Category: Work

Today started off with dropping the rental car at LAX and taking the shuttle bus (they have a People Mover that for some reason they can’t get working) to the terminals. Car rental shuttles are a curse of the past and should remain there. The positive side of this morning was it took me less than 10 minutes to get through security at LAX.

Finally a nice flight home, then my usual “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” and I was home.

Of course when I get here the chimney contractor that I had asked to come out and look at our chimney found that the entire inside of the chimney is destroyed and it looks like someone in the past had a chimney fire at some point. Also, it hadn’t been cleaned in about 5-6 years. Yup, that goes along with everything else we have found in the house. I kept thinking they had a fire at some point. I would think you should disclose that stuff on your property disclosures.

Anyways, I am sure this is going to end up with about another $10K worth of repair work. Guess I know where my bonus is going this year.

Anyways, at this point home. No more trips planned.

Interesting day today. Started off this morning with a wildfire related inspection in the Pacific Palisades area. It’s sort of depressing, the signs of fire are still all over the hill-sides. We are going on a year in January and most of the demolition has been done. Most buildings that are left have their power back on, and most services have returned. But, the empty foundations serve as a reminder of what is done, as well as what is not done.

Real Estate signs are sprouting all over the place, many people are selling their lots rather than re-building. And it appears the heavy metal contamination is the topic of conversation. Then, to make matters worse, some of the remediation contractors that came into peoples homes to do cleanup may have (for lack of better terms) – half-assed what they did. One home I was in yesterday I still found signs of soot and ash in places that had already been cleaned.

The hills are starting to show signs of vegetation but Los Angeles is going into it’s rainy season so mudslides right now are a real threat as the heavy root system of established vegetation is part of what holds the hills in place.

Look at the burnt mailboxes standing next to the plants that somehow survived.

Then my afternoon appointment was not part of the LA wildfires, but rather a garage fire. I always knew it would happen, but I had met the insured before. I am not sure if he recognized me, and to keep it professional and fair for all, I did not remind him that we had met before. He is someone that I met in the mid 1980’s who made an impression on me when I was involved in the fight for LGBT rights before the rest of the letters were added. We were fighting for people to be alive rather for everything that followed. I did not realize what a life he has made for himself until I nosed around on Google and IMDB when I got back to the hotel. Damn, he also lost a lot in the fire they had, I really wanted to give him a hug he desperately needed, but I couldn’t as I had to remain professional as a 3rd party. But it is so hard to put a value on sentimental loss.

Fire is such a scary thing. It’s why when we moved into our new house the first thing I did was had an electrician come in and replace our breaker panel and install Arc Fault Circuit Interrupt (AFCI) breakers for all the circuits in the house. These breakers are designed to trip and cut off power with any signs of an arc (spark) that can happen with a broken wire, faulty insulation, and critter damage to wiring. They can prevent fires. If you have older (really any) electrical in your house, I believe it is well worth it to try and have AFCI breakers installed. Take it from someone that has seen a lot of damage.

I re-entered the Facebook community today as I stayed away for the month of October, but for November I think I am going to write my thoughts here and share them on Facebook as a link to the pages here. I still don’t trust the Facebook algorithms and AI and I would like to keep control of my posts.

One more day and then I head home. I hate Los Angeles.

Today was another day of inspections in the wild fire areas around Los Angeles, Palisades, and Pasadena. Started the day off in Pasadena, I was running early and ended up near the Pasadena gardens and decided to stop and walk through. The gardens are not in the best of shape but still had some neat flowers and plants. They have different areas for “desert”, “plains”, etc.

Spent the rest of the day basically sitting in traffic. The good part about today was that every inspection I did was a valid loss event. Something to write in my digital diary and in my calendar. It is hard to believe that over a year later the fire damage is still so extreme. I may stop and take some perspective photos tomorrow.

I was done around 3pm and then came back to the hotel, caught up on some paperwork, yes my desk job never really goes away, and then decided to try to get out for some exercise. Found a park nearby and went down in that direction to check it out.

And that’s a wrap for today. See ya tomorrow!

What a wonderful day to be sitting in traffic in Los Angeles, CA. I really do not understand what the draw is to this area and why people want to live here. The traffic is awful! Today I started in Southeast Los Angeles then had to drive the I-5 and I-10 to Northwest of Los Angeles in the Pacific Palisades. Then back to my hotel a near LAX. I think I ran out of curse words.

I will say that the day started off nicely when I walked out of the hotel and spotted one of my favorite flowers, the Bird of Paradise.

The insurance inspections today was one commercial Theft/Vandalism claim of an 80,000 sq foot cold storage warehouse – someone took all the copper including the refrigeration piping and the wiring. The only other thing taken was the video recorder for the surveillance system. Someone knew exactly where that was, and it was not obvious.

Second inspection was a water claim in an apartment complex. Upstairs neighbors had a pipe break and drowned the kitchen of the downstairs apartment. Not good but at least most of the HVAC did not get damaged.

Third inspection was a smoke/fire claim from the Pacific Palisades wildfire last year. That area is still in very bad shape and re-building is not going well. There is ash in everything and the smoke damage is obvious. To make matters more interesting there is a lot of “questionable” claims being made. The trick is finding out what is valid vs what is questionable. Thankfully today none of the inspections I completed were in the “questionable” category.