Pacific Palisades neighborhoods had been closed to the general public for months after a January firestorm devastated the group, however since its latest reopening, there have been sightings of a brand new, disturbing customer within the neighborhood: catastrophe vacationers. Busloads of them.
“My workplace and others have acquired quite a few experiences about industrial tour operators conducting catastrophe excursions within the Pacific Palisades,” Los Angeles Metropolis Councilmember Traci Park stated at a council assembly this week. “They’re seeking to revenue off of destruction and different folks’s losses. It’s actually gross and it must be stopped.”
In a bid to cease the development from turning into routine every time catastrophe strikes the world, the Metropolis Council unanimously authorised proscribing “catastrophe tourism” buses from the Palisades fireplace zone and any catastrophe zone.
On Jan. 7, the Palisades fireplace tore by means of Pacific Palisades and surrounding areas, destroying greater than 6,000 constructions, lots of them houses, and leaving 12 folks lifeless. Though officers vowed to have a speedy restoration, the rebuilding course of for the worst catastrophe within the metropolis’s historical past has been difficult — and sluggish.
Park stated the tour buses weren’t solely unsettling but in addition probably distracting and unsafe for crews persevering with to work within the space.
“It’s additionally … harmful as a result of we’re nonetheless actively clearing fireplace particles,” she stated.
Because of the vote on Park’s movement, the town’s Division of Transportation will limit tour buses from any space declared a part of a pure catastrophe emergency, and the ban will final by means of the length of the emergency response.
The movement additionally known as on the division to contemplate everlasting tour bus restrictions in sure areas of the Palisades as soon as the emergency expires, given the Palisades’ slender, winding and steep streets — probably unsuitable for giant buses even earlier than the hearth.
