Gofundme for Nathan, home lost in Eaton Fire

Sansokuu

Sansokuu

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One of the admins of Facebook’s Bonsai Auctions lost his home in the ongoing fires in Los Angeles :(

Here is a go fund me to help him and his family get back on their feet.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/bonsai-a...cons&utm_medium=customer&utm_source=copy_link

“
Dear members,

Many of you will undoubtedly be following news of the Pacific Palisades, Eaton and associated wildfires currently wreaking havoc on Greater Los Angeles. Over 2,000 structures and 5 lives have already been lost. Over 70,000 residents are under evacuation orders, 1.5 million are without power and some 25,000+ acres have been burned at the time of posting.

The devastating effects of the fires have hit shockingly close to home for us as Bonsai Auctions founder and admin Nathan Simmons has tragically lost his home in Altadena to the flames. Nathan and his beloved bulldog Billy are safe, which is of course the most important thing and a great relief.

While insurance will hopefully fulfill its role in due time, we would like to offer Nathan some immediate support and relief in the interim. If you feel so compelled, we would sincerely appreciate any and all donations and messages of support for Nate in this terrible time.

Our auction pages, which I think is fair to say have become a tremendous resource for the bonsai community, would simply not exist as they do today without Nathan’s vision and foresight. We hope the close-knit bonsai community can use this tragedy as an opportunity to show its big-heartedness and offer Nathan a helping hand in such a dark moment.

Please visit the GoFundMe here: https://gofund.me/a58da34e

Thank you friends! 🙏❤️

[P.S. Effectively immediately, you are also welcome to post an unlimited number of auctions (during regular auction times) in which at least 15% of your proceeds are donated to Nate. Please note this applies only to this page and not to 99 Cent.]

— with Nathan Simmons.
 

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Nuccio's Nursery may also have been affected.

Another terrible fire. And it is apparently not over yet.
 
Last I heard none of the fires in LA county are at an % containment :( I have friends a couple miles from the eaton fire and many without electricity. My sister and nephews are at my parents for now, lot of businesses shuttered, no schools are open. Hoping to hear some better news with the santa ana winds having died down a bit.
 
So awful and sad. I have coworkers who have had to evacuate and expect to lose their homes. A colossal failure by California leadership.
 
Leadership had little to do with it they could not deploy water dropping helicoptors in 100 mph winds, it was the best they could do and they were completely overwhelmed. SoCal has had devastating wildfires year after year, the response teams know what to do, it was like trying to stop a tidal wave with an umbrella unfortunately. The region had very little rain all year long and these are the worst Santa Ana winds they have experienced in some time. The Eaton fire alone has 700 responders working on it and not making a dent, the water has been drained dry in the palisades by fire response.

They are also still investigating the cause of the fires..
 
OMG, you are replying to a user I have blocked. I wonder why they are blocked...
I get so mad when I see some absolute moron is saying it is because there was no water, or no raking of leaves were done, like they do in Finland.
If there are strong wings, everything is bone dry because of a 10 year period of drought, you aren't going to stop a forest fire no matter what.
No matter how much water and how many brave firefighters you have.

But those power outages in Texas, those were caused by libertarian brainrot, 100% preventable and predicted. And still not fixed btw. Because fixing it would be 'Unamerican'.

Let's see how in the next 4 years that guy is literally going to nuke a hurricane and going to withhold aid to California and let it burn down on purpose, 'because they didn't vote for me', when in fact many parts in California that did burn down in forest fires under his watch and he wanted to withhold federal aid from, did in fact vote for him.
 
Glaucus said:
OMG, you are replying to a user I have blocked. I wonder why they are blocked...
I get so mad when I see some absolute moron is saying it is because there was no water, or no raking of leaves were done, like they do in Finland.
If there are strong wings, everything is bone dry because of a 10 year period of drought, you aren't going to stop a forest fire no matter what.
No matter how much water and how many brave firefighters you have.

But those power outages in Texas, those were caused by libertarian brainrot, 100% preventable and predicted. And still not fixed btw. Because fixing it would be 'Unamerican'.

Let's see how in the next 4 years that guy is literally going to nuke a hurricane and going to withhold aid to California and let it burn down on purpose, 'because they didn't vote for me', when in fact many parts in California that did burn down in forest fires under his watch and he wanted to withhold federal aid from, did in fact vote for him.
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It’s easy to blame the victim.. honestly every time some disastrous fire happens it wouldn’t hurt to take some preventative measures. It won’t stop a steamrolling, but moving woodpiles leaning against your house, or excessive brush is always a good thing to do even to prevent local issues from happening. Here in Oregon it is always a good idea to check on the health of trees. A friend’s neighbor had their house go up because they had tons of brush and firewood stacked right by their electrical box and it lit up one day. Almost took down my friend’s house too but luckily just some attic damage before the firefighters got to it and a poor scared cat. If you have been planning to reroof your house, look into metal roofing..

I don’t know anyone personally who has lost their home in these fires, but definitely friends of my friends. :( My sister is still without power too.
 
I am not saying more couldn't be done or that mistakes weren't made. But let's have competent people discuss that. The same fake news gets pumped out during the hurricanes.
But that person here sees this message on a bonsai forum, asking for donations for someone in the community, and the only thing they have to add is 1 sentence echoing these extremely silly false claims.
They aren't even attacking their political opponents on things that are true. They are too lazy to even do that.
They could easily have said that the fire department funding was reduced In LA itself
.Which is not the municipalities that were most affected. They had different mayors and budgets. Aad that there was no effort to cut down and reduce shrubbery that grew rapidly after a record rainfall, and got bone dry last summer.
The practice of building all your homes out of wood, also doesn't help. I get that maybe it is cheaper to build with wood. In many parts of Europe, we like to build with brick. Which is more expensive. But that shouldn't be an issue in some of the highest property value areas in the US. Something to at least thing about.
Instead, they make something up about lack of water, fish and environmental laws. It is so stupid, I cannot even wrap my head around it. Why not blame wind mills for cutting up the oxygen molecules? That at least would make some sense.

We as a humanity will have to have a good think about how to deal with forest fires, hurricanes, flooding, and insurance for them.
But that requires both 1) competent political leaders 2) facts & science based discussion 3) government regulation.
Maybe it helps draw attention that many expensive properties of famous people burned down vs the poor people's homes in Hawaii.
 
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Glaucus said:
I am not saying more couldn't be done or that mistakes weren't made. But let's have competent people discuss that. The same fake news gets pumped out during the hurricanes.
But that person here sees this message on a bonsai forum, asking for donations for someone in the community, and the only thing they have to add is 1 sentence echoing these extremely silly false claims.
They aren't even attacking their political opponents on things that are true. They are too lazy to even do that.
They could easily have said that the fire department funding was reduced In LA itself
.Which is not the municipalities that were most affected. They had different mayors and budgets. Aad that there was no effort to cut down and reduce shrubbery that grew rapidly after a record rainfall, and got bone dry last summer.
The practice of building all your homes out of wood, also doesn't help. I get that maybe it is cheaper to build with wood. In many parts of Europe, we like to build with brick. Which is more expensive. But that shouldn't be an issue in some of the highest property value areas in the US. Something to at least thing about.
Instead, they make something up about lack of water, fish and environmental laws. It is so stupid, I cannot even wrap my head around it. Why not blame wind mills for cutting up the oxygen molecules? That at least would make some sense.

We as a humanity will have to have a good think about how to deal with forest fires, hurricanes, flooding, and insurance for them.
But that requires both 1) competent political leaders 2) facts & science based discussion 3) government regulation.
Maybe it helps draw attention that many expensive properties of famous people burned down vs the poor people's homes in Hawaii.
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I just wanted to point out that brick is no good in California as a building material, earthquakes require something with a little more flex. What really catches in these fires are the shingled roofs made of paper and tar right above the wood roof frame. I have heard metal and concrete roofs fair a bit better. Unfortunately even the wealthy neighborhoods even if made with better material might not have had much luck. Those wealthier neighborhoods tend to be snug up inside forested/vegetation dense neighborhoods, and the windy single roads make it very difficult for fire crew to access. Last I heard the hydrants have run dry in the Palisades which might be a municipal issue, I don’t know. 🥲
 
Nothing could have prevented this. Because the winds were insane and everything was dry and ready to burn. But it is not true that you cannot use bricks because of earthquakes. You can. You just need to build earthquake proof. But it also depends on the types of earthquakes and their depth on how to engineer them. Just look at Japan. They had an insane earthquake and generally buildings didn't collapse. The tsunami did the real damage. Tokyo used to be all wooden buildings because of earth quakes in ancient times. But that all burned down in WW2. Also, when an earthquake happens, fires happen. It may be true that for some types of earthquakes that wood is always better to prevent collapsing.

I realize building with wood is the norm. Just saying that when people really look at the real reasons, and not at smelt fish or Democrats deliberately burning down everything on purpose, which Elon Musk seems to think.
When this disaster has ended and the victims have been assisted, one can actually look at how to mitigate fires. Yes, the fire hydrants apparently did run dry. Because of the severity. And because of the nature of the pipes there.
It is all quite complex. You can't have infinite water. They did not run dry in Eaton/Altadena, and the fires were not container there either.
This happened because it was a severe natural disaster. Not because California didn't have a guy in charge who thinks he can stop a hurricane by simply changing the path of the hurricane by taking a sharpie and drawing on a map.

One can also get into a whole discussion about American sprawling suburbia, traffic jams, high density zoning, house prices, homelessness. Those neighbourhoods in California are absolutely beautiful. You generally have so many trees inside your cities in the US. A European city would be mostly brick and concrete. Those would be valid criticisms of how politicians, who often happened to be Democrats, ran California. And it's maybe worse for the SF area than the LA area.

California is an absolute miracle economy. Like Israel and South Korea are. People in some European countries and other American states could learn a lesson or two. With huge success, comes new problems.
 
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Additionally, it seems the cut to the LA firefighting department can be partially explained because they had a bump in their budget in 2023 because they had to replace all their breathing equipment. So it was a one-time expense.
I am sure there will be a report of actual professionals into this natural disaster once it is over. With actual professionals that have access to all the facts and do this for a living.
The amount of fake news about this disaster is actually insane.
 
Sansokuu said:
Leadership had little to do with it they could not deploy water dropping helicoptors in 100 mph winds, it was the best they could do and they were completely overwhelmed. SoCal has had devastating wildfires year after year, the response teams know what to do, it was like trying to stop a tidal wave with an umbrella unfortunately. The region had very little rain all year long and these are the worst Santa Ana winds they have experienced in some time. The Eaton fire alone has 700 responders working on it and not making a dent, the water has been drained dry in the palisades by fire response.

They are also still investigating the cause of the fires..
Click to expand...

Ugh it's all just so very sad. I understand it was a combination of awful conditions that made this such a large event. My comment about leadership has to do with what my local colleagues have relayed to me about their experience. It's neither here nor there now. Wild fires aren't new to California and the chance of this happening has been known. What to do about it is another conversation but i feel for Californians. Rebuilding will be a massive task and even then it's going to be a challenge to get insurance coverage as i expect more will follow state farms lead and pull out of the market entirely.

Ruddigger said:
I just found out that one of my club members lost everything. He was just about to sell the house and retire too. Ugh.
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Awful... i can't even imagine.
 
The probabilities of catastrophic events are low because multiple things have to happen or to fail to cause an occurrence. When one actually occurs, pointing to just one thing and set the blame on it is simply not right at all. These fires did not happen due to one single failure. Let’s just work on helping one another get through this. There will be time enough in the future to learn from these events.
 
Ruddigger said:
I just found out that one of my club members lost everything. He was just about to sell the house and retire too. Ugh.
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That is super sad I’m sorry. 😭 If there is anything we can do to help let us know.
 
Carol 83 said:
That's terrible, so sorry to hear. They are such nice guys.
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They were. If you’ve never been there in person they lead every customer around personally, showing them everything they might want. They had an encyclopedic knowledge of every plant there. It was kind of nuts.
 
I was about to email Nuccio's for an article I am writing, but also it see if I can include their azalea varieties with images in my database. They grow some famous ancient Belgian indica azaleas that have long gone extinct here. And their have their own azalea and camellia.
I am not into the camellia world, but it seems they are even bigger for that species. They were going to close and retire, and a school was going to build a sporting complex on their property. But the deal didn't go through so I believe they planned on keeping operating in 2025. If you google you find some pretty NIMBY news articles about how the neighbourhood was opposed to a sporting complex to be build there.

Just as I was about to email, I remembered that news info about fires in LA and I thought it would be smart to check how close they would be to Nuccio's before emailing...

These are third hand rumours, but maybe most of their plants are ok, but their nursery itself had the buildings burned down, but some cars/vans they had were maybe not so damaged. Probably, losts of equipment burned down. And they will need to water the plants in days, but there is/was no water yet. Additionally, Tom wasn't 100% ok health wise. Maybe because of the smoke or stress? Not sure. Everyone in their family was safe from the direct impact of the fires. But I can imagine their houses must also have burned down.

If you look at the satellite image of Eaton that was on CNN and other news platforms, their property wasn't as affected as most of Eaton, But there were still fires on their lot and it was a snapshot of one moment in time. And even some small fires can shot down a nursery. Especially if the area around it is completely ravaged as well. If just your own house burns down, and you have insurance, maybe you can cope. But if your house burns down, and 2000 other houses around you burned down even worse, that's much harder to deal with.
Landscape plants naturally wouldn't be the highest priority right now.

This may be a bit cynical, but I wonder if them trying to sell their property, but it not going through last minute, may actually be really bad financially. Because they were trying to sell prime real estate in a NIMBY-leaning middle class neighbourhood. But now their whole neighbourhood is burned down. And potentially every plot there is for sale now. The news article specifically mentioned that they got big money offers, but decided to try to sell it so their plot would become a school, because kids playing sports and having fun on their old property felt best for them.

Many people here on this site bought plants from Nuccio's and only have the best words for these guys. Like giving every customer a VIP treatment and showing them all their plants. Sad story.
 
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