Palisades Fire: AI Baby Facts On a Serious Matter

Last week, the DOJ announced that they had arrested a man in Florida on suspicion of starting the Palisades Fire — in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
Jonathan Rinderknecht, 29, was charged with maliciously setting fire to an area in the wild lands above Pacific Palisades, which became an 8-acre blaze — and eventually, 6 days later, turned into the Palisades Fire — according to the investigation conducted by the ATF. Yes, that ATF.
I was a bit surprised to hear that ATF conducted the investigation. I didn’t know they did fires. Apparently their new name is actually ATFE, with an E for explosives. I had no idea about that either, did you?
I didn’t know this either — that the ATF has the only official burn lab in the country that can recreate conditions from a fire incident. And that’s in Maryland.
So the ATF said, in spite of knowing that 24 fire engines and eight helicopters had spent hours putting that fire out, that a holdover fire remained active underground and then the gale force winds on Jan. 7 awakened that fire, which then burned down almost the entire village and neighborhood.
Twelve people died in the Palisades Fire, and 66,000 buildings were destroyed — included many schools and churches.
My own apartment building burned down. Some days, it’s still hard to believe.
I’m just beginning my coverage of the fire; I’m doing it at all and I’m doing it late for the same reason — that the event was so deeply personal.
And I mean even the trail where the suspect lit the vegetation — and the clearing where they said he did it — were areas I treasured for more than a decade and ran through and stoped to marvel at the beautiful yet sometimes strange foliage that was growing all over the rocky hillside.
This is most of what I know — what’s in this video — except perhaps for a more thorough exploration of prevention practiced that have or have not been employed. And rest assured, I’m leaving no stone unturned. Often there are multiple reasons why a policy changes; but if the general pattern shows a move away from best practices in life-or-death situations, then that’s a problem.

a large ember had embedded itself deep underground, and then when the hellish winds came from both off and onshore, the ember reignited the oeihibqp fore, and that became the Palisades Fire.
A couple days
in a very rugged, dense area of chaparral (shrubs that inhabit regions with a Mediterranean climate). #palisadesfire