What's Wrong With a Private Firefighter?

Plus: Zuckerberg's metamorphosis, Trump's congestion pricing plans, and more...

An update on the fires: So far 24 people are known to have died in the fires burning in and around Los Angeles, while at least 16 people remain missing. Over 38,000 acres have burned, more than two and a half times the size of Manhattan. Though the winds calmed for a portion of the weekend, they are expected to pick up again this week, making it even harder to contain the Palisades and Eaton fires, which are 13 percent and 27 percent contained, respectively. Meteorologists predict that the winds will recede by Thursday, but fire crews continue to struggle to get the blazes under control. The water system is still struggling to keep up with demand.

In the Pacific Palisades, "water is collected in a reservoir that pumps into three high-elevation storage tanks, each with a capacity of about one million gallons," notes The New York Times. "Water then flows by gravity into homes and fire hydrants." But the storage tanks were depleted rather quickly, given the scale of the disaster, and the extreme winds have repeatedly prevented aerial drops by helicopter or plane.

A lot of the damage could have been prevented with proper management ahead of time. "When you study the destruction in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, note what didn't burn—unconsumed tree canopies adjacent to totally destroyed homes," wildfire expert Jack Cohen told the Los Angeles Times. "The sequence of destruction is commonly assumed to occur in some kind of organized spreading flame front—a tsunami of super-heated gases—but it doesn't happen that way. In high-density development, scattered burning homes spread to their neighbors and so on. Ignitions downwind and across streets are typically from showers of burning embers from burning structures."

What this means, the newspaper explains, is that proper management is not really about preventing wildfires "but instead preventing points of ignition within communities by employing 'home-hardening' strategies—proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding—and enjoining neighbors in collective efforts such as brush clearing."

Private firefighter controversy: Some Angelenos anticipated something like this happening and paid for private firefighting services or called them in as the fires escalated. Now those people—who, by using private services, freed up scarce firefighting resources to go work on other houses—are being skewered all over the internet. What exactly should they have done? Waited for their houses to burn down while sitting on their hands?

Private firms to the rescue in LA:
Private firefighters. pic.twitter.com/1Q4WJh1wQ3

— The Alex Nowrasteh (@AlexNowrasteh) January 11, 2025

Developer (and failed 2022 mayoral candidate) Rick Caruso is one of the people who called in firefighting services. He owns Palisades Village, an upscale shopping mall, and deployed private firefighters from Arizona, as well as water trucks, to save his property. Other Palisades residents have been availing themselves of this service too. Scorn has followed:

"private firefighters" it's been nice knowing everyone but there truly is no hope for the future https://t.co/60fD1aTSKZ

— madison (@altmadaf) January 9, 2025

Back in 2018, when Kim Kardashian and Kanye West used such services to protect their $50 million Hidden Hills mansion, angry internet mobs condemned them. The family staved off the criticism by noting that the private firefighting crews they had hired also saved the homes of their neighbors.

In London, in the 18th and 19th centuries, this type of practice was commonplace: Each insurance company kept their own firefighting crew, which would be deployed to protect the property the company had been tasked with insuring. The crews would sometimes move on to other buildings not insured by their own company, and would be paid a fee for their services later. This same model has been replicated today: "Some private firefighting companies, including Wildfire Defense Systems, are known as Qualified Insurance Resources and are paid by insurance companies to protect the homes of their customers," reports the Los Angeles Times. 

For what it's worth, founder David Torgerson told the Times that Wildfire Defense Systems responded to 62 total wildfires in California in 2024, not losing a single property.

Back in business: Remember that Roundup about the ways Meta is scrapping its fact-checkers and changing many of its hate speech policies in favor of a more expansive, free speech–welcoming approach? Now two employees have told The New York Times that, right after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had announced such changes in policy, facilities managers removed tampons from the men's bathrooms (presumably provided for trans employees?) on Meta's campuses. And Zuckerberg just gave some spicy soundbites on Joe Rogan's podcast: "Masculine energy I think is good, and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think that corporate culture was really trying to get away from it," he said, calling many such companies "culturally neutered."

"The US government should be defending its companies, not be at the tip of the spear attacking its companies," Zuck said later during the same episode. There he was referring to the Biden administration's approach to COVID-related content moderation, which he claimed involved federal officials screaming and cursing at Meta employees for insufficiently kowtowing.

Watching this late-in-the-game pivot to fostering a company culture that's a lot less woke, you can't help wonder about the mismatch between what Zuckerberg purports to believe and how he acted for many years. Was he swept up in a cultural moment, and has now changed his mind? Did he always think a lot of these decisions were bad but went along with them because he felt it was too risky to step out from the herd? Or is he just being risk-averse now, with a new administration coming to power? Regardless, the man's been an extraordinarily influential tech magnate for the better part of 20 years; when it comes to free speech, I wonder why he didn't stand up to the Biden administration earlier.

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Scenes from New York: President-elect Donald Trump is trying to curry favor with upper-middle-class New Yorkers by promising to raise the SALT cap (the amount of state and local taxes New Yorkers can deduct from their federal taxes) and axing Manhattan congestion pricing.

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QUICK HITS

• Latest guest: Tyler Cowen! Upcoming guest: Meghan Daum, the excellent writer who tragically lost her home in the Altadena fire. A brief plea, for those who have read this far. We are so very close to 4,000 subscribers on our new Just Asking Questions YouTube channel. If you enjoy our show, would you mind sharing it with a friend who might like it too? We are working hard to grow our audience. Having our episodes live on this new channel will allow us to bring you more content, even better tailored to our audience—but we have to build a following first!
• Tim Walz, who was briefly relevant after Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris picked him as her running mate, is trying to stay in the news, this time by endorsing 24-year-old David Hogg as Democratic National Committee vice chair. "This is exactly what we need right now: experienced, thoughtful, and energized leadership that meets people where they are and takes bold action to win," said Walz of Hogg, who became a gun control activist following the Parkland school shooting, which he survived. (Hogg is many things, but "experienced" ain't one of them.)
• "American Airlines Inc. violated federal law by filling its 401(k) plan with funds from investment companies that pursue environmental, social, and corporate governance goals, a Texas federal judge ruled Friday in the biggest victory yet for opponents of the strategy," reports Bloomberg.
• "A Japanese startup is set to launch a lunar lander this week—its second attempt to land on the Moon after a first try failed in 2023," reports Semafor. "If all goes to plan, the spacecraft will touch down in a few months, making Ispace the first Asian company to land on the Moon….The launch comes amid increased private and government investment in space, as Tokyo seeks to double the country's 4-trillion-yen space industry over the next decade."
• Absolutely wild Newsom fun facts:

Gavin Newsom has perfected a very weird style I'd like to call "Disaster Chic." It's unsettling.

It turns out it's custom! During the 2019 wildfires, his office hired an embroiderer to customize Lululemon jackets for him with the bear from the CA flag.

Slay, Governor I guess? pic.twitter.com/wEMGEjf3mQ

— Max Meyer (@mualphaxi) January 9, 2025