https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/14/volkswagen-van-palisades-fire
(https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/450af165b43ec98577a937c83ed5ea932a00d5cd/0_0_3199_1798/master/3199.jpg?width=620&dpr=2&s=none&crop=none)
My son Leon was/is actually there, he lives in Topanga which is right behind Pacific Palisades. He spent the weekend ad hoc firefighting with some of his friends, putting out smaller fires in the canyon, saving pets left behind (horses among them which they rode out of the canyon), carrying an old lady with walking inability out of a house, hosing water and cutting fire accelerating shrubs. Plus being - by coincidence - interviewed by a German news team reporting about the fires (with his friends jeering "He's our token Kraut!" ;D ). We received quite a few very vivid pictures from him via WhatsApp, let me tell you!
Topanga seems to be safe now. Where he lives, fires erupted very close (walking distance), but the estate (not his 😀, he's only rented a small pool guest house from his boss - shop and production facilities are in Venice which was not stricken by fires) was miraculously spared. Not everyone in Topanga was that lucky.
Congrats on raising an upstanding young man and I'm glad he's okay. I see a red pickup there too. Looks like a Dodge?
Leon has already quipped: "Now where's my Green Card?" 😂
Absolutely fantastic, Uwe. What a great kid you have.
It's interesting. In Germany, Leon was always more the loner type, the angry contrarian kid, nothing offered in Frankfurt ever really appealed to him. And then against all odds (and via living in Paris), he did make his way to America and in that artists & creative people/alternative lifestyle/neo-hippie bubble/hub that seemingly only exists in California, he finally found and embraced community and a much larger friends & peers group than he ever had at home. He spent Christmas on the Indian reservation-located farm of a friend's parents near Cortez, CO, feeding livestock, riding horses, repairing fences, building a shed, digging ditches, doing cowboy/farmhand stuff, he loved it, even if it meant getting up at 5:00 am.
He was obviously looking for something which he has now - at 30 - found. Topanga is a long ways from Frankfurt, but we're all happy for him. We always knew that he did not have a conventional professional career cut out for him, but that he would end up designing cowboy hats on the West Coast or Lucchese boots in Texas was far from our minds or reasonable expectations. Currently, he's wondering whether a move from California to Texas might not be in order ...
That's fantastic to read and hear, Uwe. Sounds like a fine upstanding man/token Kraut ;D And sounds like he is doing great things in CA.
Thanks, I sometimes rub my eyes at it. He's now part of creating and selling American mythology (he was the artistic and settings/locations advisor for the ad reel below), an America that hardly exists anymore if it ever existed at all, an urban visualization of rural life ...
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DAtl-bxKPrZ/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet
Good to read he is safe and helping people and animals to get safe.
And nice to read he has found what he was looking for, all the way in Topanga.
It's great to have a kid who finds THAT thing they enjoy and are comfortable with. And a sincere well done and thank you for his actions during the fire. Uwe must be very proud of that young man.
Don't we all want our kids to eventually find something that fulfills them? Leon was determined to do it his way. He never had a plan B either, subscribing to the view that if you have a plan B, then plan A will never come to fruition. I'd be lying if that didn't have me worried sometimes. Talent is one thing (I never doubted that, it was visible from his early childhood on), being discovered or finding your niche quite another. He was still 15 when he left home to move to London with a rock band, asking me the poignant question, "If I don't do this now, when would be the right time, dad?"
What followed was an odyssey London-Berlin-Amsterdam-Paris-LA music/modeling/studying fashion & design/a tailor apprenticeship, but eventually it led to where he is now. When he was a toddler/small child, he had two favorite utensils to which he hung on night and day: one was a rubber-coated hammer, the kind you use for camping, the other one of my wife's make-up brushes. We always joked about to where that might lead ... 😂
This is great! He was definitely in the right place at the right time.
VW vans, though...as an old friend of mine used to say, if yours broke down on the road, you were scared to leave it b/c they were so unprotected and dangerous in case of a front collision.
That's awesome that he was able to be so helpful during the fires.
It's been absolutely insane out here. I'm personally closer to the other Eaton fire we had that took out a huge chunk of Altadena/Pasadena and while I don't think I know someone that has been directly impacted, there are a lot of people who know at least one person who lost everything.
Quote from: Dave W on January 15, 2025, 09:12:12 PMVW vans, though...as an old friend of mine used to say, if yours broke down on the road, you were scared to leave it b/c they were so unprotected and dangerous in case of a front collision.
But Dave, trust my son to not content himself with anything as Old World as a 'VW Bus' (the German term for a Volkswagen van)! 🤣 In his never ending quest for assimilation to all things Americana - you have no idea to what lengths my son will go to create an illusion of 'natural' authenticity ... - , he of course drives an original late 70s Ford woody pick up truck with extra-wide tires and aftermarket raised suspension - exactly the kind of car you sensibly need in LA to get from A to B if you're wearing original 50s Levi's and used Vietnam combat boots ... 😂
I have doubts if crash test results would be much better than with a Volkswagen van though. An added benefit is certainly that Leon's car mechanic capabilities have improved in leaps and bounds since he got that (project of a) car! Last it broke down because the fuel tank leaked ... 🙄 This with the kid who as a boy refused to play with toy cars at all preferring Orc armies. 🤗
What a relief!
You missed a point, by the way - the VW bus is the exact blue that Rickenbacker copied for their 70s Azureglo.
Babyblau - hugely popular in Germany in the 60s and early 70s, always a terrible color!
Quote from: Dave W on January 15, 2025, 09:12:12 PMThis is great! He was definitely in the right place at the right time.
VW vans, though...as an old friend of mine used to say, if yours broke down on the road, you were scared to leave it b/c they were so unprotected and dangerous in case of a front collision.
I've ridden in cars doing some stupid things, but I've never been more nervous than riding 80 miles in an old VW van on a windy day. I thought that damn thing was going to overturn every moment of the drive.
Quote from: 4stringer77 on January 15, 2025, 07:47:14 AMCongrats on raising an upstanding young man and I'm glad he's okay. I see a red pickup there too. Looks like a Dodge?
A Chevy Blazer, shurely?
Quote from: Darrol on January 16, 2025, 12:49:31 AMThat's awesome that he was able to be so helpful during the fires.
It's been absolutely insane out here. I'm personally closer to the other Eaton fire we had that took out a huge chunk of Altadena/Pasadena and while I don't think I know someone that has been directly impacted, there are a lot of people who know at least one person who lost everything.
I read an article about the history of Altadena. What a shame. so much history lost.
May the smart-alec Kraut ask something? I see the charred remains of Pacific Palisades and wonder. Yes, there had been no rain for a long time and the winds were extreme. But looking at the ruins, you couldn't erect those buildings closer together than you already did, could you? And they are nearly all made out of wood. What do you expect in an environment where bush fires occur all the time? Don't your fire, life & safety (FLS) building regulations take likelihood of fires, flammability of building materials and proximity of buildings into account at all? It sure looks like it.
What happened, happened, thank God there were not more casualties. But I already visualize a re-erection frenzy where enforcement of FLS regulations is given a pass because they are costly, unpopular and hold up speedy redevelopment. Until the next fire strikes again as it no doubt will.
Yes, concrete, bricks & mortar can burn too. But only at temperatures that are almost impossible to attain in a natural open fire. In WW II, the Royal Air Force searched long and hard and got real creative until they found a combination that would burn down German concrete and stone buildings too.(Pacific Palisades wasn't carpet-bombed with phosphor bombs or napalm.) Add to that how in a concrete & bricks buildings zone fire spreads much slower than it did in those affected LA neighborhoods.
I understand that non-wood private homes are not really an American tradition, like 90% of your private buildings are wood structures and your private home construction firms are not really well-versed in using concrete and brick as building materials. Wood is also cheaper, leaves less of a carbon footprint in production, is easier to transport and build with + you have an overabundance of timber. But if people are hell-bent living house to house in regions where wildfires are a fact of life (and the next ice age seems by all accounts still somewhat away) wouldn't more concrete and bricks as well as distancing buildings properly make some sense when rebuilding these neighborhoods?
I would actually expect any new houses to take into account the fires now. Some of the few that remain standing were indeed ones that were built with concrete. In one case, there was a house in I think Altadena that utilized a newer style that saved it. Most of the homes here were built with vents going into the attics and with the fires, the embers would just go up those vents starting the fires up there. The newer style that saved the house utilized a single vent that led to a inlet system in which an ember wouldn't survive long enough to ignite anything.
Anyways, we'll see what happens with redevelopment. The state government is already trying to make some changes to ensure that houses can be rebuilt quicker than it normally takes to build a single family residence and stop big development companies from scooping up the land. I think the goal is to fast track direct rebuilds of houses as they were prior to the fires.
Quote from: uwe on January 16, 2025, 07:51:46 AMBut Dave, trust my son to not content himself with anything as Old World as a 'VW Bus' (the German term for a Volkswagen van)!
Funny, I always knew it as a VW Bus. Maybe it has to do with having grown up in NY.
Uwe, given the rate of population growth and the available building materials, it's no wonder that US single family homes are typically made of wood. Close spacing is simply a matter of economics where developers packed as many homes as possible into the available space.
Considering that American humorist Will Rogers' (now burned) home was built in 1928, it clearly has been nearly 100 years since any fire of that magnitude took place there, which is plenty of time for developments to occur while believing they are disaster-proof. Now we know they're not.
I'm seeing news stories - some of them from near me in Colorado, where they had a devastating wildfire last summer - showing houses being built with new venting systems which are good at keeping embers out of the home's interior, and using more fire resistant materials. They noted that the construction required added about 7% to the cost of building a home, which means an additional $70,000 per million in cost. That's a lot of beer and pizza money, and it's a fair guess that most of the homes which are replaced in LA will cost in that range. I don't think Altadena is going to have a low to medium income homeowner component any longer.
Clearly the "right" thing to do is require construction to meet those standards. But getting a state law passed would take at least a year, and considering the pleas of people who can't afford the extra cost, it seems politically questionable to me.
BUT - it's pretty obvious that there are river valleys with towns which are often flooded and should never have been built, ocean-side communities (as well as a chunk of Florida) which are doomed by sea rise, and buildings in fire-prone areas which should not be there. Political will to make those calls doesn't seem to exist.
Quote from: uwe on January 16, 2025, 10:07:00 AMalways a terrible color!
Seriously? That's my favorite Ric color.
That isn't babyblau, too dark and marine, actually a nice color.
This is:
(https://www.car-editors.net/bild/load/small/102165)
It was another VW color then... Someone at Ric saw a VW bus across the street from the factory in Santa Ana, liked the color and found out what dark blue VW were using. Ric named it Azureglo because they can't say black or cherry sunburst or natural like normal people.
(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ziQAAOSwum9io5~N/s-l1600.webp)
I understand now that the wacko conspiracy theorists think that the blue color of the van prevented space lasers from setting it on fire while they were starting fires around it.
Or some other combination of idiocy. Where do these dimwits come from???
And even more, who are the completely evil people who spend their time inventing insane conspiracy ideas that the idiots fall for???
It's a question of our time, I guess.
Quote from: ilan on January 18, 2025, 12:28:23 PMIt was another VW color then... Someone at Ric saw a VW bus across the street from the factory in Santa Ana, liked the color and found out what dark blue VW were using. Ric named it Azureglo because they can't say black or cherry sunburst or natural like normal people.
(https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ziQAAOSwum9io5~N/s-l1600.webp)
That darker blue looks like what Ric called Azureglo, at least back in the 70s. Not the much lighter blue in Uwe's first post.
Quote from: Pilgrim on January 17, 2025, 11:53:08 AMI'm seeing news stories - some of them from near me in Colorado, where they had a devastating wildfire last summer - showing houses being built with new venting systems which are good at keeping embers out of the home's interior, and using more fire resistant materials. They noted that the construction required added about 7% to the cost of building a home, which means an additional $70,000 per million in cost. That's a lot of beer and pizza money, and it's a fair guess that most of the homes which are replaced in LA will cost in that range. I don't think Altadena is going to have a low to medium income homeowner component any longer.
That kind of venting system is exactly what saved the one house I saw.
It is really going to be interesting to see what happens with Altadena. I'm inclined to agree that it's not going to be fitting for the income bracket it was prior to these fires. Between time and money, I worry that a lot of the homeowners will give up their land and move on to other places allowing new developments to go in. Neighboring cities have long had the trend of little houses being turned into big multi-family homes and I can see them getting put in there as well. I hope I'm wrong but we're stuck waiting on time to show us what happens.
Quote from: Darrol on January 19, 2025, 12:08:29 AMThat kind of venting system is exactly what saved the one house I saw.
It is really going to be interesting to see what happens with Altadena. I'm inclined to agree that it's not going to be fitting for the income bracket it was prior to these fires. Between time and money, I worry that a lot of the homeowners will give up their land and move on to other places allowing new developments to go in. Neighboring cities have long had the trend of little houses being turned into big multi-family homes and I can see them getting put in there as well. I hope I'm wrong but we're stuck waiting on time to show us what happens.
As a retiree, if I lived there I'd sell the lot and find another place to live. Options as far as rebuilding would not be attractive.