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Mr. Chaudry believes the fire didn’t start in his backyard. 

Here’s a look at Chaudry’s backyard.


And here’s the context. 

Chaudry lives along a canyon filled with trees.

I reported in my piece entitled, What Started L.A.’s Firestorm? Hint: It’s Not ‘Climate Change.’, that homeless campers have started multiple fires in this and other L.A. areas before before. 

In 2021, Topanga Canyon residents were so concerned with homeless encampments and fire danger that they ostensibly “banned” them. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted to ban homeless camps because cooking dinner or drugs outside in dry brush is a really dumb idea.

In 2015, The Hollywood Reporter reported that homeless campers started a fire “on same bluffs where hundreds of homeless people reside after police pushed many out of Santa Monica. New signs declaring the hillside brush zone of Palisades Park a ‘very high fire hazard severity zone’ were scheduled to be erected on October 7.” 

A homeless count in January 2015 showed, there were “70 homeless tents, 74 in makeshift shelters and 54 in cars/RVs. The total was 198.” And the homeless count went down in 2023, they claimed. “Eight years later,” Circling the News reported, “there were no tents or shelters reported, and the number of homeless living in vehicles, mostly along Pacific Coast Highway and Palisades Drive, totaled about 30.”

The same publication noted that in 2022, a homeless family lived in the brush in a tent in 2022. They were found housing eventually.  

And just last July, homeless campers in RVs sitting along the Pacific Coast Highway became a “concern” to Palisades residents because there are only dry trees before hitting the homes on the hill. One camper brought a homemade helicopter with him. 

KABC TV headlined its piece, “People living in RVs along PCH causing concern for residents in Pacific Palisades.” 

Overlooking the ocean on the Pacific Coast Highway in the Pacific Palisades area is a stretch of parked RVs. Some of the people living in them are homeless and residents in the area want something done about it. 

Michael Rachau brought all his belongings, which include a homemade helicopter. He says he is there for now. “I’m like a visitor basically, passing through,” Rachau told Eyewitness News. There is concern about people living in these vehicles and dumping their waste into the ocean.

L.A. County’s response was to send the homeless task force to counsel the campers in an effort to move them to shelters.

KABC reported:

County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath told us: “The Sheriff’s Department’s Homeless Outreach Services Team and LAHSA actively engage people living in RVs on this section of PCH to offer housing and services. We are also working with the Coastal Commission and Caltrans on more permanent solutions that require state action.”

That’s all very nice and empathetic, but empathy doesn’t stop wildfires.

The county claims that the homeless count has gone down. 

But California’s homeless population has grown in direct measure to the questions about how this issue has been addressed and how this fire started.