The Los Angeles Police Department on Thursday cleared some homeless encampments from fire-danger areas in the San Fernando Valley and other parts of the city, as the region braced for several days of hot, dry Santa Ana winds.
This is one of the first times LAPD has used a city ordinance passed in early September that made it easier for officials to order out anyone on hillsides and or in large recreation areas during times of dangerous fire weather.
Four command posts were set up across LA near so-called “very high fire severity zones” at Hansen Dam, Topanga, Elysian Park and Westwood. Separate encampment clean-up operations on city park land also appeared to be underway, including at encampments at Hansen Dam that are not part of the zones.
Deputy Mayor Christina Miller, who is leading the coordinated response through the mayor’s office, said outreach efforts had been done in the high risk areas over the past few days, and many of those engaged left voluntarily. Some shelter beds were reserved for the operation, and one person took the offer, according to Miller.
Fire officials around the state have expressed intense concern this week over the wind event, which comes right at the beginning of what has become California’s yearly disastrous winter of wildfires. Most areas of L.A. County on Thursday could see winds as strong as 55 miles per hour, with even more powerful winds in hilly and mountainous areas, according to the National Weather Service.
The evening before, city agencies were monitoring conditions and awaiting word on whether on when they would be removing homeless people from the Valley’s more rugged areas, depending on the weather, said Valley Bureau Chief Jorge Rodriguez.
“The Santa Ana winds are starting at around 3 a.m., peaking at around 2 p.m. and trending through Saturday,” Rodriguez said Wednesday evening. “We are monitoring the weather to see when the conditions change.”
LAPD set up a command post at the Hansen Dam Recreation Area ranger station in Sun Valley at around 8 a.m., but the LAPD officers did not begin heading into the Tujunga Wash until about 9:30 p.m.
A command post has been set up at Hansen Dam Ranger Station. They are getting ready to order people in homeless encampments to leave the Hansen Dam and Tujunga Wash. They are just waiting for the call. pic.twitter.com/5gV1xxTocX
— Elizabeth Chou (@reporterliz) October 10, 2019
Foothill Division Captain Brian Wendling said anyone living in these areas was “in danger” from the extreme risk of fire today. He added that the ordinance makes living in these areas illegal on hot and windy days like Thursday.
Catie Laffoon, 36, of Silver Lake was walking her husky along the wash Thursday morning when she noticed two police vans up ahead.
She said that she runs across people living in the wash, some of them living in hutches, but “I’ve never had any issue with anybody.”
She added that she found the ever-present homelessness crisis in Los Angeles to be “offensive.”
“Why are we not doing enough to build enough housing and shelter?” she said.
The operation is part of a more immediate, enforcement-based response aimed at ejecting people from areas where there is a clear risk from people living and building fires in high-brush areas. City officials have said that the urgency of the dangers outweighed other considerations.
Residents of the Sunland-Tujunga area who do outreach to some of the people who live in the Tujunga Wash say that they only heard about the operation the day before, on the news.
Some said that whenever there is a clean-up in the wash, encampments increase along Foothill Boulevard and local parks, but it was unclear if there was much change in the homeless population in the more urban areas.
The city ordinance was proposed by LA City Councilman Bob Blumenfield and supported by City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez — both of their districts cover wide swaths of L.A. that are designated fire zones. It targets everyone who might be in these areas, including homeless people, hikers and campers.
New rules came after several high-profile fires threatened and damaged homes in L.A. that may have been started by fires at homeless encampments.
The 2017 Skirball fire was blamed on a campsite in the hills near Bel Air. A fire in the Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area in July also tore through an area where numerous homeless people were living; LAFD did not determine a cause in that fire.
But most of the area’s largest fires have not been started by homeless people or campers. The Woolsey fire in 2018 is still under investigation, but victims who lost homes claim in lawsuits against Southern California Edison that the utility’s power lines sparked the blaze.
Residents who lost homes in the Creek fire above Sylmar in 2017 reported seeing lines owned by the Department of Water and Power sparking in the area where the fire began, though LAFD never determined a cause.
