF-260 when it lost power shortly after departing Runway 21. Still unclear whether Emanuele had turned around and was attempting to land on Runway 3, or whether the plane nose-dived and crashed before reaching the end of the departure runway. Reading the various news accounts out there this afternoon, I'm inclined to believe he hadn't gotten to the end of the runway and just nosed over.

SMO's runway is just under 5,000 feet and those Marchetti's don't need a long takeoff roll, so he probably got airborne abeam or slightly past the control tower and started having engine issues right afterwards. Sounds like he stalled and nosed over. Other scenario has him burning up precious airspeed as he was making a 180 to return to the airport and stalled afterwards.

Stuck Elevator

I can check that experience off my list. Surprising, really, given the number of elevators I've ridden in my lifetime. In my last four years of employment, I've ridden the same five elevators in my Wilshire Boulevard building's elevator bank probably upwards of 1,000 times. Never gotten stuck. Until last week.

Leaving work around 1830 hours with two colleagues when our elevator car jolted to a stop about 2 seconds after it departed the 15th floor. Our building is designed with two elevator banks--floors 1 to 15 and 16 to 22. So we're the top floor of our bank. The lights stayed on, but all of the buttons died. The alarm and intercom buttons worked, so we summoned the ground floor security guard who kindly informed us he would be calling Fujitsu, the elevator maintenance company.

That's great. Except Fujitsu is based in FUCKING TORRANCE and we're in Beverly Hills. It was rush hour, on a weekday, and it was raining. No thanks, my friend, kindly call the LAFD.

No dice, he says. Building policy is to NOT CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT, but instead wait for the elevator repair man.

Here's what I'm thinking as I continue this futile argument with the very nice wage-slave nightshift security guard who's simply following written protocol:

I've called the cable company, the phone company, the plumber, the electrician and the exterminator before. (The Gas Co. gets a pass). They show up after many hours, often scratch their heads and tell me (in no particular order) a.) they don't have any idea what's wrong, b.) they don't have "the right part," c.) they have to call the main office to discuss the problem, d.) they have to call their buddy to come help them with the problem or e.) have to come back tomorrow to fix it.

I suspect elevator techs are the same. Clearly, the building's priority is to fix the elevator. My priority is to get the fuck out of the elevator. The LAFD's priority is to get me the fuck out of the elevator and to not give a shit about damaging said elevator to get me out.

So after going round and round with Mr. Security for about 10 minutes, I whipped out the celly and called 911. After being on hold for about four minutes with the CHP's 911 line, I got a live dispatcher on the phone and told her to transfer me to the LAFD, which she did. After a 30 second convo with some LAFD dispatcher in the bowels of OCD, she assured me they were on their way. Which they were.

Less than 10 minutes later I heard voices above and outside the door and LAFD Light Force 61 was on scene and in charge. I relaxed a bit as I knew these guys liked a good challenge and wouldn't leave before we'd been sprung. It took about 45 more minutes, since the building (and its chief engineer) we're being extremely obstructionist and not assisting the LAFD with simple requests like "Where is the elevator room?"

But LF 61 finally located it, cut the power to the elevator and manually raised the car back up to the 15th floor where the doors automatically opened and we walked out. Of course, I took the elevator back to the ground floor. Mechanical lighting striking twice and all that.

As I was pulling out of the parking lot 15 minutes later, Fujitsu was pulling in. Needless to say, Station 61 receive two gallons of premium Dreyer's brand ice cream during their next shift.

Dodging the Trunk

So after spending a weekend in Eagle County, Colo., a few weeks ago, I've renewed appreciation for the scanning landscape here in L.A. County. Mostly, I am greatly relieved that none of the agencies I routinely monitor have switched to a trunked system. While the LAPD's move a few years ago to a digital system forced me to spend a few hundred bucks to upgrade scanners, it wasn't that big of a deal.

My good man NathanMK had the foresight to pre-program his little Uniden TrunkTracker with a host of Eagle County frequencies before he departed Boston, and I brought along my SportCat 180 that is trunk-tracker capable, but is owned by someone that has never programmed a trunked system. In the past, I've just programmed a bunch of the EGE frequencies in the scanner, locked out the control channel (easy to find since it's the channel with the annoyingly loud buzz) and basically rolled the dice. In between the idiotic radio traffic about various Eagle Transit and Vail Transit bus routes, I'd get snippets of public safety traffic. But since my scanner wasn't programmed to trunk, the calls would jump all over the frequencies and I'd almost always only hear bits and pieces of conversations.

Nathan's pre-program was like a revelation of sorts, but it was still a pain-in-the ass, largely owing to spotty reception in our lodgings and giant mountains blocking the various signals bouncing around the county. Halfway through the weekend, I jury rigged my scanner into some semblance of a programmed TrunkTracker and had slightly better success cutting out all the useless public works and bus traffic.

By the time I returned to L.A., I was happy to resume my usual scanning habits, which the local public-safety agencies make fairly easy. There were a few amusing calls to be heard in Colorado, but also made me happy that trunking seems like a distant possibility here. I also thank my lucky stars that the city of Beverly Hills has yet to enact its long-threatened trunking system.

Airplanes

Did a little flying in the past two weeks (as a passenger) and departed KLAX on a beautiful Thursday afternoon in the midst of L.A.'s annual January heat wave. Upon takeoff from Rwy 25R, glimpsed one of the LAFD's ARFF trucks doing a welcoming spray for what appeared to be a Virgin America A320 taxiing into its terminal. They must've been inaugurating a new service.

Upon my landing at KEGE roughly two hours later, fired up the BlackBerry to discover the first reports of US Airways flight 1549's unscheduled water landing. There's obviously nothing I can add to the incident other than to say 1.) "Sully" can be my wingman anytime and 2.) I bet I could've done the same thing on MS FlightSim 2004, except that there are absolutely no decent Airbus add-on products that I've found for the sim.

Since I'm about two weeks late posting this, I'll add this postscript: Watching live-streaming video of a fatal aircraft down at KSMO this evening. Looks like a two-seater aerobatic-type had engine problems after departure on Runway 21 and tried to make it back. Crashed on Runway 3 and skid off onto a northern taxiway, where it burst into flames. Two died. SMFD crash units and airport PD is on scene. Airport will be closed for awhile for the invest. Sadly, the pilot couldn't survive the crash landing and attempted the dubious trick of returning to the runway he just departed from; but his death on the runway avoided potential carnage in the residential area just west of the airport.

Israeli Consulate Protests

So we're going on the fourth or fifth organized protest of Hamas vs. Israel since the conflict began late last month. Since then, the LAPD has really gotten their shit together after stumbling very badly the first time the Israeli and Palestinian supporters started yelling at each other from across the 6300 block of Wilshire Boulevard.

The first night of protests in late December saw the LAPD way behind the eight ball. They desperately requested backup from on-duty patrol units in Wilshire, West L.A. and Hollywood divisions as the crowd grew and they couldn't get their shit together fast enough to shut down Wilshire at rush hour. Reinforcements were sent in from the BHPD and the entire day watch shift of the BHPD was held over for a few hours while the LAPD tried to sort things out and keep protesters from getting run over on Wilshire. Also, they didn't want the two sides killing each other.

So, in the weeks since, they've really put their full effort into preventing a repeat of the organizational mishaps they suffered. What's amusing about the LAPD's subsequents shows of force is that they are disproportionate to the size of the protesters and to anything that actually occurred during the first--and biggest--protest. That is, they're clearly trying to save face and impress the other agencies more than they are actually worried about a full-blown riot erupting.

Anyways, that brings us to today's activities. On my jaunt back from Brentwood around 0900 I saw the LAPD airship circling low over Wilshire and San Vicente and figured something was up. I parked my car and mosey'd over to the general area, where the DOT had just shut down Wilshire going eastbound. The protesters numbered about 15. The LAPD numbered about 10. Within 20 minutes, the LAPD numbers swelled while the protesters remained about the same.

The crappy camera phone pic above shows the first arriving units from Wilshire, West L.A., Olympic and West Traffic divisions lining up along the street. A captain in a tricked-out black, Dodge Charger then showed up followed by a Sgt. from West Traffic. Then, the news trucks, helos and LAFD's Battalion 18's sedan rolled in. Apparently, some protesters had chained themselves to each other or the building or some other such nonsense.

As an aside, members of the State Department's diplomatic security force have basically been stationed in front of and in the consulate for the past week or so. I noticed a bunch of them taking a lunch break in front of the building yesterday.


By 1000 hours, when I returned to my place of work, which is down the street from the Israeli consulate, all of Wilshire had been shut from San Vicente to at least Crescent Heights and more than a dozen unmarked cars from Metro division were parked in the middle of the street, with officers suiting up in riot gear and removing bundles of flex-cuffs from their car trunks. The most interesting aspect of this is what's clearly a by-product of 2007's disastrous May-Day protests when the LAPD went wildin' through the crowd and beat up everyone in sight, including journalists. So now, on the back of their tactical vests, in huge WHITE BLOCK LETTERS are embroidered the officers names. At least I assume it's their names, what with "Martinez," "Rodriguez," "JACKSON," on full display. Funny, too, since when the LAPD is giving you a beatdown and you're covering your head, might be tough to spot the officer's last name ON THE BACK OF HIS UNIFORM as he's hitting you from the front. But the devil is always in the details.

At full strength, the LAPD response included units from Rampart and as Pacific divisions, as well. The LAFD had Light Force and Rescue 61 standing by, though I didn't see the full complement of mounted patrols that have been here on previous occasions.

By 1115 hours, the incident was Code 4, the Metro cops and the LAFD had departed and the airship cleared the scene.

Wilshire Boulevard Shenanigans

Maybe it's the goofy weather, but Wilshire has been a freakshow all morning from the Miracle Mile west into Brentwood (admittedly, the only portion I've actually traveled today).

Items:

-- I was rushing to an early morning appointment at 0715 this morning and was weaving in and out of worker-bee traffic going westbound Wilshire through the Westwood hi-rise corridor. Doing about 45 mph when some jerkoff pulled out from a side street and into my lane forcing me to slow down to about 35 or 40. As I was mentally swearing at this guy, I noticed out of the corner of my right eye and green and tan-clad motorcycle cop with a radar gun. We made eye contact and there was that split-second moment where he was deciding whether or not I was his guy and I was waiting to see if he'd pull into traffic. The moment passed and he kept searching for other quarry.

So, thanks to you, Black VW Jetta guy, for slowing me down and sparing me from an almost certain speeding ticket. However, I couldn't quite understand what an LASD motor cop was doing speed-trapping on Wilshire, which is the thick of LAPD jurisdiction.

An hour later, heading eastbound on Wilshire, saw the same guy about a mile from his original location writing a ticket to the driver of a black car service Town Car, which made me smile, since Limo/Town Car drivers rank only slightly lower on the aggressive-asshole driving scale than the average taxi driver.

The other Shenanigan deserves--and will get--a separate post (see above).

All Quiet...

...so far in this January heat wave. Record high temps expected again tomorrow, so hopefully, we'll get by without a big brusher.

Sunday Scanning

The joy of scanning SoCal is that on a random Sunday evening in January, the following things are all going on at once:

-- BHPD is running security and trying to keep the mischief down at the Beverly Hilton hotel as the Golden Globes awards are underway. They've been out there all day with set-up and celebrity arrivals, etc. etc. Right now, BHFD is responding to some manner of medical emergency on the second floor of the hotel, even as the place is locked-down tight because the awards broadcast is underway. Lots of traffic on the BHPD Tac (453.650) regarding random road closures and vehicles trying to get past checkpoints.

--On the far southwestern end of LAFD's jurisdiction they're using FIRE 4 to hoist some lady from the bottom of the cliff down in FS 48's district on the Palos Verdes Penninsula. FIRE 6 is standing watch as the observer helo.

--And way up in the Northwest Valley in Chatsworth, LAFD hit the "uh-oh" button when a Metrolink (though possibly Amtrak) train hit and killed some chick who was walking in a tunnel. She was pronounced dead on scene, but now they've got a train full of 400 folks stuck in the tunnel as they investigate and a bottleneck of delayed trains on the tracks behind them. No injuries on the train but LAFD and LAPD have formed a joint-command to try to figure out how the fuck to get the body out of the tunnel and move the trains again. It looks like the involved train is going to be stuck for at least two hours as the coroner investigates.

USAR Task Force 88 was on scene for a bit and was prepping for lighting and other USAR-type activities, but the IC just cut them loose since they didn't want all those guys tied up for so long, while everyone's standing around waiting.

New LAPD Stations Activated*

So I've been hearing the newly christened Olympic Area units being dispatched on the scanner in the past few days but haven't heard any calls go out for the new Topanga division way out in the west Valley (at the site of a former sex toy manufacturer!). But both divisions appear to be operational, Olympic being an important addition to the Mid-City area relieving some of the pressure in both the Wilshire and Rampart divisions. Olympic Area cars have the "20" prefix and the Topanga cars will have the "21" prefix.

There was a little murmur of debate a few weeks ago when the LAPD said they'd be shifting some officers from the ritzy (and relatively quiet) West LA Area to help staff up at Olympic.

*Check that. Just heard a Topanga unit get sent out on a HOTSHOT at 2252 hours. So all the new guys are now playing in the sandbox.

Full Moon Madness

I don't subscribe to many superstitions, but one that I do buy into is the nuttiness that a full moon brings. Tonight's moon is to be the biggest of the year and the scanner is bearing that out. It doesn't hurt, of course, that it was nearly 80 degrees in the L.A. today, the beginning of a warm spell.

By 2130 hours, LAFD had one good apartment burner going in South L.A., had put out dispatches for two others (one in Hollywood and another in Watts) and the LAPD was bumping with all manner of calls. Probably going to be a long night in the city.

Winds of Change

In the few sporadic years I've maintained this blog, the Santa Ana winds and the fires they spawn seem to be a recurring theme. I've posted about them here...and here.

Mostly, because they bring fire and havoc, often in January when the chilly nights (like the foggy one tonight) and the bare branches lull us into thinking we're done with fires until next summer. So let it not be a surprise when the winds come roaring from the east tomorrow afternoon and temps spike into the 80's by Sunday.

LAFD will probably go into Red Flag operations by tomorrow afternoon and we will all hold our breaths and hope nothing burns.

Photo: Just Fillmore Blog