Yes, well organized shelters for people, pets and large animals. We are sadly very used to fire here.
However, I have never seen this intensity of wind with the added risk of zero rainfall to date this season. The firefighters I know have said that these conditions are absolutely unprecedented.
Our pastor’s nephew lost his house in the Eaton fire. The nephew’s wife is expecting a baby in 10 weeks. I imagine almost everyone in the country has a connection to someone impacted by the fires.
Why angry?
I haven’t heard of anyone who is angry.
Probably people who don’t understand why water isn’t available at all locations. But it’s like getting angry at structural engineers for not designing buildings to withstand impacts from jet planes - it’s not economically feasible to design systems for the worst thing imaginable. 
I live in the Glendale/La Crescenta area west of the Eaton fire. Yesterday was extremely stressful as we were awakened early in the morning (after not sleeping well because of the extreme winds) that we were in an evacuation warning area and that we should be ready to go if necessary. We packed up go bags and then spent all day glued to the TV and getting updates about the fires from a very useful app called Watch Duty. We have been fortunate to have power when many people in surrounding areas have not. We have not had to evacuate and the winds have died down a lot which should help the situation. We’ve also heard a lot of water dropping helicopters passing overhead this morning which is encouraging. The air quality is terrible today, so we’re hunkered down inside with our air purifier and HVAC fan running constantly. My husband heard this morning that a colleague lost his house in Altadena–the devastation there and in Pacific Palisades is truly awful and heartbreaking.
I’m happy to report that my best friend did not have to evacuate last night, he dozed in his chair in the living room, prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. He’s truly shaken and also relieved.
My D (and my grand-cat) will probably come down tonight or tomorrow for a few days just for an emotional break. She says the air quality is awful. I can taste it in the air, and I’m 40 miles away.
Somehow LA will need to rebuild. I was thinking that with the Olympic Games coming in 2028 the city has got more on their plate than they could have imagined.
The wind has calmed, but I’ve heard it’s coming back.
Does anyone in the area have any info about how colleges in the area are being impacted?
I know UCLA has remote classes only for the remainder of this week. And LAUSD (K-12 schools) are closed today, not sure if they have announced regarding tomorrow.
Pasadena City College has closed all its campuses and canceled classes until Sunday.
(PCC is directly across the street from the east edge of Cal Tech’s campus)
On Thursday afternoon, Pasadena city officials announced one of the main evacuation centers, the Pasadena Convention Center, is at capacity.
The Los Angeles County Parks Department issued a statement saying staff was “unable to activate our evacuation plan for the reptiles and valuable items at Eaton Canyon Nature Center.”
“We are devastated by the overwhelming impacts of these fires. Sadly, our beloved Eaton Canyon Nature Center, Farnsworth Park – Davies Community Center – on the National Historic Register, and the Altadena Golf Course Club House and adjacent buildings were destroyed in the Eaton fire. Currently, Charles White and Loma Alta parks in Altadena have fire damage,” according to the statement.
Five schools in the Pasadena Unified School District suffered substantial damage, according to Superintendent Elizabeth Blanco. Eighty percent of Franklin Elementary burned, she said.
Thank you all who are sharing. There are no words. My thoughts and prayers go out to all impacted.
Arcadia Unified School District–all schools will be closed until Monday. At least 2 school campuses are without power. (My guess–Highland Oaks Elementary which inside the evacuation area and Foothills Middle School which is a couple of blocks south of the evacuation area. That area has had reduced voltage and intermittent outages.)
Hotels in LA County and Temecula are offering discount rates and temporarily suspending no pet policies for people displaced by the fires.
I looked at some of those rates. And while maybe considered good I’m not sure 200 bucks a night is something I’d sign up for figuring I may not have a home or a job in the morning.
Milo Ventimiglia, the actor who played Jack in “This is Us” lost his house in the fire. On the show, Jack died as a result of a fire. 
Milo’s wife is going to have a baby very soon.
Omg that is weirdly awful.
My friend in Ventura County is taking in evacuees, but a new fire has popped up not too far from her.
UCLA canceled all undergraduate classes today and tomorrow. I believe only graduate students still have online classes. It’s been stressful watching from afar. I feel so fortunate that my son was able to leave and head to a friend’s house.
My brother lives/lived in Pacific Palisades and I am pretty sure his house is gone, they lived across the street from a school that was totally destroyed (saw it in a news piece). He lived there for 30 years, they renovated an old house that was in pretty sorry shape. The media concentrates on the mansions and the homes of celebrities, but a lot of people live there who aren’t rich, who bought houses a long time ago. What is sad and sick there are people out there gloating about what has happened or using it for political whatever. Like people in Florida who got hit by hurricanes or tornadoes in other places or floods, people have lost everything, and houses are places of memories.
Leaving out the professional rabble rousers, people are trying to grasp how this happened, it is such an immense tragedy, and IMO they are trying to find someone to blame for it. The anger I hear is the reservoirs weren’t filled (blamed on Native Americans who wanted to protect fish or something), they are yelling that the water pressure in some hydrants went to near zero and blame the city for that. There are people, fueled by some quarters, who blame land management (and a lot of kooky crap I won’t even repeat here), that they didn’t get rid of brush. It is understandable when you have something so big IMO. You can argue reality, that you have a situation where everything was dry because the area has been in a drought situation, you can argue that when it gets dry, plants and trees pull oil from the ground, you can talk about humidity that hit 1% in some areas (dew point? -31F).
You can talk about winds pushing 80,90 miles an hour blowing from the Northeast, that pushed the fire right into some of the most densely populated areas around on a long front (in pacific palisades it was like a picket line of infantry charging). You can tell them that an urban firefighting system and its hydrants are not designed to fight something like this, that when you open so many hydrants, the pressure drops (it is why in cities in summer, where kids played in fire hydrants to keep cool, the city provided sprinkler caps for the hydrants). You can tell them that because of the winds, dump planes, that are really the front lines of the fire fighting with this, cannot fly, it is too dangerous. You can tell them that the fire itself creates turbulence and updrafts that can be real danger to fixed wing aircraft. Not to mention that there are literally 10’s of thousands of buildings in the affected areas (I have heard as many as 50,000 or more), and LA has like 1000 fire fighting units (I don’t know how many of them are pumpers or can act as one, this was a number a fire chief gave).
One technique in fires like this is to create fire breaks. The problem? With high winds, they are useless, fire jumps it.
Even if they had enough engines, in an inferno like this, a firetruck pumping water to try and protect structures is not all that much more effective than a garden hose. When I was in high school I was part of a drill simulating a plane crash using propane to create a huge fireball, it was a controlled drill, and it was still staggering how hard it was to try and put out and that likely paled against this.
The problem is the people affected by this are in shock and disbelief, and are obviously been hit to the core losing everything, including things that can’t be replaced, and the anger is why did this have to happen, so I understand it (some of the victims also have other reasons for the outrage I suspect). At this point I can’t even imagine the scope of the rebuilding, this is literally a point blank hit on a densely populated area, the aerial views I have seen remind me of cities in Europe after WWII.
It isn’t even just houses, things like the electric grid,fiber grid, the water system, communications (last I checked, communication towers on Mt. Wilson were really,really close to the edge of the Eaton fire) are all getting wiped out because of the flames and the intense heat. There are a lot of questions with this, I saw estimates of 50billion to 75b in cost, which I suspect are really low. And going forward, will there be questions about the wisdom of rebuilding? In flood prone areas the government has bought out houses rather than constantly having to rebuild them, and left it as flood zones.
Who is going to pay for it? I suspect you will see Insurance companies throwing up their hands, filing for bankruptcy leaving people high and dry.
Even if people anticipated this kind of scenario, that you could have this perfect storm of drought/dry brush, incredible winds and low humidity, with something this large, this unpredictable,it is doubtful they could develop a system to effectively fight it, where they wouldn’t be large losses. One of the members of my son’s music group has family living in LA, and they have never seen the Santa Ana winds like this, literally are as much as 100mph in places.
All we can do is hope the winds die down and they are able to start fighting it. I suspect in a lot of places it is basically going to rage until the fire burns out all its fuel. I am indirectly involved because of my brother, but just seeing the traged this is is overwhelming, and I don’t care if someone lost a 50m dollar mansion or a person of modest means a small house, my heart goes out to them and whatever help I can send their way,as little as that is.