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November 13, 2023

Bum encampment fire shuts down major Los Angeles highway artery

By Monica Showalter

Traffic in Los Angeles stinks and now it's going to get even stinkier.

According to CNN:

Southern California drivers may face travel headaches this week after a large storage yard fire over the weekend shut down part of Interstate 10, one of the major traffic routes for downtown Los Angeles, authorities said.

A section of I-10, also known as the Santa Monica Freeway, was damaged and remained closed in both directions Sunday near Alameda Street in Los Angeles, a city well known for its traffic congestion issues.

Shortly before 12:30 a.m. Saturday, the Los Angeles Fire Department received reports of a fire at a 200-by-200-foot storage yard “with pallets, trailers and vehicles well involved in fire with buildings that were exposed,” Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said at a news conference Sunday. 

“Wind pushed the heat and the flames under the freeway, and across the street ignited a secondary storage yard,” Crowley said.

 

 

Ahh, a pallet fire, they said. A storage-area fire, they said. A rent dispute with a bad tenant...

According to the local presses, it was bums camping out under the Santa Monica freeway with no zoning enforcement whatsoever. Some were said to be stealing electricity. Others were reportedly using propane tanks for cooking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But as the press puts it "cause unknown."

These vast highway arteries roaring through the center of America's second-largest city things just ... catch fire.

That's going to be a heck of a miserable commute for Angelenos who have to use that highway, which is pretty much all of them. It's the main highway of the city, stretching from the downtown area all the way to Santa Monica's beaches, crossing the industrial areas, the USC area, the Crenshaw and Leimert Park area communities, the La Brea tar pits area, the Pico-Robertson quarter leading into Beverly Hills, the Culver City area, the turnoff to the Marina, the Westwood/UCLA area, and the long way through Santa Monica. It's right at the critical interchange of highways coming in and going out, too. I know, because I took this highway a lot when I lived in Los Angeles.

Traffic rerouting recommendations include taking the 110 highway from Pasadena to Long Beach, and the 101 Hollywood Freeway -- as if those highways aren't hellish enough without additional traffic added. I know I took the 10 just to avoid those dangerous semi-truck going-too-fast highways. The Hollywood freeway in particular is a misery of bad signage telling you to get into the wrong lanes for your turnoff. I can't imagine spillover traffic getting onto that one. More likely, a lot of people will take Venice Boulevard and Washington Boulevard if it's still doable, or the La Brea Slauson USC-to-Marina del Rey cut-through.

 And they have no idea how long this will go on as the damage is being assessed but it's pretty obvious there is damage from the fire making the stretch of highway impassable, so lucky Angelenos.

 Sure, there will be an investigation. California's Gov. Gavin Newsom says it will be quick. But based on what we have seen elsewhere, if the results are not what they want, it will be an extended investigation, one with no disclosures owing to the investigation, like the Nashville shooter case.

That said, it's pretty obvious that allowing a bum encampment full of illegal drug users is just a matter of time before some kind of disaster occurs.

And that raises questions about the wisdom of this. Does a disaster have to occur before they can clear a bum encampment and place drug addicts either in jail or involuntary rehab until they clean up? They have been tolerating this stuff for years, all in the name of coddling the bums' 'civil rights.'

Now the public has to pay for it, and not just in money, but in a reduced quality of life as commutes extend and getting around Los Angeles is going to get a lot harder. Newsom says this loss of the freeway will be much worse than the freeway shutdown that hit Philadelphia earlier this year, the one Pete Buttigieg rushed over to. No sign of him, of course as Newsom takes the cameras.

What's it going to take for all-Democrat-run Los Angeles to put the public's interest ahead of the special interests?

Maybe this blue city will wake up.

Image: Twitter screen shot

 

 

 

 

 

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