Encinal Canyon Quake Sequence Continues

The Encinal Canyon earthquake sequence continued to rattle into the night … and the morning..

We had an aftershock … about 11 minutes ago (as of 12 noon broadcast)

It was at 11:49 am… magnitude 2.7.

And then … at 2:23 this morning … an epicenter 3.1 quake.

People as far away as San Diego County felt the major quake … magnitude 4.1 at 1:03 yesterday afternoon.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.1 rattled the Los Angeles area early Sunday afternoon.

In the next three minutes … three smaller quakes hit with magnitudes of 2.5, 3.0 and 2.8.

Seismologist Lucy Jones told ABC 7 … it is impossible to know what this means in terms of stress … at least … stress on the earth.

71050 4POINT1 QUAKE

“Having some magnitude fours doesn’t cause a problem for anybody, right?.

“It causes a lot of shaking.  And maybe some fear.  But not any damage.  

“And that seems to be what we’re seeing in the sequence over the last year. What does it mean at this point? 

“If we knew what it meant we would be in a whole different place then where we are.

“What we can say is it means that we’re having a lot of earthquakes in this area and when you have a lot of earthquakes, you tend to have a lot of earthquakes.”

The epicenter on all of them was three miles underneath Decker Canyon Road at Mulholland Highway … in the mountains between western Malibu and Westlake Village.

This is the same general location where three earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 or greater in the pasta three months hit earlier this winter.

Vehicle Hits Mountain Lion On Kanan Dume

A mountain lion was struck and apparently killed by a vehicle on Kanan Dume Road last night.

The crash was reported at 7:44 p-m on Kanan Dume just north of there Backbone Trail pullout … north of Tunnel 1. 

County animal control was called out … likely to remove the remains of the latest casualty of the cross-mountain road, with its 55 mile per hour speed limit.

Skateboard Park Comes In $2.9 Million Over $2.5 Million Budget

After years of talks … and years of promises to Malibu kids … the permanent skateboard park might be built after all.

But the cost has ballooned.

The concrete ramps at Bluffs Park were supposed to cost about 2.5 million dollars.

The designs have evolved over the years .. and now the bids have come in at more than double that amount. 

The job will need 2 point 9 million dollars from the city’s piggy bank … which currently has about 76 million dollars in it. 

If the city council approves the budget blowout and the contract … the skate park should be finished by this September.

City Staff Needs 1-1/2 More Days To Finish Proposed Planning Rule Changes

Malibu’s ambitious changes to the city planning codes … due to the fire … were supposed to go before the city council for the first reading and vote tonight.

That won’t happen.

The city staff apparently needs more time to… and will take the comprehensive changes to the council a day and a half later … on Wednesday morning. 

Malibu officials say the proposed changes hammered out last week … in the city’s building rules … will likely be approved by the staff at the California Coastal Commission.

The next question will be … how will the 12-member commission vote.

The Palisades Fire … the Franklin Fire … and the Broad Fire have combined to open the door to the biggest reforms to Malibu’s Local Coastal Program since it was forced onto the city 23 years ago. 

After the latest fire destroyed 700 houses in Malibu … the governor took the unprecedented step of removing the Coastal Commission permitting process over fire rebuilds …. but only for the Pali Fire.

Pali Fire victims are generally not subject to the LCP due to the Governor’s Executive Order.  They do not need expensive, time-delaying Coastal Development Permits unless they want to substantially relocate their replacement houses outside the original building’s location. 

But victims of the Broad and Franklin fires, plus the 2018 Woolsey Fire, will also see some red tape cut … if the Coastal Commission signs off on the proposed package of changes.  The city council is trying to liberalize the rebuilding permit process for everyone.

The City Council has also determined that replacement houses along the beachfront can be built higher … up to 20 percent higher in some cases … if they are built at higher base elevations to comply with new wave uprush study maps from FEMA. 

Will the Coastal Commission agree with those interpretations?

If the city council sticks to its schedule … the proposed changes will be voted on twice by the city council … then will go up to Coastal for its meeting in Santa Barbara April 9th through 11th.

The first reading of the revised rules was supposed to go before the city council today.

But the city staff wants to push that back to another special city council meeting … Wednesday at 11 at City Hall.

City Council May Meet Twice As Often, And Move Grandstanding Reports To End

Malibu’s city council may be taking a radical move … meeting twice as often.

The round table workshop that the city council held last week was regarded as a success … people were not limited to three minutes … there were no formal fixed agendas.

Today … the City Council will talk about having twice as many meetings.

The new sessions would be held on the Thursdays before the regular Monday night meetings .

Deputy city manager Alexis Brown says establishing special meetings on alternating weeks will allow for greater flexibility and responsiveness in addressing fire recovery and resilience efforts. 

The city council is also considering moving the lengthy reports that staff anf the council members deliver to the end of its regular evening meetings. 

This would possibly lessen grandstanding .. and allow the city council to vote on substantive issues earlier in the evenings. 

And council members Haylynn Conrad has broached the possibility of putting a stopwatch and limit on their own responses to the general public comments. 

LA DWP To Use FEMA Money To Underground Power Lines In Pacific Palisades – Where Is Edison?

The LA Department of Water and Power is going to use federal disaster money to put all of the overhead power lines in Pacific Palisades underground.

That’s 4,000 power lines … and 800 power poles.

All that overhead equiipmtn was just restring above Pacific Palisades as DWP has worked to restore power to the disaster-stricken coastal community.

And they all will be removed and the LA city power company moves underground. 

Janisse Quiñones is the LADWP’s boss … and she says the feds will pick up the cost of under grounding … anywhere between 1 million to 14 million dollars per mile.

Along Pacific Coast Highway … DWP is putting it overhead power lines and streetlights on metal poles.

Eventually … those lines will be put underground too. 

Malibu is served by a for-profit company … Southern California Edison … and Edison is facing a state law that requires it to put its power liens underground in a all very-high fire risk areas.

Edison has not made it clear what the timetable for undergrounding Malibu will be.  We also have yet to hear if local service drops will be placed underground at the same time that the distribution lines (generally on cross arms). 

The state law affects “distribution” lines, and not the “service lines” that run from transformers to customers.  

And only eastern Malibu will get there SCE underground lines.  Western Malibu apparently is not in line for undergrounding … because the overhead power lies there were recently replaced with plastic-covered insulted lines.

The Edison company considers the overhead insulated wires to be a dramatic improvement in fire prevention… And they are much cheaper than burying the powerlines.

Since Edison has already put up the plastic-covered lines above western Malibu… they say they cannot justify burying the powerlines in that part of the city.

Edison crews this week are finishing repairing the pavement on there northern part of Kanan-Dume Road, here they have just put in underground conduits.

Other major roads like Malibu Canyon and Topanga Canyon will get underground distribution lines soon, SCE has said.

SCE Ignoring Its Own Wind Gauges To Predict Fire Weather, State Says

Malibu residents have longstanding gripes with the Southern California Edison company … over its practice of shutting off the power when the winds are far below dangerous speeds.

Now comes news that SCE may be causing danger … by ignoring its network of wind gauges … which are supposed to want to determine when the winds get too high to safely leave the power on. 

Three years ago … California fire safety officials warned SCE they were failing to check those wind gauges frequently enough.

Every 10 minutes during a windstorm is not often enough to detect winds that could damage the big transmission lines that move energy around the region … according to electrical system experts consulted by an industry  trade publication … journal Fire and Safety Journal Americas. 

Edison is automatically checking for dangerous winds every 10 minutes.

In San Diego and Northern California … the power companies check for abnormal winds twice a minute. 

This becomes important as Southern California Edison powerlines are suspected of causing the eaten fire in Altadena… Which killed 17 people and burn thousands of houses.

Powerlines are not suspected in the Palisades fire… But they could have caused the Franklin fire in Malibu last December… Which burned down Malibu Canyon.

The State Office of Energy Infrastructure Safety began warning Edison that it needed to check its power lines in 2022. 

SCE said it would continue to use the 10 minute interval.

Another bid question being asked is why the power transmission line that caused the fire had sat in the mountains above Altadena unused since 1971.

The unused power line could have become energized accidentally anywhere along its 40 mile route across northern LA County … possibly causing a disaster in Altadena that the power company could not have detected. 

State law requires unused power lines to be removed, but Edison left that power line there for 53 years.

This story is based oil reporting by the Fire and Safety Journal Americas and the Los Angeles Times.

2-4 Inches Of Rain Likely Wed Night, Thurs Morning

One more day today with sunny and above normal temperatures today.

Then .. the storm door opens. 

Periods of light rain and much colder starting tomorrow.  

We might get a tenth of an inch of rain tomorrow.

But then. … a vigorous colds front hits Malibu Wednesday night. 

This one might hook up to an atmospheric river … a large fetch of moisture flowing up from the tropics. 

We could get 2 to 4 inches of rain from there Wednesday night into Thursday.

More rain is possible again Friday into Saturday … and another chance of rain Sunday into Monday.

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Oregon Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, alongside several colleagues, called on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to address pressing concerns regarding access to sensitive disaster victim data, mass firings, and funding freezes.

The inquiry follows reports of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) gaining access to this data.

The Senators, including Peter Welch, Alex Padilla, Bernie Sanders, and others, expressed their concerns in a letter to Cameron Hamilton, the Senior Official Performing the Duties of FEMA Administrator. They highlighted the impact of FEMA’s recent actions on disaster resilience and recovery efforts.

READ ALSO: Mass firings at USFS and USDA spark wildfire risk concerns in Washington state

“Our constituents—rebuilding from severe flooding in Vermont, Minnesota, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, as well as catastrophic wildfires in Hawai’i, New Mexico, Oregon, and California—have experienced first-hand the shortcomings of the federal approach to disaster resilience and recovery,” the Senators wrote. “Instead of addressing their needs and concerns, the Trump Administration has taken a sledgehammer to the foundation of FEMA.”

The letter criticized FEMA’s firing of over 200 probationary employees amid staffing shortages, questioning the claim that only “non-mission critical” personnel were affected. “We have yet to receive any evidence to support that assertion,” the Senators said. “Instead, reporting indicates that these firings will undermine federal disaster response and hamper FEMA’s ability to provide critical support to our constituents.”

The Senators also addressed the suspension of certain FEMA grants, noting that a local health care provider in Oregon has been unable to proceed with a crucial emergency response project due to a communications freeze. “These apparent freezes have left frontline organizations in limbo and our communities in jeopardy,” they stressed.

The letter concluded with a demand for prompt responses to their inquiries, including details on the authority and procedures behind the firings and the impact of frozen grants on disaster-impacted communities.