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On the Palisades and Eaton Fires

Seventeenth in the News Commons series
First on the #LAfires

We’re watching KABC/7 from Los Angeles, live on our Roku TV (which has it among hundreds of “Live TV” channels), and in a browser on this laptop. One screen grab:

KABC/7 live coverage of the Palisades fire, and the new one a Eaton Canyon in Altadena.
Fire.ca.gov has much information, and maps. Here’s one for the Palisades fire:

Current perimeters and evacuation areas for the Palisades Fire, via CalFire. It has since expanded to San Vicente Boulevard in Santa Monica.

Winds are so strong that there is no fire fighting on the front as it moves east and southeast. Gusts are up to 85 miles per hour.

Here is a screenshot of Google Earth, with visualized data from MODIS and VIIRS satellites, which pass over regions (such as this one) of Earth fourteen times a day on polar orbits:

Fire detection by MODIS (the big squares) and VIIRS (the small ones), as of about 8 PM Pacific on January 7, 2025.

NASA has that data here. Look at the row titled “USA (Conterminous) and Hawaii.”

I am using Google Earth Pro. Other versions are available. See here.

More links:

Now at 8:33pm: Palisades Charter High School, (aka Pali and Pali High) with many famous alumni, just burned to the ground.

 

 

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Doc Searls

4 responses to “On the Palisades and Eaton Fires”

  1. Raphael Avatar
    Raphael

    Hey thanks for posting this.
    I’m trying to find the perimeter of the Eaton Fire.
    Palisades Fire perimeter and evacuation zones seem to be so easy to find, but not the Eaton Fire, which has grown to over 10,000 acres. Any help with that?

    Reply
    1. Doc Searls Avatar
      Doc Searls

      CalFire https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents is in charge of incidents. It has the perimeter for the Palisades fire, but not for Eaton. I don’t know why. Inciweb, which was created by a lone techie working many years ago, and did a great job of bringing together data from many sources, has since been taken over by wildfire.gov. On Eaton it has this: https://inciweb.wildfire.gov/incident-information/caanf-eaton-fire. Not a lot there.

      In the aughts and teens, blogs and social media were good sources of on-the-ground info. It’s still there, but much more scattered (X, Threads, Bluesky, etc.) and thick with conjectural reports. The best we can do is fish around.

      Reply
  2. Raphael Avatar
    Raphael

    Thanks for your reply. I’ve since found this site that has been helpful (your image post shows some of this earlier data.
    https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/usfs/map/#d:2025-01-07..2025-01-08;@-118.47,34.02,13.96z

    Reply
    1. Doc Searls Avatar
      Doc Searls

      Thanks! FIRMS is great, but it relies on MODIS, Landsat and VIIRS, which are satellites that fly around the world every 100 minutes or so, and not always over the same places, so they miss a lot. Right now they’re missing the Sunset fire and the fire encroaching on Mt. Wilson.

      Reply

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