Pacific Palisades neighborhoods have been closed to the general public for months after a January firestorm devastated the neighborhood, however since its current 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 studies about business tour operators conducting catastrophe excursions within the Pacific Palisades,” Los Angeles Metropolis Councilmember Traci Park stated at a council assembly this week. “They’re trying 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 each time catastrophe strikes the realm, the Metropolis Council unanimously authorized 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, a lot of them properties, and leaving 12 folks 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 gradual.
Park stated the tour buses weren’t solely unsettling but in addition doubtlessly distracting and dangerous 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.
On account 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 by means of the length 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’ slender, winding and steep streets — doubtlessly unsuitable for giant buses even earlier than the hearth.
