Palisades Fire victims told they had to pay for new hydrant in order to rebuild

https://abc7.com/post/palisades-fire-victims-told-had-pay-new-hydrant-order-rebuild/18488114/

by donsupreme • 6 months ago

7 8 6 months ago

8note• 6 months ago

grandfathering these places in in the first place seems like it was a bad idea

Neywiny2• 6 months ago

Agreed. IMO anything that's objectively the wrong implementation for any lifespan of the regulated thing should not get grandfathered. If it's like, "this type of concrete only lasts 10 years" then the regulation should say that anything built < idk 8 years ago is fine so long as everybody is notified. But if regulators found that doubling hydrant frequency would help then it just should've been done.

Neywiny2• 6 months ago

A bit sneaky of the reporter here. They're hinting that even with an extra hydrant it may not have helped because there wasn't enough water to go around. Unless I'm misunderstanding

seanmcdirmid2• 6 months ago

Yes, they probably need more water towers as well to provide the pressure needed for a large scale fire.

yesfitz• 6 months ago

"The LADWP tells Eyewitness News they will cover the cost of installing a new fire hydrant at the price tag of $35,000."[1]

The median sale price in the Pacific Palisades is ~$2 Million.[2]

The homeowners said "Our insurance certainly wouldn't have covered [a new hydrant]." And according to them, the LAFD said "please contact LADWP to get a cost estimate for what you'll have to pay to build and install this new hydrant." Emphasis mine.

Even if the homeowners had to bear the entire cost, assuming they had a median home, a new hydrant would be 1.75% of the value of the house, equivalent to a $7,175 expense for a home valued at the US median price of $410,000.

I feel for these people. No matter who you are, losing your home is a terrible experience. But it's ridiculous to choose to rebuild in a clearly fire-prone area, and then complain that the city needs to you install fire protection as part of the building.

This should have been a matter between the homeowners and their insurance company.

1: https://abc7.com/post/palisades-fire-victims-told-had-pay-ne... 2: https://www.zillow.com/home-values/19810/pacific-palisades-l...

estimator7292• 6 months ago

It shouldn't be an out of pocket cost unless the fire department isn't publicly funded.

This is what taxes are for. You pay your locality tax, you get service from the fire department. If some plot of land within city limits doesn't have infrastructure for firefighting, that's the city's problem. If a plot of land can't be serviced by firefighters, it shouldn't be zoned and permitted for residential construction.

seanmcdirmid2• 6 months ago

Fire departments are funded via property taxes, and prop 13 messes up what per house pays. They probably have no choice but to charge home owners for improvements that would typically come from property taxes due to dumb decisions made by Reaganites 50 years ago, but at least they have cheap property taxes

lacker• 6 months ago

It's pretty common in California for cities to abuse the permitting process to extract money from homeowners. But on the other hand, these homeowners are getting subsidized by Prop 13. For a typical house in the Palisades bought 34 years ago ChatGPT estimates the subsidy is about $15,000/year. So, I have a little bit of sympathy but they're really on the benefitting end of California's various forms of tax craziness.

Palisades Fire victims told they had to pay for new hydrant in order to rebuild

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