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 obtained quite a few experiences about industrial tour operators conducting catastrophe excursions within the Pacific Palisades,” Los Angeles Metropolis Councilmember Traci Park mentioned at a council assembly this week. “They’re trying to revenue off of destruction and different individuals’s losses. It’s actually gross and it must be stopped.”
In a bid to cease the pattern from changing into routine at any time when catastrophe strikes the realm, the Metropolis Council unanimously accepted limiting “catastrophe tourism” buses from the Palisades fireplace zone and any catastrophe zone.
On Jan. 7, the Palisades fireplace tore via Pacific Palisades and surrounding areas, destroying greater than 6,000 buildings, a lot of them houses, and leaving 12 individuals useless. 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 mentioned the tour buses weren’t solely unsettling but additionally doubtlessly 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 mentioned.
Because of the vote on Park’s movement, 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 via the period of the emergency response.
The movement additionally known as on the division to think about everlasting tour bus restrictions in sure areas of the Palisades as soon as the emergency expires, given the Palisades’ slim, winding and steep streets — doubtlessly unsuitable for big buses even earlier than the fireplace.
