Just call me Silver Lake Watergate.

I went to hear a panel of journalists talking about blogs and investigative journalism last week at the LA Press Club, and I realized, Hey! That’s me! I was so furious about the fire in gp a year ago that took FOUR DAYS to put out, that I started this blog. If you were around then, you remember the dozens of firemen and women who took exception to my point of view…

Creative Commons-licensed photo by Will Camp bell of Blogging.la. Will has done his own hard digging in natural LA, and has a good blog here. I call this amazing photo – click on it – Stitched Silver Lake.

But I kept digging. This is why blogs are so great: it was a reader, obviously another fireman, who anonymously wrote a comment that led me to drill down further: we don’t have the right kind of trucks in LA to fight brush fire in wooded areas. We have type OES type 1 trucks, according to Officer Brian Humphrey. Wooded areas like in national forests need type 4, and we don’t even have type 2 and 3! Jason Randall, a commenter at that post, who appears to also be a LAFD fireman, wrote:

In addition to the resources of 104 fire stations, there are four brush patrols, six helicopters, and a very well equipped tractor team. If you’re interested in learning more, you might want to visit Fire Station 88 in the San Fernando Valley. As an aside, the city also has five fire boats, including the largest fireboat in the U.S. (Fireboat 2).

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, however,

[Captain Comfort] said in a wildland situation (in any hilly area without roads) “we don’t chase fires, we just contain it.” And since they don’t have any large off-road fire trucks, their range is limited to the length of the hoses: only 300 to 500 feet! He added that the longer the hose, the more loss of water pressure, too. There are a limited number of small Brush Patrol trucks (4), used in Red Flag situations, that are off-road, and able to go deep, but obviously interior areas are mostly dependent on helicopters for big firefighting.

No one in the media picked up the fact that we don’t have the right fire trucks for forest fires. So thanks, Donna! I think self-congratulations are in order!I also stopped the “Forestry Division”, ie, unqualified tree hackers in gp, from cutting down hundreds of more trees for no reason at all after the fire. And notice that as of 3 weeks ago, Silver Lake has emergency water again! Since I am the only person in the media who spoke up about that…well, I’ll have a little water, thanks.

Wait til you see my next one!