The Pacific Palisades community was closed for months after the January fire destroyed the community, but since its recent reopening, a new, disturbing visitor has been discovered in the community: Disaster Visitors. Their buses.
“My office and others have received a lot of reports about commercial tourism operators who are taking a disaster trip in the Pacific Palisades,” Los Angeles City Councilman Traci Park said at a meeting this week. “They want to profit from the damage and the losses of others. It’s really serious and needs to be stopped.”
To stop the trend from becoming routine when disaster strikes the area, the city council unanimously approved limiting the “disaster tour” buses in the Palisade Fire District and any disaster area.
On January 7, firefights in Palisades tore up in and around Pacific Palisades, destroying more than 6,000 buildings, many of them houses and killing 12 people. Despite officials vowing to recover quickly, the reconstruction process of the worst disaster in the city’s history is challenging and slow.
Parker said the tour bus is not only disturbing, but it can be distracting and dangerous for crew members who continue to work in the area.
“It’s also dangerous because we’re still actively removing fire debris,” she said.
Due to the vote on Parker’s motion, the city’s Department of Transportation will limit tour buses in any area of natural disaster emergencies, and the ban will continue until the emergency response period.
The motion also calls on the department to consider permanent travel bus restrictions in some areas after the emergency expires once the emergency expires, given the narrow, winding and steep streets of Palisades, even before the fires, in some areas after the emergency expires.
