A fire broke out in the parking garage below the senior living building.
FIRE IN CIELA PARKING GARAGE:
A car caught fire in Ciela’s parking garage under the three-story building. Los Angeles Fire Department reported on April 21, at 7:45 p.m. that “First arriving companies report a convalescent home (three residential stories over a parking structure) with light smoke showing due to one automobile on fire in parking structure. Firefighters are operating in offensive mode.”
The automobile fire was extinguished in 34 minutes, according to the report, which also included “One female patient sustained a fall injury while evacuating the building; she was transported by LAFD paramedics to a local hospital.”
Ciela, which recently opened, offers independent living, assisted living, memory care and short term stays in studios, one or two-bedroom apartments.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
One reader wrote CTN that “Of course, this could happen at any building that has parking underneath. But if evacuation is necessary, and if the occupants are elderly and unable to evacuate quickly, then that could be a huge problem.”
GRAFFITI IN WOLFBERG PARK:
There are two residents, Cindy Simon and John Alle, that religiously remove graffiti from poles and other surfaces in Pacific Palisades.
On Friday, vandals sprayed paint on signs and in the bathrooms in George Wolfberg park. A reader on Saturday alerted CTN that at least 15 signs at been painted. He was able to track the names down of the kids responsible, including first and last names. That list has been sent to LAPD.
The reader said, “The police need to give these kids’ parents a visit.”
CTN printed on April 21: “If you are the parent of Lucas, Alex, Thaddeus, Remi, or Eli, your child has been implicated in tagging. It might be time to instill community service or a commitment to community beautification and go to Anawalt and pick up a remover. It could be fun for the entire family to remove the red paint.”
Simon told CTN on April 22, “I have cleared tagging from signs since the park opened, but it was always two maybe three a weekend and then it stopped.
“Whoever did this recent tagging in my opinion is angry and trying to call attention to himself. I’m not sure what was going on his mind, but to tag so many signs and boulders and the large information signs is a disturbed person, and I feel needs to be located and held accountable,” Simon said.
She said that it took awhile to clean just four signs, before she ran out of graffiti remover and needed to buy more.
CTN received the following comment “Seriously Sue what’s wrong with you? Some kids told you something and you print it online like a confirmed source? And how many kids with those names do you think live in the area? I used to think you were doing our community a service with your reporting? Now you just seem like someone posting thoughts as you have them. Sort of like a child would.”
Interestingly, this reader has never subscribed or supported CTN with a donation. Maybe he and his child would like help Simon remove graffiti?
PASSOVER STARTS TONIGHT:
Happy Passover! This holiday, which begins at sundown tonight, April 22, celebrates the ancient Hebrews’ exodus from slavery out of Egypt. For decades, the Jews had been slaves of the Egyptian pharaohs until Moses led them out of captivity.
As a child we learned about the Old Testament and this editor was fascinated by the 10 plagues – imagine water turning to blood, and that frogs, flies and lice were everywhere.
But there’s a plague in the country right now, and that’s the “allowed” antisemitism that’s happening on college campuses, including Columbia and Yale.
Things have gotten so bad [at Columbia] that a campus rabbi is urging Jewish students to leave because of concerns for their safety.
Actor Michael Rapoport, speaking near Columbia University today, said “as offensive as these people are across the street, agenda number one… is to free our hostages,” prompting a crowd to start chanting “bring them home!”
“These are bullies. These are cowards. These are pathetic, low-life scumbags,” Rapoport continued. “Agenda number one A is to eradicate Hamas to the very last one of them.”
“For all you Jewish younger people… be prouder, be louder than you’ve ever been before about being Jewish,” Rapoport said.
The staff response to the fire at Ciela appeared to be totally inadequate. Watching from across the street, staff members scrambled back and forth between the lobby and the garage entrance for several minutes before triggering the building fire alarm. It then took a number of additional minutes before the relatively few residents at the facility began to appear outside. Staff did not seem to have blankets or other warm items at their disposal to protect frail residents as they moved them outside. Also, until bystanders recommended, they did not move the residents far enough away from the building, where there was the possibility of explosions from vehicles in the garage in the vicinity of the vehicle (an Audi SUV) that burned. or the toxic smoke coming from the garage. Finally, LAFD reported that they extinguished the fire in 34 minutes, but that was AFTER they arrived. It took at least 20 minutes for them to come up the hill from Station 23, and when they did, they stopped first on Pali Drive instead of coming to the main Ciela entrance on Vereda de la Montura. It took substantial staff yelling and gesturing to get their attention before they moved their trucks to the area where needed. All in all, the Shrams and the operators get a black eye for their lack of preparedness and protection of the residents, and the PPCC should be criticized for its giddy party bus support for the project at the appeal hearing and for opining that the use as a senior warehouse at this location was “appropriate”. Wait until we have a big wildfire in Santa Ynez Canyon.
Thank you for calling out the names of the students who are doing the graffiti. That is horrible and their parents should take action. Keep doing the great job that you are!
I met Cindy today as she finished moving the graffiti in Protero Csnyon.
I thanked her and marvel at how committed she is.
I think it’s great that you are calling out the names of the graffiti kids. You would think this might be a wake up call to the parents to have a talk with their kids about defacing beautiful public property… it wouldn’t help either if the parents bought clean up paint and joined Cindy in her clean up mission.
You mention kids who do good things in our community… only fair that you point out the kids who don’t.