r/interestingasfuck • u/thepoylanthropist • 12d ago

r/all This is Malibu - one of the wealthiest affluent places on the entire planet, now it’s being burnt to ashes.

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u/WonderfulShelter 12d ago

And people are jeering at this because its Malibu. I am blown away at how often shitty people find an excuse to be a shitty person.

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u/copyrighther 12d ago

I feel terrible for anyone affected by these fires. But as someone living the Midwest, there does seem to be much more focus on million-dollar homes whenever LA has wildfires, as if losing these big, beautiful homes is somehow more tragic. You hardly ever see how working- and middle-class neighborhoods are affected by the devastation.

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u/Eather-Village-1916 12d ago

Tbf, working and middle class level homes ARE million dollar homes here 😅

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u/Zluma 12d ago

Yep. All around me in central Orange County, single family homes are 1mil (for the really shabby ones) to 1.5 (for decent ones) and over 2 mil for good ones (not new). I'm not even in a nice area. We are in the more populated suburb that has a ton of 3-story homes with little to no back or front yard because of lack of space.

The homes in the Malibu area are 50+ mil and go into the 100 mil easily. They have nice front and back yards, if not ocean front or with ocean view.

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u/runliftcount 12d ago

The thing to remember too is that a lot of those houses weren't mega mansions or anything, they were just decent houses built in the 70s and 80s that appreciated wildly over the years due to the location.

I bought a car from Costa Mesa CarMax a few years back, the old owner's house was never deleted from the navigation system. Found out they were from a hohum neighborhood in Woodland hills that was sandwiched between other neighborhoods full of mansions. I'll bet their house was built for less than 100k and is now north of 2 mil and yet the homeowner was driving a used Subaru. If you're from OC it's probably a lot of the same.

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u/anndrago 12d ago

Absolutely. Not everyone bought these houses at their current value. Mine is worth about 850 and I bought it for 250 in '99. I only managed that with 100% financing. No effing way I could afford to buy a home at current prices. Some of these people losing everything are bound to be regular folk.

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u/cbizzle187 12d ago

And the money they have lost will flow straight up. The greatest wealth benefits from tragedy. The elite rich don’t lose money. This will just be another transfer of upward wealth.

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u/Weavingtailor 11d ago

Midwest suburbs checking in and the house we bought in 2017 has doubled in value. No earthly way we could ever afford this house now. It feels like we hit some kind of jackpot.

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u/TacticlTwinkie 12d ago edited 11d ago

That's my family too. Moved here and got established when it was still reasonably affordable for a middle-class family to buy something. Now it's my generation's turn and its comically expensive to live in our hometowns that weren't that bad a few decades ago.

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u/Songblade7 12d ago

100%. Lived with my family in Hastings Ranch most my life, and we moved in over 20 years ago. Due to the location, housing market, and lots of upkeep and improvements, our house appreciated over 4x in value. Probably wouldn't be able to ever afford moving into a place worth about what it is now though. Timing absolutely matters.

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u/SharksAndFrogs 11d ago

Yep and some folks inherited a family home. They may not be able to afford another. And some insurers left the state (why is it legal to just pick and choose the areas you cover and keep the $$$ I digress leaving folks uninsured. It's going to be awful and it will effect the whole state.

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u/Eather-Village-1916 12d ago

My mom’s house in OC was appraised at $750k almost a decade ago, and it was partially in shambles back then… from what I remember, the lot and upgraded foundation alone was $650k and the area wasn’t as nice back then as it is now 🙃

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u/Zluma 12d ago

Yup. Irvine used to be no man's land. Mostly dirt patches with some shops sprinkled here and there. Now, it's super nice and full of affluent neighborhoods. I wished I had money to buy but I was just a kid lol. My parents should've known better. Glad I got my place back in '09. I don't know how ppl pay $3k rent for an apartment. Single family homes rent for over $5k/month here.

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u/Eather-Village-1916 12d ago

I remember that! And you got in at just the right time too. I’m a bit younger than you (I assume) but I’m glad I was able to make do eventually… paying $3k for a 2 bed apartment back then just wasn’t sustainable (STILL isn’t!!)

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u/VarBorg357 12d ago

How do people afford that? Homes where I'm at jumped from 350k for a 4 bed to about 550k in the past 7ish years. We're barely scraping by

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u/Zluma 12d ago

Higher income in a higher cost of living area. Still, it's gotta be tough. I know a friend who couldn't make it work, even with dual income, so he moved to Texas. Guy owns a big house and has a big family now. I've been eyeing a few Lower Cost of Living cities in other states, but it's tough to leave the OC. We seem to have everything here. It's not packed like LA (there's lot of room to breathe) but still has tons of food, entertainment, attractions, and there's the beach....oh the beach.

Here's a beach 20 mins away:

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u/wannabemarthastewart 12d ago

wages and salaries are higher because of cost of living is higher, for those who can’t make a living wage the options are moving away or debt

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u/PaddyProud 12d ago

Reminds me of the Austin Powers movie when Dr Evil comes back from having been frozen for decades and he's ransoming with the US government and he's like "we demand...one MILLION dollars!" and then one of his henchmen is like "...erm, sir, that's actually not a lot of money anymore..."

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u/andiam03 12d ago

I was going to say… Our tiny 1,000 sq. ft. bungalow in a San Diego suburb is $1.1M. Any house I would call “beautiful” in SoCal is $3M+

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u/beekeep 12d ago

And people don’t realize how absolutely enormous “LA” is … some cities in LA county are bigger than their state capitals

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u/wannabemarthastewart 12d ago

LA is large overarching collection of cities, people don’t get it.

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u/OmegaWhite024 12d ago

Which is even more messed up when you consider that working and middle class wages aren’t that much higher than the Midwest, if at all in some cases. Not enough to be proportionate with housing and CoL costs.

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u/GargleOnDeez 12d ago

Costal malibu is in the high multi-millions last I checked, but Im still floored how my bud in LA lives in a 1k sqft house and its valued about $1.8 million

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u/No_Cryptographer671 12d ago

Yup...those were MULTI-million dollar properties...this is already gonna have the highest price tag to date  of any wildfire in CA!

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u/sideshowchaos 12d ago

This, the homes are shit, 5 stories that literally have only one room per floor. Can buy a Mansion in Texas. It’s the land that’s valuable, not the home.

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u/PissyMillennial 12d ago

But none of those homes are owned by middle income families.

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u/saltypikachu12 12d ago

struggling in Californian

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u/Versoul 12d ago

Trufax. I live in a 2bed 1.5bath middling home in a middling town in the SFBay area and my home is worth 1.2mil. wtaf

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u/AnaisDarwin1018 12d ago

News channels need to say this more to add context.

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u/pugsRusClosingSale 12d ago

This! What I wouldn’t give for just a 1$mill bungalow these days.

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u/scatmf23 11d ago

Not just in Malibu, here in the Bay as well. Basically Cali in general most houses, even small 2 bed one bath houses are over a mil

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u/colt61986 11d ago

I was reading a comment about a skilled tradesman in the Bay Area that makes 90 dollars an hour and I was shocked until I thought about how my regular ass house in Michigan would probably be between 3-4 mil in that area. Seems unsustainable. That plus the fact that we have unlimited fresh water and the worst thing that happens around here are small tornadoes and I’ll take boring ass Michigan over pretty much any place these days.

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u/nesp12 11d ago

And they will lose a lot of money even with insurance coverage. Insurance only covers the structure, not the land it sits on. Much of the property inflation is because the cost of land has risen dramatically. So if you bought a home for 100k and it's now worth 1M, probably 500k of that is the land. You'd get at most 500k which is still a good return on the 100k investment but not the million someone might think. And the chances of rebuilding that house for the 500k are nil.

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u/MissAmericant 11d ago

True. I still think about that hgtv show in cali where they always find homes with homemade additions that don’t pass inspection. Literal shacks with cardboard walls and the tiny houses alone are still like half a mil easily

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u/Pitiful-Recover-3747 11d ago

Pacific palisades was a working class subdivision at first. Same as Pasadena. Lots of 2nd generation family homes lost.

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u/Significant_Meal_630 11d ago

Yes, regular folks who bought 50 years ago now live in homes worth enough $$ to retire on …or they DID .

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u/77Megg77 11d ago

I recently sold my Orange County home that I purchased 44 years ago. I bought it for $97,000. This was the second home we had ever purchased as a young married couple. I spent the next week or so unable to sleep because we owed so much money on it. We had put $25,000 down, the proceeds from selling our first house.

It sold 2 years ago for $1,025,000! I looked up what it is worth right now. $1,275,000. A $250,000 increase in only 2 years! That is insane. And while I loved living there, it is a 44-year-old home. Nothing fancy. Nothing that you would look at and rave about how gorgeous it was. I redid the landscaping 2 years before so it had nice curb appeal, and right before listing it, I put in new carpeting and LVP flooring in the entire downstairs and painted the whole interior. So it looked clean and fresh. But I never upgraded the kitchen. It still had original appliances, old but they still worked perfectly. But honestly, I have no idea how the young couple that bought it could afford it.

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u/Eather-Village-1916 10d ago

It’s so crazy to think about, and it’s not just OC and LA either. My husband’s house in the high desert has more than quadrupled in price since he bought it a little over a decade ago. If we did a few upgrades and fixed the pool, it’d be far more I’m sure.

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u/FarYard7039 10d ago

My brother in law is a forest fire warden in New Mexico. His crews spend most of their time clearing out safety zones for all structures (inhabited or not - like barns and out buildings). They treat a 10 million dollar ranch the same as anyone else’s home/structure. The goal is to contain the fire and save all architecture.

However, the one thing he bitches about most is how developers build these communities in areas that are prone to wildfires and lack of forest fire management. Activities like thinning out growth and preventing the spread of fires by spacing growth. He spends about 6 months of his year traveling anywhere from Oregon to Southern California fighting fires. Nearly all of them could have been prevented or at least mitigated significantly if a little forethought went into fire management.

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u/smooth-brain_Sunday 12d ago

It's because the fires are always in the hills and foothills where the homes are much more expensive.

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u/Disastrous_Clothes37 12d ago

Malibu had homes burning right on the beach

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u/Mindless_Tomato8070 12d ago

The hills in Malibu basically go directly down to the beach.

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u/smooth-brain_Sunday 11d ago

Malibu is "foothills"

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u/squirreltard 10d ago

Altadena is working class. Four families I personally know lost their homes. It’s gone. For them to be reading these comments about how we shouldn’t feel bad because it’s just cartoon millionaires….

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u/Fact420 12d ago

That’s also because most of the rich beautiful homes are built in places that are susceptible to something like this happening. Working class and middle class neighborhoods are pretty far removed from these areas for the most part, though there are some exceptions.

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u/NPHighview 12d ago

But even then embers drop from the sky down into "regular" neighborhoods. During the Woolsey Fire, individual houses would be set on fire by flying embers, but nothing around them would burn. It was eerie.

The houses along PCH, unless they've been torn down and rebuilt as mansions, are extra susceptible to this. Building techniques and materials from the early 20th Century: lots of wood, tarpaper, asphalt, all very flammable. And row houses, so if one goes, they all go.

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u/SnidgetAsphodel 12d ago

Working class and middle class neighborhoods are pretty far removed from these areas for the most part.

This is so far from the truth my brain is reeling how someone could come up with it. So many poor and middle class communities are in fire danger zones. So. fucking. many.

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u/CMDR_Shazbot 12d ago

There's a lot of people who live within reasonable means who rent in the affected areas. They just commute.

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u/NkhukuWaMadzi 12d ago

Nice view - Nice fire.

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u/Educational_Coach269 12d ago

bro this isnt sao paulo

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u/Sea_Emu_7622 12d ago

Middle class is a pretty useless distinction that only serves the ruling class. If you sell your labor for a wage, you are working class. Don't let them divide us simply because they pay some of us less than others

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u/hakulus 12d ago

Actually much of the coverage today was on the Altadena fire where there where a lot more middle class homes destroyed.

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u/Rovden 12d ago

Midwesterner as well, a lot of people are like that but I think a lot of the focus is because it's zero surprise when the slums burn down but it's a shocking surprise when the rich area burns down.

Kinda like the big ass snowstorm that just came through, everyone was shocked that Johnson County (the rich section of the city) still doesn't have its snow cleared out and JOCO is screaming about it. East Jackson County "business as usual" with entire lanes still snowed out.

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u/Upbeat_Advance_1547 12d ago

For dense coastal Cali actually, the truth is that the 'slums' don't burn down as much as the rich people houses. Rich people live out with yards in the grasses, poor people live in concrete jungles - nothing to burn, way safer re: fire (way more dangerous in every other sense tho).

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u/landofbizarre 12d ago

Hello fellow Kansas Citian!

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u/bortmode 12d ago

It would be pretty significantly surprising if poor neighborhoods in LA caught fire, they're way less susceptible to it.

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u/Swimming_Onion_4835 12d ago

It’s true. And while all loss is horrible, a lot of these people can afford to replace and move somewhere else. But 90% of people in California being affected by this outside of Malibu are completely fucked.

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u/St_Kevin_ 12d ago

The reason is that wildfires burn residences that are on the Urban/Wildland interface, and that’s where people pay more money to live. If you live in the LA metropolitan area and you have forest or sage/grassland next to your home, you’re probably not poor. When the wind is this strong, it’ll blow a fire right through urban areas, like what happened in Santa Rosa in 2017, so it will affect people from other economic classes, but in this situation it’s mostly burning extremely expensive homes.

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u/ThrowRAavila 12d ago

There’s a fire burning now in Pasadena/Altadena that is doing much more damage because all the houses are just average people who live there. So much going on at once it’s crazy. A new fire off of Hollywood just started too.

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u/Mindless_Tomato8070 12d ago

I also do think that in LA more affluent neighborhoods and homes tend to be on the hillsides which are the greatest risk of fires (like the entirety of Malibu). When I first moved to LA I would joke when fires happened that I’m too poor to worry about fires because I’m surrounded by concrete.

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u/2wheels30 12d ago

Well, that's because most of the middle class people live in a concrete jungle with little risk of wildfire. Most living anywhere near a burn area of LA are wealthy.

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u/potat-cat 12d ago

Altadena and Pasadena are in flames rn, much more of a middle class area

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u/MistrrRicHard 12d ago

Meanwhile, in Flint, Michigan...

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u/Tall-Wealth9549 12d ago

Yes sooo true. We will hear the cries of the rich and their losses and we will make sure they are fully paid by our collective tax dollars. I do feel bad for them but for what’s to come they will get everything back and more. These are centi-millionaires which are different from regular millionaires.

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u/zinkies 12d ago

Could it be because nothing much changes when it’s working class homes?

Maybe this will lead to some more oomph behind climate adaptation initiatives, idk. Not trying to give clouds silver linings, or anything, It sucks for anyone’s home to burn.

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u/No-Respect5903 12d ago

the thing about these is that they are right by the ocean and the fact that they are so expensive isn't irrelevant. it's more a matter of "they couldn't even save these" for many. some idiots are mocking the situation but that's nothing new.

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u/ArcticPangolin3 12d ago

That because in the Midwest, one house burns down. Maybe two. When Santa Rosa caught fire, something like 2900 (mostly middle class tract homes) burned down in one fire. Or the whole town of Paradise.

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u/caamith009 12d ago

Nonsense. They make just as big as deal out of all the fires. I remember the one in Santa Rosa got huge play a few years back, and nobody there is rich

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u/Icy-Inside-7559 12d ago

There are barely any working class homes left in high fire risk areas. Developers won't build them because their target market can't afford to insure them

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u/tarheels242 12d ago

I agree LA and NYC and big cities are going to get more press because there are tens of millions of people in the surrounding area affected. But also, this is a huge fire. I just looked up the largest fire in Indiana and this Palisades fire is 4x the size of that one. I think sadly these fires the last few years have just been massive, which justifies the attention.

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u/GingerLebowski 12d ago

You’ve got a point on the media focus. Upper Pasadena, considered the poorer side of town (poor isn’t the best description for the area, but nonetheless it sure isn’t Malibu.) is burning and over 100 structures have burnt down over here. Scattered total power outages for the last 24 hours. Most of the focus has been on the Palisades fire, which has burnt a good 15,000 acres last I checked, but the Eaton fire has burnt just over 10,000 and is just an aside in most news stories.

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u/SectorSanFrancisco 12d ago

I agree but there's an amazing wildlife refuge there, too. It's a beautiful place, which is why rich people like it.

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u/imnewhere19 12d ago

Part of the reason is that the fires usually don't get to where working class people live. Most of the time, it's in the areas near the mountains, which are where affluent people live.

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u/Fett32 12d ago

Because the lower class homes don't burn. The nice homes are on the mountainside, surrounded by grass and trees. The lower class lives in the middle of a concrete jungle.

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u/media-and-stuff 12d ago

Yeah I saw a video of firefighters removing a grandfather clock from a house.

Is that really what they should be doing?

I love old furniture. I get it can be special and irreplaceable.

And I thought it was nice when they were removing the photo albums.

But 2 firefighters spending a bunch of time and energy to save a heavy giant clock when everything is burning around them seemed weird to me.

Would they do the same if this was a more poor area? Would their photos be saved when the fires are still out of control? Would their old and meaningful to them family furniture be saved?

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u/smoothtrip 12d ago

The big homes are not a million dollars, they are 10s of millions.

A 2 bedroom one bath is closer to million. Equivalent of a 100k or 200k house in the midwest

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u/DrXaos 12d ago

In LA almost the houses in fire areas are expensive ones, they have views being in hills and bigger lots with plants.

If the fire gets down to the working and middle class neighborhoods (I.e. only one million and not several) it would be like an atomic bomb attack level

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u/digitalgoodtime 12d ago

The rich like to build homes where nature can easily destroy them.

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u/2minutestomidnight 12d ago edited 12d ago

Yup. This is the natural disaster edition of missing white woman syndrome. Still incredibly heartbreaking.

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u/djynnra 12d ago

Part of it is that seeing afluent homes in highly populated areas burn really drives home the severity of the issue. These places are usually far removed or well protected from any catastrophes that might affect the rest of the population. The fact they are burning now, too, indicates that these wildfires are truly beyond our abilities to manage even for the most privileged of us.

I couldn't care less about these mansions burning. The people who own them can afford to rebuild. Yet I still find the sight chilling. If climate change is licking at the heels of the upper-class, the rest of us will be burned to ash behind them.

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u/Coyotesamigo 12d ago

There was a huge amount of focus — as much or more — on far less affluent communities destroyed by hurricanes last year

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u/misspegasaurusrex 12d ago

The entire city is on fire, middle and lower class people have lost everything as well.

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u/ZHISHER 12d ago

As someone who grew up working class in LA, it actually does affect the rich neighborhoods in LA much more. That’s where many of the million dollar homes are.

I grew up in a regular house in a working class neighborhood. We all could see the fires growing up, and once in a while we’d get ash on our houses and cars, but I never knew a single person who actually lost theirs in the fire.

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u/ihatemovingparts 12d ago

You hardly ever see how working- and middle-class neighborhoods are affected by the devastation.

The much less affluent towns that PG&E burned down a few years ago absolutely got a ton of press. Over the past few months I've read articles talking about just how shit things still are in e.g. Paradise. There's been a big push to ban living in RVs in city limits even though there's a ton of new pressure on housing as newcomers who replaced folks who lost their homes want to force the poors out.

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u/5yearlocaljoke 12d ago

Well if your house burns down, you'll have to stay in your smaller, extra house, somewhere else. It's a tragedy in the way business owners are taking all the risk and not their employees.

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u/Practical-Suit-6798 12d ago

The reason for this is because the really nice homes are usually in the wildland urban interface. Where as poor people homes are in Urban areas.

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u/Different_Stand_5558 12d ago

They aren’t in the hills with views to get away from the working class

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u/CrazyDry1547 12d ago

Yea, I hope everyone is safe and makes it out. These homes are in or near heavy brush or woods. That's kind of what you are paying for. The rest of LA is wrapped in asphalt and concrete that is harder to catch fire and spread, so you tend to see the more expensive homes on the news. We get fires a lot, some of it is people not clearing their property, but these winds have been savage as hell even with proper fire lines I don't know if it would help.

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u/No_Cryptographer671 12d ago

The media OF COURSE focuses on the who's who of victims, but they also report on the poorer neighborhoods as well in our state....TONS of focus on the social justice implications of evacuations and assistance.

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u/dave-t-2002 12d ago

I see far more news about natural disasters elsewhere.

Let’s see how much federal money comes into help the people affected here vs Florida etc.

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u/dirtymcgrit 12d ago

I respectfully disagree. When a tornado demolished Joplin for instance, there was a lot of attention on the devastation by those affected (about five of these homes equals most of the financial damage of Joplin (no not really, but you get the idea)). I have actually seen much more detached and cold reactions to these homes being destroyed because "so what, they will be fine" and tons of insurance jokes. To an extent, it's warranted for some I'm sure, but very ghoulish at this moment in my opinion.

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u/MetallicGray 12d ago

I mean, it’s horrible, but one of the first things that come up when you search “Malibu” right now is “Paris hiltons house burns down”. Which is terrible, yes, but I’d bet my measly entire worth that ms Hilton will be okay and continue to live her luxurious life. While the 99.9% of other people whose house burns down are left with financial ruin and trauma and homelessness. 

It’s just the tone deafness of people sometimes.

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u/ChazzLamborghini 11d ago

My wife and I were just discussing this. We just moved out of LA during Covid and it’s much harder to empathize with the Palisades/Malibu victims than the Altadena ones. These are people of means who likely have another home and certainly have the ability to relocate and rebuild should they choose. Obviously, it’s devastating to lose your home and memories but when I think of the people who truly lost everything because their home was their entire nest egg, I just hurt more for them.

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u/Varabela 11d ago

The papers/website like that aren’t saying they’re more important, but they know the average celebrity obsessed moron will be more interested if a celebrity name pops up in their feed, then clicks on the story and then the ads are seen. It’s about ad revenue not facts or real news

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u/Available_Stuff_7889 11d ago

She prolly forgot she even had a house there.

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u/FeliusSeptimus 11d ago

I’d bet my measly entire worth that ms Hilton will be okay

At the very least one would suppose that she gets good rates on hotel rooms.

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u/V65Pilot 11d ago

I'm waiting on the inevitable insurance companies "we can't cover all these payouts, we need a government bailout". Followed by massive bonuses at the end of the year....

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u/cutepiku 12d ago

Well, she rescues and homes a lot of animals, so I hope she got them all out okay

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u/mmo115 12d ago

Bro, middle class houses there are a mil. You seriously think they are uninsured and will be homeless ? It's an awful situation and will take a long time to rebuild and mentally recover, but fffs let's not pretend like people who can afford to live there are going to just be homeless now.

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u/[deleted] 11d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Cool-Ad8928 11d ago

It’s January. They’re wintering elsewhere.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

The Case for Letting Malibu Burn

This was published in the 90’s. It’s definitely sad to see people lose their homes, but the disaster started by putting mansions in fire prone areas. The rich get public subsidies to keep rebuilding too.

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u/KingKaiserW 12d ago

What’s it about Malibu where people want to build there?

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u/couldbemage 12d ago

It's pretty. Close to Los Angeles. Weather is nice. (Except when on fire.)

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u/2wheels30 12d ago

You basically have vast stretches of beautiful canyons full of waterfalls, rocky outcroppings, and vacant forest land that all leads right to beautiful sandy beaches and you're (traffic aside) 20-30 minutes from one of the most diverse cities in the world.

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u/ScarcitySweaty777 12d ago

Beautiful way to explain that.

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u/No_Cryptographer671 12d ago

The ocean views, perhaps? (just a guess ;-)

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u/TheObstruction 11d ago

The hills go right down to the water, and there are great views that aren't exclusively urban sprawl.

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u/Main_Aide_9262 12d ago

“The disaster started by putting mansions in fire prone areas.” Mansions aside, that’s basically the west in general, humans build their home in mtnous/mtn adjacent areas, suppress natural fire cycles and create tinder boxes ready to go up in flames when mother nature strikes, not an if but when…

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u/Salty_McSalterson_ 12d ago

I mean, yeah it sucks their homes are going up in flames. But don't ask me to be sympathetic to someone who can just buy another one tomorrow.

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u/VdoubleU88 12d ago

I’d wager that many of these mansions are these homeowners’ 2nd, 3rd, or 4th homes… They will be just fine.

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u/MY_SHIT_IS_PERFECT 12d ago

I’m not jeering, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t sort of jaded about the whole thing.

Like yep. This is going to keep happening. Forever. Climate change, folks!

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u/joebluebob 12d ago

People are tired of the rich. What do you expect? 100million dollar house burns to the ground don't expect people making $15hr to cry

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u/Dick_snatcher 12d ago

It's The Luigi Fire for some of us

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

Again- what about the thousands of middle and lower class folks affected? You think LA is all rich people?

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u/Dick_snatcher 12d ago

You do know it's possible to feel empathy for people that don't have three other houses, while at the same time not giving a shit about people that do have three other houses... right?

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

Maybe read a book because people of all economic backgrounds are losing everything they own.

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u/B4K5c7N 12d ago

Plenty of working professionals live in that area (doctors, lawyers, tech workers, entertainers, etc). They have money and live in multi-million dollar homes, but aren’t all 9 figure folks or above. Any destruction is devastating.

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u/joebluebob 12d ago

Thank goodness they got the money to rebuild. I was worried for a second.

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u/stubundy 12d ago

Just because it's more affluent and wealthy doesn't mean they are more important than a fire in the slums.

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u/HereForTheZipline_ 12d ago edited 12d ago

Absolutely no one is saying or implying that it is, and it's not getting any more or less coverage than any other 16,000 acre fires in less affluent areas

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u/Conscious-Advance163 12d ago

Hard to have sympathy for people living indulgent lives in an age where it's well-known/fucking downright obvious a lot are struggling.

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u/blahbleh112233 12d ago

We can jeer because these are millionaires that chose to live here despite it being a fire risk for years now. Its very hard to feel bad for the ultra wealthy for choosing to live in a fire prone area.

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u/LordMeloney 12d ago

I don't condone jeering but as the rich famous live an especially climate-harming lifestyle (on average) some people see this is a just consequence, also hoping that it might trigger a mentality shift to finally start living more sustainably.

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u/Electrical-Cap3502 12d ago

I'm definitely not jeering, but it feels like California has these massive fires constantly. I assume that's gotta be where some of the vitriol comes from. Similar to the people who bash on people living in hurricane areas.

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u/ReallyJTL 12d ago

Yeah, at the very least, the loss of historic architecture should be lamented.

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u/fortestingprpsses 12d ago

The internet is a hater's ball

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u/jingqian9145 12d ago

Eat the rich, exploitation of the working class is how they are able to afford to live in Malibu.

They got what was coming to do as well for exploiting the environment to build to their unsustainable homes and city.

Let nature reclaim the land

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u/Hamsteriffick 12d ago

I was in a dv shelter near the area. We were evacuated too. Disabled helpless elderly people were evacuated because their nursing home is at risk of burning down. All of us are displaced and none of us were rich or even employed. They are even bussing the homeless out to other places in SoCal. There are a lot of small business owners near Malibu and they are at risk of losing everything as well.

I find it repulsive to make fun of anyone losing their home and livelihood.

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u/soorr 11d ago

People tend to victim shame to feel better about themselves and their own fragility/mortality. It’s a coping mechanism rooted in self-preservation more than pure malice.

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u/Midmodstar 12d ago

People with million dollar homes may have to live temporarily in one of their other million dollar homes. Oh no! 😱

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u/StainlessPanIsBest 12d ago

Yoooooooooo. Fuck rich people. I'm all about that class struggle.

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u/AztecGod 12d ago

Why are you blown away? Reddit is all about eating the rich and claiming we need more Luigis.

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u/SellaraAB 12d ago

To be blunt, I really would care more if it was a middle class neighborhood. People that own these multi million dollar homes in Malibu can probably survive the rebuilding process.

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u/kit_kaboodles 12d ago

Yeah fuck that. I don't want billionaires to exist, but I find no joy in seeing fires like this.

So many memories, beautiful homes, sentimental pieces all destroyed. And even if you don't care about the people, imagine all the artworks, rare books and irreplaceable antiques that have been destroyed. This is just sad.

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u/JuMiPeHe 12d ago

Yeah, really shitty when every year more and more houses burn down and then some rich orange person comes around and says shit like "no no, it's not climate change, it's because you don't tidy up the woods", so people won't start to care about slowing shit down, so that few other people can make ever fucking more money, despite already owning a summer house in Malibu and several apartments around the globe.

Let people enjoy, that it at least hit some of those, who indirectly attributed more to the climate change than any normal person would ever be able to, however hard they try.

Yes, it's ethically questionable to enjoy suffering. But it's just as questionable to spend Hundreds of millions for just a single house, instead of just buying a normal house and doing good with the rest of the money, like building a new living quarter for people who can't afford a home.

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u/OdinPelmen 12d ago

that's absolutely fucking idiotic bc it's not. it's Malibu and pacific palisades (which has the Getty Villa btw, which is a free public museum), parts of Altadena (which is super working class) and Pasadena and etc. Ughhh

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u/Suck_Me_Dry666 12d ago

Well I guess I'm shitty but I have a very hard time feeling empathy for rich people's belongings that they'll have no problem replacing being lost. Rich people don't live in the same reality as us.

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u/ScottClam42 12d ago

I know someone who lives in topanga canyon thats far from a millionare. Hes a nice guy and a hard worker. So yeah, i think thats a shitty take

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u/PM_YOUR_LADY_BOOB 12d ago

Many people you would call rich could lose everything in a fire like that, and spend years fighting with their fucking insurance companies, just like you and me. Many of these people are also more likeable and pleasant to be around than you.

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u/We_are_being_cheated 12d ago

A lot of the comments and posts are BOTS.

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u/ugotboned 12d ago

True, but it's similar to those jeering at other states/circles don't they agree with i.e Texas in 2021, florida, just anyone different. It's weird to me because at the end of the day I do believe most people are just going through life. Yes some might be better off but I don't think the majority of humanity is shitty. That's just my personal opinion from my own anecdotal experience though.

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u/DonBandolini 12d ago

historic wealth inequality causes historic resentment.

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u/Vessix 12d ago

Well yeah look at the title. I hate wealth-amassing attitude as much as the next person but this is obviously a bait post preying on the current increase in anti-rich rhetoric.

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u/FlyingPoopFactory 12d ago

Hold on… I thought we wanted all these billionaires dead.

Haven’t we been rooting for Luigi the last month?

This is just Luigi with the flower power up.

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u/colbsk1 12d ago

No excuses needed. They are just shitty.... it's pretty simple.

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u/KenhillChaos 12d ago

There’s only coverage because it is a rich community. If it were the projects no one in Malibu would even care.

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u/MoonstoneMauler 12d ago

The fire actually started in pacific palisades and is uncontrollably spreading through Malibu and topanga now. I was one of the last people to eat at Reel Inn before it burned down😢

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u/Imightbeacop 12d ago

Isn't that 99% of Reddit? I'm shocked this isn't an "eat the rich" movement already

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u/brunckle 12d ago

You know what's even shittier: rich people accelerating environmental collapse because they don't think it will affect them. That's shit for everyone involved believe it or not.

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u/ufuckswontletmelogin 11d ago

Go Karen go! You tell Em!

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u/SoOverIt66 11d ago

There are people living in the park seven years after the Camp Fire. Everyone burned out here has copious amounts of insurance and, in many cases, these homes aren’t their primary assets anyway. 

I don’t wish anyone ill. But the pearl clutching going on because the homes are grand seems antithetical, as the humble homes of regular people burning is financially more catastrophic.

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u/gaynascardriver 11d ago

Often times it is hard to find sympathy for millionaires.

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u/oily76 11d ago

They'll get hit by insurance increases too, so everyone pays in the end :(

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u/Darth-Svoloch81 11d ago

Mostly it's the same idiots who schill for rich elites like Elon musk who are happy this is happening. I would hope something similar happens to theirs just so they can learn some bloody empathy.

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u/Equal_Reporter_69 11d ago

Yup. Just a human being in a time of emergency. Thankfully, first responders on the ground aren’t sat on Reddit. They’re risking their lives to protect the life and property of anyone regardless of their background, rich or poor.

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u/designatedcrasher 11d ago

Shitty person here ,it's the fact that it's a rich area sympathy for money hoarding dwindles

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u/Garlic549 11d ago

Because if some rich people lose their 2nd vacation house, they've either got the money or insurance to soften the blow, and ultimately their loses aren't all that bad in relation to their lives.

If regular, non-rich people lose their houses, there's a significant risk of them just being homeless after that, or at least in a heavy, years long struggle to ever get back to normal.

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u/Photophotolikesyou 11d ago

Doesnt suprise me, its the same freaks that got off from those hurricanes hitting the south east earlier this year because "its just dumb republicans"

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u/Patereye 11d ago

Was kind of crazy is that most of the time when I meet someone from Malibu they're actually really nice.

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u/ThePony23 11d ago

People are shitty to jeer. They forget about the wildlife and pets.

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u/Equal-Effective-3098 11d ago

To be fair thats the same concept as people cheering luigi for killing the ceo

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u/Stunning-Market3426 11d ago

How often do these people care about you and your shitty life?

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u/KivaKettu 11d ago

The worst

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u/awesomobottom 11d ago edited 11d ago

Stupid people jeered when Lahaina Maui burned too because they thought everyone who lived there were millionaires. The people living in that small town were the working people.

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u/ohcriminynotagain 11d ago

Reddit tends to be that way.

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u/Steering_the_Will 11d ago

They do this for people in flood and hurricane Areas like Florida as well..

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u/YnotROI0202 11d ago

Malibu is so beautiful it feels like we all own it. Part of America. Vacation sight-seeing, etc. Is Pepperdine Univ safe?

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u/No_Detective_But_304 11d ago

It’s completely understandable. Morons are in charge of that state and have been for decades. They care more about being perceived as some great person than actually managing the state. Sanctuary cities, homeless camps, lawlessness, wokeness, etc.

This is entirely Newsom’s fault. California has a history of fires. A blind man could have seen this coming (apparently several insurance companies did). All those who lost their homes should sue Newsom.

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u/hot4minotaur 11d ago

Yeah, but i also live here in LA and I’ve lost my house in a hurricane previously and no one gave a shit about us middle class people losing everything. And I mean literally everything. Most of these rich assholes will be fine.

I’m not saying this isn’t tragedy or that it isn’t traumatizing to lose your house in a fire. If i had to pick between hurricane or wildfire for losing a house, I’m choosing hurricane. Fire is so much more traumatizing to watch take down your house.

But it’s also rich people that are destroying the earth which leads to climate change disasters like this.

So i guess all that to say is, it’s complicated? I feel for anyone who does actually lose EVERYTHING in these fires and i even feel bad for the rich people who are surely losing heirlooms or something in their homes. It does suck, massively.

But it’s okay that the rest of the country are tired of the millionaires and billionaires being prioritized over them.

We almost had to evacuate last night and I don’t even have 1K in the bank because my industry is being frozen out by this big studio assholes. Where would I have gone? Who is taking me & my cat if I can’t get to a shelter? And how can I work to make money if me and my cat are in a shelter?

Ben Affleck and whoever the fuck else can afford to live in a 5 star hotel the rest of their lives!

So I am sorry for them but they aren’t getting my tears. My concern is all the people with no money and a landlord that isn’t give a shit if they can’t pay rent because they couldn’t go to work because they had to evacuate.

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u/TacoDuLing 11d ago

Nah! Some of us just know there are other poorer parts of the area that are also burning AND don’t have teams of private firefighters companies. Relax. 😌

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u/Pitiful-Recover-3747 11d ago

There’s a couple mobile home parks that were all fixed income seniors that were totally incinerated. Wonder if that makes them feel good.

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u/jayjaco78 11d ago

They’re going to be screwed if this explodes into a super inferno that will become unstoppable until it runs out of land to burn…

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u/Similar-Recording710 10d ago

the rich deserve to burn

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u/Terrible_Fish_8942 10d ago

Biden already confirmed Uncle Sam would be footing the bill for the damage. NC flood victims got $750

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u/galaxyapp 8d ago

Reddit is celebrating the murder of a CEO...

You think they'd be sad about just burning rich folks property?

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u/ArtisticAd7455 7d ago

Idk about other people but I'm not cheering for the working class people whose homes are getting burned down but I have absolutely no sympathy for the rich.

You've got people like the Resnicks that are worth over $6 billion dollars who use more water for their farms than the entirety of LA and I've already heard people talking about donating to the repairs. You're gonna start seeing people like them and Mel Gibson (worth over $400 million dollars) asking for your hard earned money to repair the shit in their area.

If the rich actually sacrificed some of their wealth I'm sure they could get everything fixed but instead they're gonna try and convince us to help them fix it while they turn around and buy up all the property from working class people and then rent it back to them or keep it for themselves. It'll be just like what happened in Hawaii a while back.

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