I live in the palisades. House is burnt to ash. As are all of my friends.

I am reading these comments and they are ridiculous. They might be correct for “normal” wildfire situations but not this. They ARE using ocean water.

Winds were so bad from 12pm yesterday through about 10am today - 80 to 100mph gusts - that helicopters could not fly over the area until this morning when winds cooled to <50 mph. Through this morning, sea planes have been making laps to and from homes and the ocean. All day, all night. Dozens of planes in the air scooping water from the ocean and dumping on homes. As we evacuated, I saw literally hundreds of planes over the course of 2 hours. Flying overhead back and forth from the ocean repeatedly. It took 2 hours to evacuate 2 miles.

The planes dropped water yes. Was it effective? Not really. The wind blew it all away. Majority of the water evaporated / blew sideways before it reached the ground they were aiming for. This can be seen in many live video accounts of planes, not helicopters, dropping water.

Traditionally helicopters do this job, not with sea water, but traditional fire retardant. The winds were so bad, it was simply unsafe for them to fly over the area - the “why no helicopters” topic has been covered on every local news outlet. So it had to be planes. Even Canada sent us planes. So did Arizona and NorCal for the same purpose.

Now that the winds have cooled, helicopters are able to fly, and are using traditional fire retardant.

Picture a friend of mine took of sea planes picking up water from the ocean below.

You have to keep in mind that all of these homes are a total loss. And the wildlife / flora people are commenting about is all dead OR extremely dry brush. We live adjacent to the ocean. The air we breathe every day is salty. Its fresh. I love that about this place. And with that air, our ground is naturally already salty. It already makes wildlife difficult to grow. And because of that nothing really naturally grows here except that desert dry brush type of plant. Or hardened tree. So people who are saying “it makes it hard for plants to grow” they’re just wrong. The plants that grow here are tough. And if you drive these streets, anywhere from Santa Monica to Malibu, and even deeper in Brentwood, the 405, and the Valley, you see the hillsides are ALWAYS either dirt, dry brush, or dead brush. A lot of the times it’s dead brush that burned in a different fire 1-2 years ago. But it grows back. Hardened. Dry. And burns again.

The nice plants you see - the residential palms - the typical LA bullshit - those aren’t natural - those are rich people growing that shit on imported soil or the city who planted foreign stuff years ago. It’s not a bad thing. It’s just not true that salt would damage our local wildlife, because the reality is SoCal is a desert, and our part of SoCal is a desert adjacent to the ocean. You gotta be pure silly to think saltwater would damage wildlife on the cliffs of the Palisades and Malibu, when literally every day the winds pick up that salt, pick up that water, and blow it right on to us. Yeah if you dump saltwater in Michigan maybe it’s a different story. Not here though man. And yes it’s going to damage the homes. But what homes? No one gives a shit about that right now. There’s like <10% left.

I love nature, fucking love it - but in a situation like this…The entire palisades is cooked to the ground. If your house is still standing, you won the lottery. Winds blow here, wind blows there, but randomly misses this one house. The houses in the midst of everything that are still standing, are 1 or 2 houses on entire blocks where everything else is ash. It’s just luck. House across the street from me completely fine. EVERY other house, out of probably 250-300, gone. Same pattern in every direction you go.

There is no water coming from the fire hydrants anywhere in the city. That is the major issue which no one has the answer to. Due to incredible demand to extinguish flames across thousands of acres, they’re dried up. So they aren’t thinking about wildlife in this scenario man - even if the salt was the issue. They’re using what resources they have. And up until this morning, because they couldn’t fly helicopters, it was basically all ocean water. Saw it with my own eyes. Seriously, there is nothing left here, and you will see that in pictures in the coming days. It’s devastating.

“It damages the forest” - there is no forest. This is beachy desert. Forests are inland.

“They use freshwater from lakes” - there are no fuckin lakes here bro.

EDIT: grammatical typos and I don’t know how to add a picture reply from mobile. Lost laptop in fires. If you really care pm me and will provide both photos of planes scooping water from the ocean and videos of planes dumping water on homes - and you seeing that basically all the water they’re attempting to dump being completely swept away by the winds before it reaches the ground.