[HN Gopher] Two fire experts interviewed about L.A. wildfires
___________________________________________________________________
Two fire experts interviewed about L.A. wildfires
Author : hodgesrm
Score : 53 points
Date : 2025-01-12 15:59 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
| CurtHagenlocher wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42666776
| elteto wrote:
| I'm still looking for the incovenient truths because I couldn't
| find them in that article... A couple thousand words with no real
| insight or information.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Not directly stated (and maybe not even intended) but for me
| the inconvenient truth is that human society is absolutely
| powerless against nature at the extreme ends of the scale. We
| can do a lot, we can build sea walls, we can reroute rivers, we
| can cross over or tunnel under almost any obstacle. But
| ultimately, the planet is capable of bringing more to bear than
| we can offset, whether it's wind-driven wildfires, floods,
| large hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, volcanoes. The best
| and only thing we can do in those situations is hope we have
| enough warning to get out of the way or find someplace to hide.
| tlogan wrote:
| I believe this assessment is intellectually dishonest.
|
| A couple of days before the fires started, I received a major
| red alert on my phone (I was in Los Angeles just prior to the
| fires - Recognizing the danger, I decided to leave).
|
| I expected to see a large-scale response--fire trucks
| stationed everywhere, extra firefighters on standby, planes
| ready to deploy, and vegetation being watered--but none of
| that appeared to happen.
|
| This isn't about partisanship. One of the core
| responsibilities of our elected officials is to effectively
| manage situations like this. Until we address the root causes
| (like global warming), these events will continue to occur,
| and we need better preparedness in the meantime.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Fire departments do not have the equipment nor the
| personnel to handle "the entire city is on fire" events.
| That would require one or two fire trucks with crew for
| each house in the city. Even if you could do that, you
| would quickly deplete the available water supply. It's just
| not possible.
|
| Could more have been done to make a fire of this size less
| likely? Perhaps. But once it starts, and reaches a certain
| size, with winds as they were and combustible material in
| its path, all you can do is get out.
| lazide wrote:
| Every city in the state has mutual aid available.
| tlogan wrote:
| > Fire departments do not have the equipment > nor the
| personnel to handle "the entire city is on fire" events.
|
| True, but in fire-prone areas--such as those so high-risk
| that insurers refuse coverage--we might need to consider
| a different approach. Whether it's specialized equipment,
| additional staffing, or other protective measures, some
| system should be in place specifically for those
| regions..
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > as those so high-risk that insurers refuse coverage
|
| Maybe in those areas the policy should be "you're on your
| own."
| takeda wrote:
| They did prepare though, 3 days before they got units from
| north California. If nothing would happen they would be
| attacked for risking safety of
|
| BTW: which locations in the whole Los Angeles (you know how
| big it is? actually there's no guarantee the fire works be
| in LA) you should get fire trucks stationed?
|
| There wasn't any rain registered since April, there were
| unprecedented (last time we had such big ones was 15 years
| ago) dry, 100mph winds. This means using air support was
| also not feasible at the time.
|
| We mostly talk about Palisades, but when watching WatchDuty
| app, fires were constantly popping up in random places.
|
| It was a nightmare, and it is frustrating to see
| politicizing the whole thing or criticizing that fire men
| did something wrong.
|
| Why those people aren't volunteering and helping?
|
| There are some things that is impossible to do with what we
| have.
|
| Much more effective would be for example having all
| building up to the latest fire code, but majority are of
| course old.
| tlogan wrote:
| > If nothing would happen they would be attacked for
| risking safety of
|
| You've pinpointed the core issue. Politicians have little
| incentive to invest in preventive measures because, as
| voters, we rarely reward that sort of long-term planning.
| And who's really at fault? We are. We don't demand enough
| accountability for prevention when we cast our votes.
|
| If they successfully prevent fires, nobody notices--and
| no political points are scored.
| danaris wrote:
| > This isn't about partisanship. One of the core
| responsibilities of our elected officials is to effectively
| manage situations like this.
|
| Unfortunately, this seems to be fast _becoming_ a partisan
| position.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Not necessarily. There are similar cases in other countries
| where the fire was well controlled. Might not be as similar
| as I thought, but I'm wondering if professionals can give an
| honest post mortem at least for this time.
| leptons wrote:
| >There are similar cases in other countries where the fire
| was well controlled.
|
| Did they also have unprecedented 100mph wind gusts, and
| strong winds blowing for days? It's impossible to fly fire
| mitigation aircraft in those conditions, and the terrain
| where the fire was spreading the most were rugged mountain
| areas, mostly not accessible to firefighters.
| throw0101a wrote:
| E.g.,
|
| > _"Without helicopters, this kind of a brush fire, we
| cannot stop it on the ground," said Margaret Stewart, an
| LAFD spokeswoman._
|
| > _Perhaps demonstrating what a difference aircraft can
| make, a fire that threatened the Hollywood Hills late
| Wednesday was quickly contained and limited to 43 acres.
| Calmer winds allowed aircraft to douse flames with water
| from nearby reservoirs._
|
| * https://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/weath
| er/20...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Water scooped from reservoirs is less effective than you
| might think. When it is dropped, a good amount of it
| evaporates before it ever hits the ground. Most effective
| would be air drops of fire retardant, but neither can be
| done in high wind conditions.
| RangerScience wrote:
| > similar cases
|
| Can you provide specific citations?
|
| And.. normally, I might ask that for argumentative reasons,
| but... sitting here, south of Pasadena, I really want
| things to look at to understand what this might do to the
| place I live.
|
| Right now it's my understanding that this is yet another
| once-in-a-lifetime disaster. I think our generation is
| at... five of these, at least?
| lokar wrote:
| We can't treat fire as an occasional emergency the fire
| department will take care of. Managing fire risk is something
| every town and home owner need to spend time on year round.
| ghaff wrote:
| Even if you don't really live in a wildfire area, there are
| things you can/should do. I get my fields cut back with a
| tractor once or twice a year and keep a lawn around the
| house. I also won't use firepits that have the potential to
| ignite the surroundings.
| lokar wrote:
| This is what everyone needs to be doing, and the fire dept.
| needs to enforce it.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > [...] _and the fire dept. needs to enforce it._
|
| And/or insurance companies.
| lokar wrote:
| This is actually where the action has been recently. Lots
| of people complain about aerial inspection by insurance
| followed by ultimatums to clear vegetation and junk.
|
| Look for people asking for regulations to prevent this
| any day now.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Look for people asking for regulations to prevent this
| any day now.
|
| I actually sort of empathize with a point of view that
| you pay your insurance every year, aren't doing anything
| especially unreasonable, and have to adhere to a somewhat
| arbitrary new standard at possibly very significant cost
| and time.
|
| To be clear, I get the other side too in wildfire-prone
| areas.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > [...] _and have to adhere to a somewhat arbitrary new
| standard at possibly very significant cost and time._
|
| Either you _adhere to standard_ and make the effort to
| comply, or you eat the cost of a _higher premium_ because
| your property has a higher risk.
|
| It's going to cost you either way.
|
| Or you can decide to try to go without insurance and you
| pay neither the costs of the premium nor adhering to the
| standard.
| lokar wrote:
| Fire protection is like vaccination. It protects you, but
| also people (homes) around you.
| ghaff wrote:
| These are fairly high cost areas (for the most part) so a
| lot of people will eat higher costs or get out. But, for
| many others, the answer is move to Nevada and CA housing
| prices increase overall, if you can't afford to live
| there, you should probably find somewhere cheaper.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Unless you live in the southwest, this isn't true at all.
| lokar wrote:
| Or the northwest?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Fire
|
| The world is changing
| ghaff wrote:
| Wildfires in _many_ areas of the West is not a
| particularly new thing.
|
| B&B Complex Fires in Oregon in 2003
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%26B_Complex_fires
|
| Yellowstone Fires in 1988
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_fires_of_1988
|
| And I'm sure I could find many other older examples.
| RangerScience wrote:
| LA homeowner here. My backyard is also an undeveloped (re:
| "natural" hillside).
|
| I'm responsible for clearing brush in that hillside, so that
| it's n-hundred feet from structures. It's checked in May, or
| thereabouts.
| lokar wrote:
| Interesting. City or county enforcement? From the news it
| seems like it was not well enforced in the burn area,
| perhaps it's more public land there?
| RangerScience wrote:
| I think city? Which for me is LA itself. Pacific
| Palisades and Altadena would be different cities, and
| yes, from the maps the burn areas are public land.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| The inconvenience was ignoring the experts advice.
|
| They might have said something along the lines of make sure you
| have water, the ability to use it (hello Maui), and people who
| know how to use it.
|
| Or maybe they thought that was needless to say and had more
| advanced advice like clearing dead brush, making fire breaks,
| etc.
|
| Or ... Well yeah. It would be nice to know what advice was
| ignored. I'm sure there was plenty in that category.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _A couple thousand words with no real insight or
| information._
|
| Because it's things we already _know_ about, but refuse to _do_
| anything about. For example:
|
| > _"The assumption is continually made that it's the big
| flames" that cause widespread community destruction, he said,
| "and yet the wildfire actually only initiates community
| ignitions largely with lofted burning embers."_
|
| We've known about embers for _decades_ , and why you need to
| clear the area around your home of ignition sources:
|
| * https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-
| research/wildfire/prepari...
|
| Here's a potato-quality video posted thirteen years ago on
| landscaping best practices:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NVe0gu69FY
|
| A news story from twelve years ago about a home that survivied
| (with a charred landscape around it):
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rgUp245nso
|
| Which is talked about in the article:
|
| > _This fundamental misunderstanding has likewise led to a
| misunderstanding of prevention. No longer is it a matter of
| preventing wildfires but instead preventing points of ignition
| within communities by employing "home-hardening" strategies --
| proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding -- and enjoining
| neighbors in collective efforts such as brush clearing._
|
| We may also have to accept that perhaps Mother Nature can still
| be more powerful than humans at times:
|
| > _The National Fire Prevention Assn., a national nonprofit
| that provides standards for fire suppression operations, calls
| for a minimum of three engines or 15 firefighters for a single-
| residence fire, a number that is impossible to attain when
| fighting a fire on the scale of the Palisades or Eaton fires._
|
| > _"We're not recognizing, analyzing, questioning how we're
| failing," Cohen said. "We just think we need more airplanes and
| more helicopters flying 24 hours a day."_
|
| > _More CL-415 super-scoopers or Firehawk helicopters will not
| help when water is being dropped into 60 mph wind gusts._
|
| See also "Why Los Angeles was unprepared for this fire":
|
| > _Water runs short: [...] "There's no urban water system
| engineered and constructed to combat wildfire," said Michael
| McNutt, a spokesman for the Las Virgenes Municipal Water
| District, which serves 75,000 people in northwest Los Angeles
| County. The system was intended to supply water to homes and
| businesses, he said, and to help fire crews defend a large
| structure or several homes, not multiple neighborhoods at
| once._ [...]
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42674591
| SteveVeilStream wrote:
| I think this gets at the heart of it. People assume that these
| fires are fought and prevented in the forest/hills by wildland
| fire fighters but the reality is that individual homeowners can
| do a lot by clearing brush, etc. (ahead of time,) from their
| own yards. It's an inconvenient truth because it shifts the
| responsibility to individuals.
|
| ""...Ignitions downwind and across streets are typically from
| showers of burning embers from burning structures." This
| fundamental misunderstanding has likewise led to a
| misunderstanding of prevention. No longer is it a matter of
| preventing wildfires but instead preventing points of ignition
| within communities by employing "home-hardening" strategies --
| proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding -- and enjoining
| neighbors in collective efforts such as brush clearing."
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > "The assumption is continually made that it's the big flames"
| that cause widespread community destruction, he said, "and yet
| the wildfire actually only initiates community ignitions largely
| with lofted burning embers."
|
| I think this is well-known and not at all some sort of secret
| inconvenient truth. After any disastrous event, there will always
| be people coming out of the woodwork saying "you should have
| listened to me."
|
| Pretty unimpressed by this article, frankly.
| lokar wrote:
| Well known by people who pay attention, yet ignored by people
| who make policy at the local level.
|
| Look at the before pictures in LA. Homes with flammable
| exteriors and dense plantings.
|
| Look at Laguna beach to the south. About half the town burned
| in the 90s. Strict building codes and regular inspections. It's
| expensive and annoying to homeowners, but it works.
| morkalork wrote:
| "What Saved The 'Miracle House' In Lahaina?"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37192915
|
| Iirc, one of items listed was rocks/gravel surrounding the
| house on the ground so any embers that landed beside the
| building had nothing to feed on ignite.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Don't even have to go back in time in another state, but
| even right now in California, "Owner of 'miracle' Malibu
| mansion reveals why he thinks house survived raging fire":
|
| > _"It's stucco and stone with a fireproof roof,'' he said,
| adding that it also includes pilings "like 50 feet into the
| bedrock'' to keep it steady when powerful waves crash into
| the seawall below it._
|
| * https://nypost.com/2025/01/10/us-news/owner-of-miracle-
| malib...
|
| And you don't need to have a building made out of concrete
| either, as long as the shell and the surrounding area is
| not flammable:
|
| * https://www.builderonline.com/building/safety-
| healthfulness/...
|
| * https://www.nfpa.org/en/education-and-
| research/wildfire/prep...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| What we see is the outcome of a political process, but
| doesn't mean policymakers are unaware.
|
| All it really means is that when it comes to a battle between
| fire prevention people and people who like their gardens, in
| the absence of a fire, the people worried about fire are
| going to look like scolds and the people who want the
| individual freedom to have a garden are going to win the
| political fight. More of a collective outcome of our society
| than oversight by policymakers.
|
| Good luck trying to ban gardens in the Oakland hills, people
| just won't do it even if policymakers want it. Probably the
| best way to do it would be to deregulate insurance and give
| them discretion - "oh you want to have a garden in a fire
| prone area, sure - that will just be 3x your original bill"
| lokar wrote:
| Do you mean garden in the American sense or the British
| sense? Tomato plants are not a problem.
|
| Trees and dense shrubs near the house are.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i'm referring to the generally dense areas of green and
| trees that are common on the west coast ie like what you
| see here
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/hWghBErtRoHU8CTm9
| lokar wrote:
| Yeah, that's just not safe in places that can go 9+
| months without rain and get 50+mph dry winds most years.
| RangerScience wrote:
| AFAIK, just the shrubs. Particularly, California native
| trees are fine for and in fires. And if you look at the
| pictures, the houses have burned but the trees haven't.
| throw0101a wrote:
| >[...] _the houses have burned but the trees haven't._
|
| Which of course has fuelled conspiracy theories:
|
| * https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/los-angeles-wildfire-
| trees-1.7...
|
| TL; DR: dry bushes burn, trees with moisture in them do
| not.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Well known by people who pay attention, yet ignored by
| people who make policy at the local level._
|
| It is not ignored by local policy folks:
|
| > _Molly Mowery, an author of a 2020 report for Los Angeles
| County on how to reduce wildfire risk, said that the county
| now takes wildfire into account when reviewing new housing
| development plans. The problem, she said, is that nearly 90
| percent of the county's housing stock was built before 1990,
| before many subdivision or building code requirements for
| wildfire hazards took effect. Once fire enters these
| communities, the homes are the fuel._
|
| * https://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2
| 0...
|
| But to a certain extent government can only do what the
| citizens want to be done:
|
| > _Nic Arnzen, a town council member in Altadena, where
| thousands of homes, businesses, restaurants and parks were
| lost in the Eaton Fire, said the unincorporated community in
| Los Angeles County was trying to address fire risks. Less
| than a month ago, the town council chair wrote a letter to
| Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, recommending
| she adopt a controversial land-use plan that would direct
| development away from the Altadena foothills "and other high
| fire hazard zones."_
|
| > _It had been a subject of debate for months. Residents
| concerned about the community's vulnerability to an inferno
| roaring off the slope of the San Gabriel Mountains favored
| the plan. But others didn't want to lose the ability to
| develop their properties in the hills._ [...]
|
| * Ibid.
| lokar wrote:
| They could, but don't, enforce vegetation clearance around
| homes, even 100 year old homes.
|
| But you are correct, politicians can only "lead" a much as
| voters allow.
| rurban wrote:
| The problem of non-compliant old buildings eventually
| solves itself, as seen here. All new buildings must comply
| with current building codes.
|
| Same thing as in all European cities in the middle ages,
| where building codes eventually enforced itself.
| jonah wrote:
| Yeah. About these fires, someone recently told me they should
| have cut a dozer line around the fire right away and that would
| have taken care of it.
|
| I replied: sure, but it would have to have been at least 10
| miles wide to protect from the 100mph-wind carried embers...
| red_admiral wrote:
| > It may be the fire equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane
|
| When I saw the pictures of the completely burnt out districts,
| the first thing I thought of was Hiroshima. At least we got most
| of the people out first this time, though.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Much/most of the damage at Hiroshima was the resulting fires,
| not the explosion, so it's very similar!
| spike021 wrote:
| As someone who's spent their entire life in california near
| these types of fires and someone who recently visited the
| Hiroshima memorial museum, this take is pretty disingenuous.
| macintux wrote:
| As someone who's not participating in the discussion, can you
| elaborate? "No it isn't" is an unhelpful response without any
| explanation whatsoever.
| 23B1 wrote:
| It's inconvenient to the policy 'makers' who are more interested
| in their aspirations than their duty.
|
| It's common sense to everyone else.
| thenaturalist wrote:
| Cheap talk and extremely boring overgeneralization.
|
| As everyone else clearly has built their houses in a fireproof
| manner, activated personal fire prevention tactics like
| watering their surroundings and, as the article stated, tried
| to decrease community hotspots succeptible to being ignited by
| ember, what do we even need these experts for, am I right?
|
| I mean, clearly it's common sense, right?
| 23B1 wrote:
| Yes, it is common sense.
| thenaturalist wrote:
| The fact that thousands of homes are burnt to ashes very
| simply and clearly shows that is not the case.
| akamaka wrote:
| I found a much better article (5 page PDF) from the fire
| prevention expert quoted in this article, which details his
| method of prioritizing building fire-safe homes and dispels
| misconceptions of how wildfire spreads to homes:
|
| https://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/woods/117_121.pdf
| dumbmrblah wrote:
| Thank you, the original article had very little actual
| practical information, or substance at all.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| The 2020 Australia Royal Commission on bushfire prevention is a
| good resource, too.
|
| There are tons of things that could be done. Virtually none are
| being done nowadays, much less retrofitted to existing
| structures.
|
| Bushfire prevention via design is essentially in its infancy,
| much like earthquake safe designs took decades to become
| widespread in California after the 1933 quake. It wasn't like
| structures built in the 40s had "learned the lessons" and were
| earthquake proof. It has taken the better part of a century to
| get there.
| contingencies wrote:
| https://www.royalcommission.gov.au/system/files/2020-12/Roya.
| ..
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| A professor of atmospheric science from the university of
| Washington has a couple posts he wrote about how the fires
| started and it seems like it was probably electrical, and could
| have been avoided (by turning off the grid in the area) given the
| very clear forecasts for extreme wind.
|
| https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2025/01/did-la-fire-disaster-...
|
| https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2025/01/where-and-how-did-pal...
|
| The other inconvenient truth is that the lack of good water
| management, prescribed burns, and forest management has been
| problematic across the country. Climate change isn't the cause,
| even though attribution teams desperately try to make it that -
| it just makes things worse. But forests have dry fuel that will
| light up at some point and that's regardless of climate change.
| There's inadequate proactive planning for this.
| cjcenizal wrote:
| "Climate change isn't the cause."
|
| The region experienced back to back years of high rainfall,
| spurring brush growth.
|
| This year the region experienced severe drought, converting all
| of that growth into fuel.
|
| Last week the region experienced 100 mph winds, which converted
| spot fires into fast-spreading conflagrations that _could not
| be fought._
|
| This pattern of instability is an outcome of climate change.
|
| So yeah, it was caused by climate change.
| RhysU wrote:
| Which of those named weather events was outside of historical
| experience in the area?
|
| From the outside, wet years and dry years and desert winds
| seem very much like the expected climate for SoCal.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Which of those named weather events was outside of
| historical experience in the area?_
|
| Over the last few decades averages for events have changed,
| and not for the better:
|
| > _It was found that nearly all the observed increase in
| burned areas over the past half-century is due to human-
| caused climate change. It is estimated that from 1971 to
| 2021, human-caused climate change contributed to a +172%
| increase in burned areas, with a +320% increase from 1996
| to 2021. In the coming decades, a further increase in
| annual forest burned areas is expected, ranging from 3% to
| 52%._
|
| * https://www.drought.gov/news/study-finds-climate-change-
| blam...
| RhysU wrote:
| Source paper is
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2213815120.
|
| The paper, which looks quite good, amounts to (stationary
| baseline + climate drift) explaining burning more than
| (stationary baseline) alone.
|
| From the paper...
|
| > Their respective uncertainty bands overlap for most of
| the time periods considered; however, starting in 2018,
| there is a complete separation between CMIP6-ALL and
| CMIP6-NAT scaling factor distributions suggesting a
| complete dominance of anthropogenic over natural forcing.
|
| ...or incorrect models or uncertainty bands. The paper
| looks good but like it presumed to find the desired
| results from the research outset.
|
| Beware anything done with simulations that provides 3
| significant digits (172% increase!). I don't doubt the
| influence of climate but I do doubt the certainty of
| these authors.
|
| Going back to the GP, I still want to know how wet years,
| dry years, and winds are outside of reasonable
| expectations in SoCal. These are part of the (stationary
| baseline) the paper should include. From a quick pass on
| the paper, it's not clear to me that the paper captures
| hysteresis due to intermittent wet/dry periods. Or that
| they considered any additive non-stationarity, in
| (stationary baseline + climate drift), they wouldn't deem
| anthropogenic.
|
| Not denying here. Just enjoying throwing rocks at a paper
| adjacent to a past life. I have published on uncertainty
| quantification for computational fluid dynamics that
| employed explicit slow/fast timescale decompositions.
| remarkEon wrote:
| The revealed preferences of political leaders is that they
| don't believe Climate Change is the "cause", either. If they
| did, they would've planned for this instability and increased
| funding for all of the preventative actions mentioned in this
| thread and the various links therein.
|
| Or do people still think that banning plastic bags and carbon
| taxes stop wild fires.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| bad forest management is a much more proximate cause than
| climate change, absolutely - not sure why it has become
| verboten to say.
|
| climate change makes a difference at the margin but the sheer
| number of recent events has a lot more to do with how we manage
| our forests/urban upscaling.
| freddie_mercury wrote:
| It's not verboten in a single place. I've seen it mentioned
| literally hundreds of times the last few days.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| sure it's not verboten in the RW media landscape, but in
| blue circles you're basically called a trumpista for saying
| that forest & underbrush management is a larger proximate
| cause [0][1][2]
|
| [0]: https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fast-moving-
| wildfires-... [1]: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/
| 12/2296400/-Critics-... [2]:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/09/los-
| angel...
| zzgo wrote:
| > not sure why it has become verboten to say
|
| It's not. In California, we've been discussing forest
| management for at least 25 years since a series of wildfires
| broke out. There have been plenty of discussions about how we
| should be managing forests, trying to build consensus around
| best practices, and building the political will to implement
| them. It's been a maddeningly slow process.
|
| If anyone is coming into the conversation out here saying,
| "California has bad forest management, they need to rake the
| forest floors" or whatever, it shows that they're entering
| the conversation with at best a 1990s mindset of what modern
| forest management is like. Yeah, we know, that alarm has been
| clanging for 25+ years. Come at us with solutions, not
| problems, we know the problems.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Bad forest management or ... bad electrical equipment ?
|
| This excerpt of the last week tonight show 90 year old
| electric line equipment responsible for fires :
| https://youtu.be/qBpiXcyB7wU?feature=shared&t=515
|
| I don't pretend to know anything and I don't know how common
| this is but it is pretty concerning and I wonder if anything
| has been done about that.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| pg&e at least is investing very heavily in undergrounding i
| believe but it is still slow going and expensive like many
| megaprojects in cali
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| It's verboten because it undercuts the (hasty and unrigorous)
| attribution to climate change or fossil fuels or whatever.
| I'm not ignoring those causes but I think they are
| incorrectly attributed aa an sole cause and there is so much
| that could be done to prevent these fires regardless. It
| seems like we are reluctant to blame governments and
| politicians that are not performing their most basic duties.
|
| Forest service people have tried educating the public about
| how new forests have a different set of issues - high
| density, uncleared dead wood, pests spreading easily, and all
| that. But no one amplifies those points because it is
| politically inconvenient. It's also incredible how little
| money is spent on access roads, fire breaks, properly located
| reservoirs, firefighting aircraft, power line management, and
| so forth given how large state and federal budgets are.
| areoform wrote:
| > Climate change isn't the cause, even though attribution teams
| desperately try to make it that - it just makes things worse.
| But forests have dry fuel that will light up at some point and
| that's regardless of climate change. There's inadequate
| proactive planning for this.
|
| I think it is worth pushing back on this, because while yes, in
| the absolute sense, no single incident can be traced back to
| the broader pattern; the inconvenient truth remains.
|
| Our addition of the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is the
| long lever that can move the world. Between 1970 and 2020,
| 381+-61 Zetta Joules (10^21 joules) of _additional_ energy was
| absorbed into the system (i.e. the Earth).
|
| This estimate was prepared using satellite data, which is
| public source,
| https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1675/2023/
|
| How much energy is this? It's roughly 80% of the estimated
| energy of the Chicxulub impactor. Albeit spread over a
| significantly longer period of time.
|
| The strongest explosion humanity has ever created is in the
| order of 10^17 joules, or a hundred Quadrillion Joules.
|
| We've managed to add 1.5 million times that number in this 50
| years. We've been essentially adding one tsar bomba's worth of
| energy every fifteen to twenty minutes for the past five
| decades.
|
| Based on my reading so far, we don't actually know what all of
| this additional energy is doing to the system. One theory based
| on satellite data has been that 'wet-gets-wetter, dry-gets-
| drier' -- and some satellite data and simulations bear this
| out. See, this intensity analysis of NASA/German GRACE and
| GRACE-FO satellite data,
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsbgZ9om0t8.
|
| Now others disagree, because it's a complicated system and we
| don't know what this energy is doing... And so the debate rages
| back and forth.
|
| But here's the inconvenient truth. While we may not know
| exactly what all of this additional energy is doing to the
| system, we do know that it isn't going to do nothing.
|
| It is the inescapable truth that we're in the middle of a
| statistically anomalous period of extreme weather events. Was
| each and every one of these directly caused due to global
| warming? No, of course not. But that doesn't mean that the
| additional energy we've added to the system didn't change the
| dynamics of the system in such a way that made this outcome
| more likely.
|
| Or, more simply, we've biased the dice and - as they keep
| getting rolled - we keep getting these "surprises."
|
| I am young enough that in my lifetime, the Earth will look
| dramatically different than the one I was born into.
|
| So yes, you're strictly right. But no, I think it's worth
| examining the statement further and pointing out that yes, this
| is just the sign of what's to come.
| ajkjk wrote:
| It really means nothing to talk about how much additional
| energy was added in terms of Tsar Bombas unless you're also
| going to tell me the sun's steady-state energy in the same
| units. Just sounds like you're trying to make it sound
| dramatic and scary.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I wonder what caused the fire to burn more heavily before anyone
| took action? The first few hours are usually very important. It's
| very difficult to control once it goes off totally.
|
| Similar fire in Chongqing, China back in 2022. The fire was
| pretty close to the city. The total acre burnt was less than 1000
| acres in total.
|
| https://www.lifeweek.com.cn/article/174896?from=information
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Firefighters can't work well in very high winds, they probably
| didn't try until the winds died down.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _I wonder what caused the fire to burn more heavily before
| anyone took action?_
|
| High winds don't help:
|
| > _"I'll be clear: We could have had much more water. With
| those wind gusts, we were not stopping that fire," Pasadena
| Fire Chief Chad Augustin said._
|
| > _When winds are as strong as they were Tuesday and Wednesday
| -- reaching 100 mph on mountaintops and surpassing 60 mph along
| the coast -- firefighters are severely limited in their
| tactics, experts said. They make it too dangerous and all but
| impossible to establish any fire perimeter. They blow flames as
| tall as 200 feet horizontally and send balls of red-hot embers
| flying at speeds that can carry them a mile or two away, where
| they start what are known as spot fires._
|
| [...]
|
| > _The lack of firefighting by air was a critical deficiency
| that persisted from Tuesday night through early Wednesday, fire
| officials said, and one that has allowed other devastating
| Southern California fires to spread in the past, including the
| Woolsey Fire, which burned across a footprint just to the west
| of the Palisades Fire in 2018._
|
| > _"Without helicopters, this kind of a brush fire, we cannot
| stop it on the ground," said Margaret Stewart, an LAFD
| spokeswoman._
|
| *
| https://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/20...
| Axsuul wrote:
| The fire quickly grew into a firestorm due to the 50 mph+
| winds. Southern California is known for this phenomenon of dry
| winds that blow from the desert called the Santa Anas. They
| only affect certain areas, so the perfect combination of the
| winds + being in a fire prone area + having record rainfall the
| year before + being in a drought caused the fire to burn crazy
| fast with access to lots of brush (fuel).
|
| If you don't stop it within the first 5 min, it quickly gets
| out of control. There's so much stuff to burn.
| kshacker wrote:
| If true, isn't this setup to fail? In cloud infrastructure,
| we build redundancy because humans can't really solve such
| problems in 5 minutes. And here in real world, that's our
| margin? Not talking about uprooting established habitats, but
| it appears that such risk should not be allowed.
| Axsuul wrote:
| Redundancy only develops after failures. Only after that
| 5th PagerDuty alert do we start to add more of it.
|
| The fires in LA were a failure and more redundancy will
| soon follow like improved building codes, better forest
| management, etc.
| leptons wrote:
| There wasn't mention about extreme wind in the link you
| provided, all it called out is "southerly winds". The _very
| high winds (100mph gusts)_ in Los Angeles prevented fire
| mitigation aircraft from flying, and spread the fires far and
| wide very quickly - and the area where the fires started was
| inaccessible to firefighters, so the fire had very little push-
| back for the first night so it grew uncontrollably. The
| circumstances are very different from what happened in the link
| you provided.
|
| Fire crews were ready to fight fires in Los Angeles, and quite
| a lot of fire crews from outside the area were brought in
| before the fires even started - they knew how dangerous the
| situation was, and they were trying to do what they could by
| staffing up. Once the winds died down, fire-fighting aircraft
| could fly and started containing the fires on the mountains,
| but much of the residential areas had already been lost, there
| was just too much fire and too few resources to keep it under
| control.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| Assuming you could get to the fire in the first place.
|
| The winds prevented the use of aircraft, either for direct
| attack or to insert handcrews.
|
| That means firefighters need to drive/hike in, which can take
| hours. By that point, it's grown to the point where the wind is
| blowing embers over your head and causing spotfires miles away.
|
| With the winds again, your containment options are limited.
| It's already too large for a direct attack. It'll jump your
| mineral earth containment lines, and you can't light a
| backburn.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Building codes failed to address the requirements of specific
| environments, and infrastructure was laid out without attending
| to potential hazard.
|
| Well, yeah. Americans tend to laugh at European construction
| codes, label us with words suggesting we live in a
| dictatorship... but with every report I see from the newest
| natural disaster in the US, be it fires, floods or hurricanes,
| I'm happy that building codes are very very strict here.
|
| > For example, municipal and fire prevention agencies must give
| property owners advance -- and continual -- warnings to clear
| dead vegetation and to wet dry brush within 10 feet of the house
| with periodic, prolonged sprinklings.
|
| Try that with your average American and the poor sod tasked with
| doing that will be at best yelled at with "leave my property",
| and that's assuming they can inspect the property to begin with.
| egorfine wrote:
| Taxing people and protecting everyone from fires by imposing
| regulations is of course socialism. /s
| whimsicalism wrote:
| NA has far more natural disaster exposure than europe does,
| especially when people just like to subset to the richest
| western european states as 'europe'.
|
| i seem to recall quite a few buildings collapsing in Turkey and
| in Greece in the last quarter century after earthquakes
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > NA has far more natural disaster exposure than europe does
|
| Agreed, but that's even more of a sign for "the US should be
| _even more_ proactive in regulations and enforcement than
| Europe, not the other way around!
|
| In any case we do have areas that are prone to wildfire,
| especially the Balkans, Greece and Turkey get hit regularly
| and hard. But the human toll is always very low even if the
| fires rage, because our buildings don't consist out of the
| cheapest sort of wood and cardboard and there is ample
| distance between homes and forests.
|
| > i seem to recall quite a few buildings collapsing in Turkey
| and in Greece in the last quarter century after earthquakes
|
| Yup, and in almost all cases it turns out that either the
| owners intentionally circumvented the code or construction
| was shoddy because someone diverted money and substituted
| cheaper but unallowed materials.
|
| Our greatest issue tends to be floods like in the Ahrtal or
| the beginning of Spain, because our building and zoning codes
| haven't caught up with climate change. Unfortunately, what I
| call "Americanism" (or y'all "American Exceptionalism") seems
| to have seeped into our culture as well - the attitude that
| humans are superior to nature's forces and can bend them to
| their will, and so I'm afraid history is doomed to repeat
| itself.
| sulam wrote:
| Maybe not average, but in Oakland after the '91 fire we now
| have yearly inspections, including overflying drones and
| helicopters as well as foot inspections of our properties. They
| alert us if we have any problematic vegetation, most especially
| accumulated dead brush or trees that need to be trimmed to keep
| them out of power lines. We have to address them or we will be
| fined. I'm not sure beyond that what happens, I haven't gotten
| one of the fines, we keep our greenery pretty controlled, as do
| our neighbors. Maybe it's because you can still regularly meet
| people who lived through that fire, but no one is crying
| "'Murica!" when the firemen come by here.
|
| The other thing that is subtle and maybe not obvious about
| American culture -- firemen generally are not lumped in with
| the rest of the government. Police are looked at with extreme
| suspicion very frequently, but firemen are just generally
| liked. Yes there are people who don't want anyone on their
| property that they didn't invite, and in some states those
| people have the law behind them (I grew up in Texas), but
| firemen coming by to let you know that your property has too
| many trees near the home are probably the least likely to be
| shouted off. There is one group, though, that doesn't want to
| hear the message - the wealthy. Often they have an image in
| their head of how they want their house to look and what kind
| of landscaping they want, never mind what best practice is.
| They will listen politely and then completely ignore the advice
| they get because it would keep them from having the picture
| perfect English cottage look, or maybe they'd have to see their
| neighbors in their winter ski chalet, or whatever it is that's
| in their head. When the Tahoe area has a fire like this, it
| will be because of these attitudes, 100%.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Ok I get all of these, but, {checking calendar}, it is freaking
| January! Not Summer.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The Santa Ana winds that spread the fire are an all-year thing,
| concentrated in autumn and winter.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I thought the appeal of California was that it didn't have
| intense winters or summers, but was pleasantly warm year-round?
|
| LA is at the same latitude as North Texas, and Texas isn't
| exactly known for snow. Where I live in the Midwest we're
| guaranteed at least one good snow every winter, and it's been
| around freezing temperatures for weeks.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| So many tall telephone and power poles with wires everywhere in
| LA, but rarely mentioned. Can't survive really high winds.
|
| It's not clear why they're not buried other than cost. A few bent
| poles must now be replaced in our neighborhood at great expense.
|
| Looks like they'd be cheaper buried in the long run.
| Axsuul wrote:
| It is mainly cost - like 6x more. Utilities like LADWP
| eventually want to underground everything but the time scale of
| such a project is probably eons.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| cost and regulators generally have been unwilling to approve
| the rate increases necessary for resilience
|
| plus we make our utilities pay prevailing wage
| RangerScience wrote:
| Yeah because _those_ are where the money's going.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=pg%26e+profits
| whimsicalism wrote:
| 1. a 10% profit margin this year - they are not even
| profitable over the last 10 years and barely profitable
| over the last 25.
|
| 2. yea, prevailing wage requirements are definitely
| relevant to the marginal cost of a labor intensive
| undergrounding project
|
| 3. why is pg&e the topic of discussion here?
| RangerScience wrote:
| The last batch of fires were, AFAIK, caused by under-
| maintained PG&E infrastructure. I would _not_ be
| surprised if it turns out these were, too.
| rented_mule wrote:
| LADWP (Los Angeles Department of Water and Power) and SCE
| (Southern California Edison) provide almost all
| electricity near these fires.
|
| PG&E does not operate in the Los Angeles area: https://ww
| w.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_MAPS_...
| verteu wrote:
| GP is referring to these fires: https://apnews.com/articl
| e/af0ec776efd4b3049f7800ff981bff88
|
| > Pacific Gas & Electric's outdated equipment ignited
| wildfires in California that killed more than 100 people,
| wiped out entire towns and led the company to confess to
| crimes driven by its greed and neglect.
|
| > The decision by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali
| clears the way for PG&E to pay $25.5 billion for losses
| from devastating fires in 2017 and 2018.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Ah! You're correct, thank you for the correction. I've
| been LADWP for so long I forgot the rest of the area was
| SCE.
|
| I have a friend who does power pole inspection, and boy,
| the stories. Infra is crumbling.
| RangerScience wrote:
| AFAIK most of the fires in recent years have been started by
| PG&E power lines.
| nothrowaways wrote:
| What are the odds of the fire expanding to the rest of the world
| making a full circle?
| gruez wrote:
| Given there are continents acting as fire breaks, pretty close
| to zero.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Don't you mean oceans acting as fire breaks?
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/ienhO
| antoniuschan99 wrote:
| I think the Santa Ynez reservoir being empty is probably the
| issue how the Pallisades fires got out of control
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