January 11, 2025

THE MAFIA WAS BETTER AT PROVIDING SERVICES: Obvious Blue Model Failure: “It’s unclear when the reservoir first went offline.”

The Los Angeles Times reports this morning — confirming a conspiracy theory that people have been spreading online as social media disinformation, of course — that the major local reservoir at the heart of Pacific Palisades was dry when the fire started, due to a torn liner. The newspaper quotes a city DWP official as saying that the reservoir has been out of service for repairs for “a while.” They’re not sure about an actual date. The story is illustrated with a photograph of the empty reservoir that was taken in 2022, so.

As the fire burned, the water supply in the Palisades came from three storage tanks that hold “1 million gallons each,” while the 117 million gallon reservoir was completely empty. You can read the whole story to dig into the several arguments that the reservoir wouldn’t have been entirely full even if it was working, and that the supply from the reservoir wouldn’t have been immediately and entirely available for firefighting, but nonetheless: the most important water storage facility in the heart of the burning neighborhood was empty because of maintenance problems, with city officials shrugging and mumbling about the details.

When government becomes a shakedown, all they care about is the money. Not what the money is supposed to go for.

Plus: “We replaced our fleet of police cars with Teslas, by the way, consistent with our climate action plan. The image of new patrol Teslas racing across potholed streets past cracked bridges to save the climate is very blue zone.”

UPDATE:

Also:

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds