January Newsbites - Fire Edition

***We Were Lucky – This Time*** 

Although our neighborhood was spared from the recent Los Angeles fires, we know that many have friends and family who have lost their homes or businesses or have otherwise been greatly affected. The Board of Directors of Bel Air Hills Association would like to extend our deepest sympathies to all those affected by these tragic events.  We hope that our neighborhood can pull together to help those in need, and to work together to protect our neighborhood in the future - because the next time it could be us.   

***Be The Change You Want to See***  BAHA Wildfire Input Survey – BAHA has created a survey for your input on wildfire issues and ideas, which you can find HERE. The results of this survey will help inform not only BAHA’s actions but also those of the City. BAHA’s President met with Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky last week, along with other City Council District 5 (CD5) Neighborhood Association (NA) and HOA Presidents, for a Wildfire Update meeting. In addition to the updates BAHA already distributed on January 14th, the Councilwoman expressed interest in hearing NA’s and HOA’s ideas and concerns regarding wildfire in a future meeting. Completing BAHA’s survey is an important opportunity for you to shape BAHA’s wildfire input to the City, so please make sure you complete BAHA’s Wildfire Input Survey. 

BABCNC Meeting This Wednesday, January 22, at 7pm (online) – 

[Zoom details below] The Bel Air Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council (BABCNC) will have fire updates from City Officials and a forum for comments from the public (that’s you!) on the fires during Agenda Item #6 at its Board Meeting this Wednesday at 7pm (held via Zoom). The BABCNC will also be deciding whether to create an Ad Hoc Wildfire Committee and who will be on it (Agenda Item #8) and several other wildfire related agenda items. Public comment is welcome on all the agenda items and your input is important! The BABCNC is chartered by the City of LA to be a conduit between the City of LA and residents in the area bounded by Sunset Blvd, Mulholland Blvd, Sepulveda Blvd, and Laurel Canyon Blvd (that means you!). BAHA has two people on the thirty-five member BABCNC Board (BAHA President Patricia Templeton and BAHA ARC Chair Mike Kemp) and a third BAHA Board member (Robin Greenberg) is also on the BABCNC as the Religious Institutions. Bel Air Hills, as a ribbon of homes surrounded by hundreds of acres of dense brush, is one of the areas most at risk of wildfire within BABCNC territory and we have been at the forefront of advocating for wildfire issues with the BABCNC for some time  – please make every effort to attend this BABCNC meeting to ensure that your voice, and that of our neighborhood, is heard! If you feel comfortable providing public comment at the meeting, we suggest that you include that you are a resident of Bel Air Hills as this will help amplify the voices of your BAHA representatives. 

                   Bel Air-Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council Virtual Board Meeting
                                        Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025 at 7pm
                                                   Join by Zoom or telephone
                                 Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88442885491
     By Telephone: Dial 669-900-6833 or 888-475-4499 and enter Webinar ID 884 4288 5491
                               You can find the Agenda for this BABCNC meeting here
                     To sign up for all future BABCNC meetings and newsletters click here
 

***Protect Your Home***  We have gathered some reliable information for you to use to help protect your home from wildfires:

   Learn about what you can do to make your home more resistant to wildfire (“Home Hardening”) from the CA Dept of Insurance HERE

   See for yourself the difference hardening your home against wildfire makes in these short video demonstrations HERE and HERE :

   Watch (if you want to really get into the details) a long webinar about Home Hardening and Defensible Space from the Santa Barbara County Fire Safe Council HERE
 

***Protect Yourself***  Here is some information on how to protect yourself in the event of wildfire:

   Wildfire Smoke – Click HERE and HERE to learn about Air Quality and masking for wildfires and HERE for a lot of information on masks (note it is OK to use a mask with an exhalation port if you are using it to protect yourself from smoke, but masks with exhalation ports are not OK for COVID etc). 

   Fire Information – There will be more fires, so be prepared. The Watch Duty app or website is an excellent resource to keep track of wildfires and related emergency notifications and updates. Watch Duty is a 501(c)(3) organization, and provides great information for free but a small fee/donation allows you to view active flames and firefighting air support in real time. You can access Watch Duty online at https://app.watchduty.org or better yet download the Watch Duy app at https://www.watchduty.org.  

   Emergency Notifications - The City announced during the fire that it was consolidating its emergency notifications through the Los Angeles County’s system that you can sign up for at https://alertlacounty.genasys.com/portal/en/register.  At this time it is unclear if the City will continue to consolidate notifications through this site (we’ve asked them and are awaiting an answer), so you should also sign up for emergency fire notifications with LAFD HERE and with the City of LA’s NotifyLA HERE for all emergency notifications (because: earthquakes, etc!) 

   Evacuation Info (Save for future reference) - Our Councilwoman’s office put out a good info sheet on what to do before you evacuate (if there is time!).  You can find it HERE. And HERE are some tips for what to do when you return from being evacuated.  If you would like to sign up to be on Councilwoman Yaroslavsky’s mailing list you can do that HERE

    More Fire Information – If you like to get your information from podcasts, The Big Burn from NPR and LAist is one to listen to. Find it HERE (Disclaimer, we have only listened to snippets so far)
 

***Email Addresses***  It is important for BAHA to be able to reliably reach you, especially in times like these!

1. Please put BAHA and its email address ([email protected]) in your Contacts.  This will help reduce the risk that emails from BAHA bounce (i.e. get rejected by your email provider)  
2. Please make sure we have your best email address, so you reliably receive BAHA communications.  Contact us at [email protected] to change your email address.
3. Please encourage your neighbors to sign up for BAHA communications.  The more residents “in the know”, the better for our neighborhood and for you!  The form to sign up is on the front page of our website www.baha.la – tell your friends and neighbors to look for the gray box on the right hand side of the webpage, or just forward this email to them.

***Will You Step Up?***  BAHA is run by a very small group of volunteer members and relies entirely on membership dues to fund everything we do.  We could REALLY REALLY REALLY use more people willing to step up to work on Committees and be on the BAHA Board. If you want a stronger Emergency Preparedness and Response Committee (or a stronger any other Committee), do something about it! Join BAHA from our website at www.baha.la (membership dues come out to a mere 50 cents a day) and, if you’re the type of person who gets stuff done, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE volunteer for a Committee by emailing BAHA at [email protected] or by filling out the Committee and Board interest part of the BAHA Wildfire Survey linked to in the first blurb.