[HN Gopher] The Case for Letting Malibu Burn (1995)
___________________________________________________________________
The Case for Letting Malibu Burn (1995)
Author : pseudolus
Score : 117 points
Date : 2025-01-12 17:47 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (longreads.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (longreads.com)
| czhu12 wrote:
| It certainly feels like the need for climate change adaptation
| that's been foretold for years is starting to happen. There's
| quite a bit of blame being thrown around regarding details like
| how much water was in the reservoir and the DEI stance of the
| fire chief, but does any of that really provide a sustainable
| solution?
|
| Maybe it's time to confront the fact that people can't continue
| to live in those areas without substantial changes in the build
| environment.
|
| The tragic reality of climate change is that despite well
| informed and well meaning people, no one actually wants to
| meaningfully change their own lifestyle to adjust to the
| consequences. Clear cutting trees for instance, can be a
| preventative measure, but I'm sure home owners in the area would
| protest the environmental impact, the loss of privacy, the change
| in their lifestyle.
|
| California has always been a state that, on paper, acknowledges
| the severity of climate change, but thus far, has been fighting
| tooth and nail to keep homes in wildfire prone areas. What I
| worry about is that California chooses to create a public option
| for homeowners insurance that is tax payer funded to subsidize at
| risk homes, increasing costs for everyone else. To me this would
| just be another form of climate change denial.
| fliglr wrote:
| Zoom out:
|
| >But in gauging the longer-term trend of what's really
| happening with the fires, it's necessary to go back much
| further. Data derived from written records from Cal Fire and
| the U.S. Forest Service dating back to 1919 show that
| wildfires, far from increasing, have actually declined over the
| last 100 years. And in fact the website of the National
| Interagency Fire Center previously noted that fires were at
| their very worst a century ago. (See data, research, and
| methodology for this article.)
|
| >The data on the overall, century-long trend suggest that most
| of the 20th century represented an unusually low amount of
| fire, and what we're seeing now is a return to the "normal"
| levels of fire of the early 1900s.
|
| https://future.com/why-california-burns-the-facts-behind-the...
| Amezarak wrote:
| Thanks for that link. The data also shows that, over a longer
| (millennia) timescale, California is currently in a _wet_
| period.
|
| Context is very important. Climate change is a critical
| issue, but solving it doesn't help California stop burning.
| scarab92 wrote:
| Climate change is real, but people are vastly overstating the
| magnitude of its effect.
|
| This is simply a fire prone region, and this was inevitably
| going to occur at some point, with or without climate change.
|
| The government should have been more prepared for that.
| 01100011 wrote:
| This. Fire is an integral part of CA ecosystems and the
| native plant communities are dependent upon it. It does burn
| more frequently thanks to man, but citing climate change as a
| reason for the fires only makes you sound smart to the ill-
| informed.
| bsimpson wrote:
| I'm from a swing state, where you get used to smart people
| having conflicting opinions.
|
| The people I know who don't embrace climate fear, recycling,
| etc. always cite hypocrisy as their most salient motivation.
| They see people like Al Gore and Leo di Caprio talking a big
| game about a climate catastrophy and then using as much energy
| as a whole village. They see their friends nitpick composting
| and then buy single MPG trucks to go camping in. They see
| cities rolling out fines for recycling badly and then
| everything going into the same truck when the garbagemen come
| by.
|
| I don't think environmental activists realize the damage they
| do to their case by not living by what they preach relentlessly
| about. By being loudly critical of others without changing
| their own behavior, they give denialism space to entrench.
|
| "It can't be that bad if even the people who are mad don't seem
| to actually care."
| dullcrisp wrote:
| > I don't think environmental activists realize the damage
| they do to their case by not living by what they preach
| relentlessly about.
|
| The ones who do that probably don't care about their cause so
| much as having a cause.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Ah, the millennia old argument of "you cannot successfully
| proselytize donating money to the poor unless you live like a
| monk yourself".
| daveguy wrote:
| I am very in favor of climate change mitigations through
| careful legislation and believe we are doing nowhere near
| enough. But I think a closer analogy is "proselytizing
| donating money without donating any money yourself" or in
| the extreme of making the problem worse -- "proselytizing
| donating money while robbing from the poor." That
| proselytizing while making the problem worse is more a
| problem with the proselytizer than the critic. But the
| worst of all is making it worse and actively fighting
| against remediation.
| llm_trw wrote:
| More like the decades old argument that if you keep getting
| caught fucking men in toilet stalls being gay can't be all
| that bad.
| pempem wrote:
| Is...that a decades old argument? Or is the argument: If
| you're fucking men in toilet stalls, stop arresting other
| men for doing the same and claiming no one should do
| that. AKA the rule of law.
| eastbound wrote:
| I nitpick about little things like accuracy in scientific
| studies (hear: blatant bias, even admitted by the authors),
| and only one side of the opinion being funded for studies and
| not the others.
|
| I myself used to be a staunch vegan, surrounded by friends
| who planned not to have kids. Well, they have kids now. That
| triggered my will to study the original documents and find a
| movement that is fundamentally dishonest.
|
| The worst angst I have is, what if they were dishonest and
| still right. That would be terrible.
| virgildotcodes wrote:
| Eh, as someone who's been vegan for a couple decades, ascetic
| for a solid chunk of that time, and active in various other
| ways to greater or lesser degrees, people will still shut
| down mentally when they don't have the hypocrisy lever to
| pull.
|
| People in the reactionary/denialist/antagonistic camp will
| just end with "okay yeah you're right but I'm not changing/I
| don't actually care/I accept that I do evil and shrug".
|
| People looking to inspire positive change being required to
| be perfect saints lest they and their movements be condemned
| seems like a hint that human psychology is not tuned to rise
| to this occasion.
|
| That expectation of perfection is unrealistic. Humans are
| messy and bound to be hypocritical in countless ways.
|
| The CEO of Phillip Morris may volunteer at the local
| children's hospital and feed the homeless on weekends.
|
| Yet his hypocrisy in doing good in his personal life while
| doing so much harm in his professional life doesn't seem to
| interfere with his ability to do harm, in fact it likely
| helps.
|
| The executive director of the nonprofit children's hospital
| going out on weekends and beating stray dogs to death with a
| pipe, well his hypocrisy may very well end his ability to do
| good in his personal life.
|
| It seems like we're just destined to let people who do bad
| things without any pretense of doing good off the hook, while
| crucifying anyone who dares try to do a moral good who isn't
| somehow perfectly aligned in their lifestyle, ideology, and
| entire life history. Despite the fact that the former may
| represent a large net negative to our world and the latter
| may represent a net positive.
|
| TLDR: Even if the climate activists weren't hypocrites, your
| friends would likely be no closer to embracing the terrible
| reality of climate change and the necessity of painful
| sacrifice to address it.
| pm90 wrote:
| Perfectly put. Personally I am quite amazed at people who
| think this way. This is not adult level reasoning. It's not
| something that will change by setting an example.
|
| I just fear that large swathes of society are completely
| oblivious to what it means to live in a liberal civil
| society and how changes gets affected. The expectation of
| perfection seems like a result of being
| unfamiliar/unrealistic.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Historically, we do have examples of it working though :
|
| https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-rise-of-
| chr...
|
| https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-early-christian-
| strateg...
|
| Though in our case it's a much harder issue :
|
| How do you make and keep a powerful polity while staying
| militarily weak ? (Tanks / planes / nukes not being an
| option in a society that decided to de-industrialize.)
|
| This also involves population : a post-industrial society,
| is likely to have its military strength based on population
| (like pre-industrial societies did, where agriculturalists
| overwhelmed hunter-gatherers) : how do you keep your
| population low without becoming weak ?
|
| (Christian polities didn't exactly stay meek, more like the
| opposite (after a while)...)
|
| At least values can be transmitted memetically, without
| genetical lineage, so keeping a stable national population
| is probably the least unworkable issue as long as
| immigration and assimilation are high enough...
| pempem wrote:
| If the only people we can find who are 'mad' are al gore and
| leo dicaprio, I'd suggest we have a selection problem. There
| are plenty of monks, ascetics, lawyers, product managers,
| entrepreneurs, bankers and trad wives who care and are doing
| quite a lot more than the average person.
|
| Bad actors, uncommitted actors does not actually change the
| problem's existence. In an adjacent example consider here in
| LA. Before the fires, corruption in the homes for the
| homeless got some decent air. It does not actually change the
| need for homes for the homeless. Its been poorly implemented
| and allowed to be exploited. That doesn't mean the homeless
| should get shafted.
|
| Here the question is quite literally about humanity. If one
| cannot connect with that, maybe they can connect with the
| need for a stable population that creates new workers and
| funds said person's retirement.
|
| What is being preached about is that the way things are going
| will lead to larger, more unpredicted/out of cycle natural
| disasters. We are seeing that. Globally. We will all pay,
| whether its together and preventatively or independently one
| by one. History shows we do better when we're together.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Support in CA for rebuilding is really county based. Butte
| County is fine with you making the same mistake over again.
|
| Sonomas cities are helpful by not rezoning to the fire codes
| they really should be. Napa is happy to let you keep a camper
| on your burned site for as long as it takes you to realize how
| you can't afford to rebuild to 7A code.
|
| Malibu was marked 7A years back and those folks can afford it.
| robomartin wrote:
| > The tragic reality of climate change
|
| Oh, please. I am so sick of this being shoved in front of
| people's faces as an indisputable cause for, well, everything.
| Might as well bring Odin and Zeus into it as causes...because
| they are just as valid.
|
| I have lived in the Los Angeles area for nearly 40 years. The
| Santa Ana winds happen every year, multiple times per year. It
| never fails. The winds are strong and mostly directionally
| constant. Some years are worse than others. Average speeds are
| not monotonically increasing.
|
| Guess what? Strong wind + a small fire + lots of fuel = massive
| fire.
|
| It's that simple.
|
| So please, pretty please, with sugar on top, stop with the
| nonsense. This was a case of bad governance, bad decision-
| making, misplaced priorities, complete lack of preparedness
| and, yes, some bad luck.
|
| Here's a simple example of that: Why is it that we have to rent
| firefighting aircraft from Canada every year? Seriously? I
| understand costs. Well, I look around Los Angeles today and it
| is easy to call that argument to be criminally demented. We
| should OWN a large fleet of these planes and have them ready to
| deploy en-masse as needed. Again, it isn't like these winds
| surprise us!
|
| Brush and vegetation (fuel) management are crucial. In our
| neighborhood, a few months ago, we received a notice from the
| fire department saying they were going to come around and
| inspect for overgrown vegetation. In this letter they said that
| the requirement was to not have trees or large bushes/plants
| within about 6 feet (~2 m) from the property line.
|
| NOBODY CAME!
|
| The inspections were not done at all, or, if they were
| conducted, they were done at an almost invisible scale. I have
| always been very responsible about this. I do not have large
| trees anywhere on my property. We live in a fire hazard zone
| with serious winds multiple times per year. My entire backyard
| is non flammable and my back fence is concrete block. My
| neighbors, on the other hand, they have massive highly
| flammable trees almost touching the fence we share and covering
| their entire property. Every other year massive branches break
| off due to strong winds. I have advised them that, if we ever
| have a fire, their trees are going to become massive ember
| manufacturing machines. They either don't understand, don't
| care or a combination of both. The point is: The fire
| department could have come around and enforced some kind of a
| reasonable safety standard. They have not. Ever.
|
| And so, if a massive fire takes out the entire neighborhood,
| this lack of bad governance is what is going to result in a
| high cost in property and lives.
|
| This isn't about climate change. That's ridiculous. This is
| about incompetence and misplaced priorities.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Ana_winds
| downrightmike wrote:
| I hope they only hook the taxpayers for the actual cost to
| rebuild and not the stupid crazy valuations that are not linked
| to any real costs.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Are you talking about houses? Wouldn't insurance cover those,
| not taxpayers?
| aaomidi wrote:
| Insurance in very high risk areas practically cannot exist
| without governmental subsidies.
| throwup238 wrote:
| There's going to be lots of cleanup that will be paid for by
| city and state governments because it's shared infrastructure
| and they don't want to leave cleanup of toxic materials to
| homeowners that might skimp on it so it washes into the sewer
| system next time it rains.
|
| It also depends on how many houses were insured by the state
| insurer CalFAIR. It's over half a century old and has never
| been bailed out (funded entirely by premiums) but this is the
| most destructive fire in Calfironia history so we'll see how
| well that holds up to this stress test.
| dkasper wrote:
| Calfair will certainly need to be bailed out. The plans has
| over 5B in exposure in palisades alone, and only a few
| hundred million in reserves.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (1995)
| bruce511 wrote:
| >> So why do people insist on rebuilding in the firebelt?
|
| Why do Floridians keep rebuilding in the wake of endless
| hurricanes? Why do folks live in Tornado Alley? Why do Dakotans
| endure one tragic winter after another? Why did New Orleans build
| back after yhe flooding?
|
| Man seeks to tame nature - to bend it to our will. Plus we'll
| take "build now, great views now" over "possible disaster later
| ".
|
| One could argue that nowhere is completely risk free, but it
| seems like the homing instinct (Plus the cultural instinct to
| build out of wood) is strong.
|
| It might be time to consider alternate building methods suitable
| for the risk of the area.
| derektank wrote:
| I would append to these explanations, "moral hazard". Many of
| the people rebuilding in these areas are being subsidized by
| the rest of us, particularly people with access to
| reimbursement from the national flood insurance program.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Sure, the point of insurance is that the many subsidize the
| few.
|
| But I expect there comes a point where insurance companies
| say "enough is enough".
|
| Perhaps federal and state money will start to pay out, but
| the land gets bought as well.
| baq wrote:
| Getting insurance is a making a bet bad stuff happens. The
| insurer makes a bet it doesn't happen when it signs an
| agreement with you. If the bet is obviously negative
| expected value, it stops being a useful subsidy and it
| becomes instead throwing good money away.
| WalterBright wrote:
| A rule of thumb is you'll pay twice in insurance premiums
| than you'll get in payouts. Insurance is only worth
| buying if you cannot afford the cost of the disaster.
|
| For example, I don't pay for collision protection on my
| car. I can afford losing the car. Over time I've saved
| far more in insurance premiums than the cost replacing
| the car.
|
| The same goes for insurance for appliances, etc.
| matwood wrote:
| Yep. One of the ways the rich get richer is when they can
| self-insure everything and invest what they would have
| normally paid in premiums.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That really isn't true. The rich buy insurance like
| anyone else, they are even more aggressive about
| insurance with things like umbrella policies to protect
| their wealth. They also hedge a lot, which is just
| insuring through investing.
| tptacek wrote:
| Another way the rich get richer is simply taking their
| money and investing it.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Can you afford to replace the other guy's car?
| jmb99 wrote:
| Collision insurance != liability insurance.
| tptacek wrote:
| Insurance has an obviously negative expected value for
| its customers.
| baq wrote:
| The magic trick is it protects you from ruin. EV is
| negative for this one bet but not for the whole budget.
| tptacek wrote:
| Right; there are all kinds of positive-EV bets you should
| never take. Heads you win $50,000,000; tails I get
| $500,000 and your house. Insurance isn't so much about
| expectation as it is about marginal utility.
| jalk wrote:
| The insurance companies did say "enough is enough", which
| is why the FAIR plans exist - i.e. https://www.cfpnet.com/
| tptacek wrote:
| That is not in fact the point of insurance.
| godtoldmetodoit wrote:
| Agreed on this point, I don't want to be subsidizing
| insurance or paying for multi millionaires homes to be
| rebuilt.
|
| I truly feel bad for the people who lost their homes, it's
| awful. But it shouldn't be the tax payer who picks up the
| tab. If insurance is so prohibitively expensive you can no
| longer afford to build there, then so be it - you can't
| afford to live there after all.
| metabagel wrote:
| This strikes me as not understanding the limits of private
| insurance. There wouldn't be earthquake insurance across
| much of California if the state didn't provide it. Private
| insurance isn't generally able to withstand large
| calamities which result in many thousands of high dollar
| claims in a short period of time.
| tptacek wrote:
| You can insure against a very expensive event that is
| very likely to happen; it's simply that the premiums for
| that insurance will be very, very high. If you're
| "insured" for a catastrophic event that is likely --- for
| instance, a home in Pacific Palisades of any sort --- and
| your premiums look reasonable and bearable, then the odds
| are you're not insured, you're subsidized.
| michaeljx wrote:
| Private insurance can and generally withstands large
| calamities (known as natcat losses) without government
| intervention via the utilisation of global reinsurance
| organizations. Especially for earthquake, a properly
| reinsured insurance can cover a large earthquake loss
| about once every 15-20years
| matwood wrote:
| > paying for multi millionaires homes
|
| Keep in mind that for many expensive homes, much of the
| expense is in the location, and not the home itself. It
| doesn't cost the market value of the house to rebuild it on
| the same spot. It's also not free, and in mass disasters it
| can be more because of shortages, but it's still less,
| often significantly so, than the market value.
| nroets wrote:
| The Gulf coast is thousands of miles and hurricanes only
| destroy a few dozen miles of it each year. So the risk
| management isn't illogical.
| bruce511 wrote:
| It seems like the destruction is not rotating through all
| miles equally though.
|
| It sure seems like the folks in Florida are rebuilding more
| often than most.
| jjallen wrote:
| Florida is many hundreds if not thousands of miles of
| coastline. The vast majority of it hasn't been impacted
| majorly (defined as more than a tropical storm and
| evacuation) in many decades.
|
| My family has been there since the 50s and has never had
| major damage to any home. There's some work and minor
| damage involved with tropical storms but nothing like a
| full on flood or total loss of house like these fires.
|
| It's just not true at all to say that most of Florida is
| regularly majorly impacted.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Exactly, and plenty of other Gulf states obviously are
| devastatingly impacted all the time, e.g Katrina, Harvey,
| etc. Not sure what the parent comment you are responding
| to is talking about.
| tptacek wrote:
| The devastation of a sparsely-inhabited patch of rural
| coastline isn't an economic or social problem, because
| ~nobody lives there. But pick any one of those patches
| and build a metropolis there, and you've recreated the
| problem we do care about. It's the concentration of risk
| that's the issue.
| cle wrote:
| I think framing people "staying put" in a solely negative light
| paints an incomplete picture. I'd bet that the biggest reason
| people stay put is not anti-social but pro-social--tight
| community, cultural, and family bonds.
| bruce511 wrote:
| No doubt. As I said, the homing instinct is strong. We build
| in risky areas because we've lived there all our lives.
|
| Perhaps we should build different though to mitigate risk.
| It's not hard to build a fire-proof house. Or one that's
| flood resistant. Or hurricane proof...
| baq wrote:
| Concrete is nice if you don't want the whole house to burn
| down, it's required in some places. Also, some minimum
| distance between buildings and regulations about what you
| can plant in the yard. There are folks who'll say it's
| taking away their freedoms and they're actually right, it's
| just we don't want to pay for an army firefighters for when
| their respecting their freedoms puts the neighborhood in
| danger. (I've got nothing against firefighters - but if
| they aren't needed as much, they can be not firefighters
| and contribute in a different way.)
| throwup238 wrote:
| That's definitely the case in Altadena which is a
| historically minority neighborhood. The cities south of
| Altadena like Pasadena and South Pasadena were redlined by
| real estate agents for decades after desegregation, which
| forced African Americans and Latinos to settle the foothills
| of the San Gabriel mountains at that wildland-urban boundary.
| Lots of people lost homes that have been in their families
| since the 60s and 70s.
|
| Who knows? If not for those policies, Pasadena could have
| been built denser and Altadena could have been miles of flat
| natural reserve that acts as a large firebreak where
| firefighters can easily fight the flames before they threaten
| thousands of structures, with frequent prescribed burns to
| keep the fuel load down.
|
| That's probably the real kind of conversation we should be
| having of municipalities easing housing restrictions to build
| denser and the state buying up large swathes of these
| wildland adjacent communities to create larger breaks between
| the hills and the houses.
| rexpop wrote:
| > Man seeks to tame nature [citation needed]
|
| This is a shockingly archaic outlook espoused by the outmoded
| likes of the 17th century's Francis Bacon who posited "Man, as
| the minister and interpreter of nature", asserting that "the
| secrets of nature betray themselves more readily when tormented
| by [science] than when left to their own course."
|
| To tame, conquer, and torment is an abhorrently perverse
| attitude to hold towards the cradle of our species. It's not
| the dominant philosophy of humankind, only the ideology of a
| backwards niche minority that's had some recent success--not
| unheard of in nature. ;)
|
| More common and contemporary perspectives are based in concepts
| of interconnectedness, innate affinity, and _stewardship_
| rather than _ministration_.
| bluGill wrote:
| Is there any place on earth where the weather isn't potentially
| dangerious at some time?
| IshKebab wrote:
| Very safe in most of Europe. In the UK the only weather that
| kills people is the cold (pensioners who can't afford
| heating; I wouldn't say it's exactly natural causes, but it's
| in the vicinity) and floods, which occasionally kill single
| digits of people.
|
| There are basically no earthquakes, tornadoes, tsunamis,
| wildfire, etc. I would imagine a lot of places are like that.
| adriand wrote:
| I live in southern Ontario which is mostly like this too.
| There is occasional flooding but minor compared to other
| places, and occasional major snowstorms, but the worst
| natural disaster I can recall in a half century here was an
| "ice storm" that caused damage that was quite frankly small
| potatoes compared to hurricanes and earthquakes.
|
| Living next to the Great Lakes also means that regardless
| of what happens with droughts, we have a supply of fresh
| water that is virtually limitless. I have to wonder whether
| the region will start to become more popular with climate
| refugees. Might Chicago become more of a destination, for
| example?
| nelox wrote:
| I've been to places in the Phillipines where everyone expects
| their house be destroyed and rebuilt, after typhoons, at
| least 20 times in their lifetimes.
|
| [edit: typos]
| mattlondon wrote:
| UK is pretty benign. We occasionally get some mild "extremes"
| (for us) that people are not prepared for, but nothing major.
| nprateem wrote:
| Let's hope it lasts:
| https://www.ft.com/content/7711109e-0338-43ad-
| aada-853f058a2...
| gboss wrote:
| Well given that intense heat wave that hit the UK a couple
| summers ago where the country went from green to brown from
| space, I'd worry about forest fires
| tptacek wrote:
| You mean like, Wisconsin?
| pm90 wrote:
| Yes there are many. One of the strategies for dealing with
| the upcoming climate catastrophe has to be to do a sober
| assessment of its impact and instrument societies to relocate
| quickly. There is simply no point in trying to rebuild in
| areas that will be constantly destroyed by natural disasters
| on a regular cadence.
| aworks wrote:
| https://firststreet.org/ will report climate risk, for a
| given address. I live in a part of the Bay Area with the
| following risk factor profile:
|
| 1/10 Flood. 1/10 Fire. 1/10 Wind. 7/10 Air. 3/10 Heat.
|
| Seems manageable. Of course, earthquakes are not climate-
| related.
| nprateem wrote:
| The odds of the UK experiencing 40degc heat in the next 50
| years were put at 0.02% a few years ago. It happened the
| following year.
|
| Those stats are meaningless. 1/10 just means unlikely but
| the dice could still land that way.
| marze wrote:
| One would certainly hope that reconstruction would involve
| houses with concrete exteriors, or masonry. It would be silly
| to build a bunch of wood houses. Especially for luxury homes, a
| concrete shell should only add 1% to the overall cost. And
| technology exists to build hurricane-proof houses.
|
| Shouldn't this be mandated, if a "natural disaster" destroys a
| home, to not replace it with a similarly vulnerable structure?
| giantg2 wrote:
| California has a more stringent wildlands fire building code.
| Not sure if they'd apply it to this area too. I've also heard
| that some insurances have declined fire coverage or charged
| very high premiums to homes not meeting their material
| requirements.
| em-bee wrote:
| i have been wondering about this. how well do concrete and
| other less flammable materials actually help in a fire storm
| like this? wouldn't much of the house still get damaged
| enough that you may well have to rebuild anyways? or is the
| difference enough to keep, say, 50% of the houses in a
| reusable state as opposed to losing all of them?
| mancerayder wrote:
| why is that 'instinct' to build out of wood? The instinct is to
| build wealth, and it's cheaper to build wood than brick.
|
| I find Western European construction standards to be higher
| than American. European homes feel like they're made out of
| brick and stone, seem better insulated, and American homes feel
| like they're wood-framed with giant modular pieces of wood (at
| least here in the northeast).
| nprateem wrote:
| The Great Fire of London put a stop to wooden houses in the
| UK. Maybe the same will happen in California now.
|
| But having seen the pictures from social media of the torrent
| of embers, maybe a few more homes might have survived but
| probably not many (unless they concreted their gardens too).
| adastra22 wrote:
| London doesn't have earthquakes. Masonry is a death trap.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> So instead of a long-overdue debate about the wisdom of
| rebuilding and the need to prevent further construction in areas
| of extreme natural fire danger, public attention was diverted
| into a discussion of the best methods for clearing vegetation
| (rototillers or goats?) and making homes fire-resistant._
|
| Does anyone honestly think that debate has any actual chance of
| hapenning, even now? Malibu and the Pacific Palisades are some of
| the best real estate in the state if not the country. There's
| always going to be someone willing to pay the rising cost of fire
| insurance and take the risk to live there. Short of the state
| buying out all the property owners or making that area
| uninsurable by CalFAIR, people are going to build. Not to mention
| the political connections they have.
|
| Altadena, on the other hand, was built where and how it was built
| because of segregationist redlining in Pasadena and South
| Pasadena. It's a historically minority neighborhood that was only
| built so densely with so little fire protection because they
| couldn't afford it and the state never gave them much help. It
| looks like once again our power companies are responsible for
| starting a destructive conflagration because they siphoned
| maintenance money to shareholders and executives (many of whom
| probably live in Malibu or the Palisades). Any state policy that
| tries to solve the Malibu/Palisades problem is going to
| disproportionately screw these low income communities that have
| built out around the edges. I'm betting that entire neighborhood
| will sell out to real estate developers building apartment
| complexes that can afford more expensive fire mitigations,
| destroying a historical community as much as any freeway and
| opening the door to tenement fires.
|
| This has all happened before and will happen again. I don't
| really see a holistic solution that has any chance of passing
| public scrutiny and working, other than chipping away at the
| insurance regulator and CalFAIR, which will screw over the most
| vulnerable and entrench the real estate NIMBYs.
| scarab92 wrote:
| California needs to get rid of its price controls on insurance,
| so that people building in high risk areas are exposed to the
| true costs of the risks they are taking, and have appropriate
| incentives to build to the conditions.
| dullcrisp wrote:
| How can there be price controls on insurance? The state
| subsidizes insurance in these areas?
| throwup238 wrote:
| The California Department of Insurance regulates the
| insurance rates, down to how much they can raise them each
| year. Over the last decade the real risk of these fires has
| become better known to insurance companies and they've been
| screaming to be allowed to raise rates faster. Some have
| even exited the state completely (to new sign ups).
|
| CalFAIR is the state insurer of last resort but last I
| checked it's not subsidized. There were talks of needing a
| possible bailout last year, and it's going to intensify
| now, but it hasn't happened yet.
| silotis wrote:
| CalFAIR is subsidized in the sense that insurance
| companies are forced to pay into it. Insurers of course
| pass this cost on to their customers. Combined with price
| controls on insurance this is just taxation with extra
| steps.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| I live in the Netherlands. My insurance already doesn't cover
| a flood (it also doesn't cover war or a nuclear reactor
| blowing up).
|
| It is the government that picks up the bill in real disasters
| I suggest everyone reads the fine print on their contracts.
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| Government doesn't pick up bills, taxpayers do. And it
| introduces moral hazard when the people engaging in risky
| behaviors (buying homes in high fire-risk areas) don't bear
| the costs of those risks.
|
| This creates larger, systemic risks and is simply unfair.
| Someone in Montana should not have to pay to rebuild homes
| in California.
| bad_haircut72 wrote:
| No doubt the people in Montana expect help when their own
| houses burn down though
| Panzer04 wrote:
| It's the difference between paying a few hundred dollars
| a year on your own insurance because it's incredibly
| unlikely your house burns down, and many thousands a year
| because your suburb burns down once or twice a decade.
|
| We shouldn't be back stopping the insurance costs for
| anyone. If they can't pay it, maybe that tells them
| something about the place they are choosing to live in.
| dataflow wrote:
| > Government doesn't pick up bills, taxpayers do. [...]
| Someone in Montana should not have to pay to rebuild
| homes in California.
|
| Are Montana residents' taxes currently paying for
| rebuilding homes in California? How does that work - I
| actually don't know but I thought FEMA doesn't rebuilt
| homes?
| fells wrote:
| > Government doesn't pick up bills, taxpayers do.
|
| Is this an interesting comment to make? Yeah... the tax
| payers foot the bill because like we elect the
| representatives to maintain the government.
|
| > Someone in Montana should not have to pay to rebuild
| homes in California.
|
| Is this a joke? Should I, as a Californian, also be able
| to say "oh, my tax money? You damn well not send it to
| Montana to help subside program XYZ that doesn't help
| me."
| cyberax wrote:
| > Someone in Montana should not have to pay to rebuild
| homes in California.
|
| Montana receives way more Federal aid per capita than
| California. So it's fair to say that Californians
| shouldn't be paying for road maintenance in Montana.
| merrywhether wrote:
| Yeah, the solution isn't divorcing risk (as communicated by
| cost) from reality. If the concern is usurious insurance
| rates, that's where things like profit caps and other
| regulations come in. Society should want people to have fair
| insurance rates but not necessarily cheap rates.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Profit caps are a bad idea in general, but they are an
| especially terrible fit for companies insuring against tail
| risks, because you need to eke out a small profit for years
| or decades to hedge against the black swans with massive
| costs. The 2017 and 2018 wildfires wiped out _25 years_ of
| insurance company profits, for example: if you had said in
| 2013, "hey, these guys have made 20 straight years of
| profits, we need caps to control costs", you'd have left
| them insolvent against the fires.
|
| This is all a moot point though: you cannot force companies
| to offer insurance. If regulations prevent them from
| offering policies at a profit, they just leave. Which is
| exactly what is happening in California (and Florida):
| every company is bailing out and refusing to renew
| policies.
| daveguy wrote:
| Profit caps are not the same as disallowing profit. They
| make sure insurance payouts are fair given the insurance
| premiums. Distributing "profits" back to shareholders to
| the point that the insurance company cannot honor
| policies is a disingenuous use of funds for an insurance
| company. You seem to think profit cap = no profit, which
| is not the case. It means the profit ROI cannot take
| precedence over the insured ROI.
| cyberax wrote:
| > The 2017 and 2018 wildfires wiped out _25 years_ of
| insurance company profits
|
| Money spent to repay loans or to make reserves are not
| profits.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Shouldn't competition take care of usurious rates in
| relatively free and working market? That is people will
| move to cheaper offerings which likely are close to real
| price.
| __loam wrote:
| Really hard to make the argument for this politically when
| the state is also facing a housing crisis. Unfortunately, a
| lot of undeveloped land is also prone to wildfire. The
| solution is zoning relaxation and building dense but there's
| also a lot of resistance to that.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Newsom is proposing waiving CEQA for rebuilding destroyed
| homes in the wildfire zone, but _only_ for low-density
| structures, which makes me want to scream until my throat
| bleeds. California infallibly manages to zero in on the
| worst possible solution; waive CEQA either entirely or not
| at all, and let the Palisades homeowners wait for their
| decade of environmental review like the rest of us have to.
| Neonlicht wrote:
| What fire mitigations are there for these kind of disasters
| besides complete depopulation? There are already 15k
| firefighters working on this one. It's just gonna get worse
| with climate change.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I think that assumption is inaccurate:
|
| 1. In parts of the Pacific Palisades/Malibu, as the article
| points out, yes, there are firestorms that are going to
| happen there pretty much inevitably. But even then, if you
| look at some places that had both the money and motivation to
| really invest in fire prevention (e.g. the Getty Villa), they
| escaped the worst of the damage - no structures in the Getty
| Villa, smack dab in the middle of the Palisades, burned.
|
| 2. What happened in Altadena was entirely different. It
| shouldn't go unnoticed that in many pictures and videos that
| lots of trees are still standing unscathed while the homes
| are all burnt to the ground. Most of these homes went up long
| before adequate fire protection was deemed a necessity, and
| given land values there now (even with it being in the state
| it's in), it should be possible to rebuild in a _much_ more
| fire resistant state than what existed previously.
| Carrok wrote:
| Metal. Stone. Concrete.
| Amezarak wrote:
| It will get worse no matter what. Even if we went carbon-
| negative tomorrow, California in currently in a historically
| _wet_ period. The music will stop no matter what, unless we
| acquire planetary weather control.
|
| > Across the Californian region, paleoclimate records dating
| back more than 1,000 years show more significant dry periods
| compared to the latest century. Ancient data reveals two
| mega-droughts that endured for well over a century, one
| lasting 220 years and one for 140 years. The 20th century was
| fraught with numerous droughts, yet this era could be
| considered relatively "wet" compared against an expansive
| 3,500 year history. In recent times, droughts lasting five to
| 10 years have raised concern, but are not anomalous. Rather,
| decade long droughts are an ordinary feature of the state's
| innate climate. Based on scientific evidence, dry spells as
| severe as the mega-droughts detected from the distant past
| are likely to recur, even in absence of anthropogenic climate
| change.
|
| I say this because people should not confuse the issues.
| Fighting climate change won't stop California from burning.
| This was always going to happen; even in the best-case
| massively carbon-negative future, we at best defer the
| burning a few years. So we shouldn't have the attitude
| "California will just be OK if we can go carbon negative." It
| won't.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_in_California
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| It's the water that allows the fuel build up though.
|
| So a drier California might actually not burn as much,
| because, as the article points out, there's not much to
| burn in a desert ?
|
| Also, this being more about human behavior, people might be
| much less interested to build in a desert (in this case, I
| doubt it, see also : Saudi Arabia). (Up to a point of
| course, worst case climate change scenarios involving these
| latitudes becoming uninhabitable in the next centuries.)
|
| Otherwise, I was wondering whether, under a still "wet"
| California, but under still mild climate change, the more
| frequent both rains and droughts, might increase the
| frequency of firestorms just high enough so that humans
| actually start taking them seriously.
|
| (EDIT : And looks like they already did, if those 2007
| building code changes aren't just for show ? How is the
| correlation between the post-2007 buildings and those that
| survived firestorms?)
| thereisnospork wrote:
| Simplest answer is cut down all the trees and pave it over.
| No fuel no fire.
| nelox wrote:
| As politics follows power, I agree that preventing rebuilding
| would prove challenging. But so is witnessing an apocalypse,
| the likes of which Angelinos have just endured. It would be a
| brave politician indeed to remove any possibility of
| development in those areas.
| mullingitover wrote:
| I always hear about how the region is evolved for the occasional
| wildfire, but the area also had far more large grazers keeping
| the fuel in check. The under-grazing is a big part of the fire
| equation.
| motohagiography wrote:
| that's an interesting view. would a feral goats, sheep or
| another species population keep this specific vegetation down?
| 01100011 wrote:
| Maybe to a small degree. Grazers might keep the non native
| grasses and invasive weeds in check (although that has
| historically been the job of wildfires). Grazers aren't going
| to eat mature oaks, toyon and other woody natives though. The
| canyons near me have plenty of deer but the canyon is still
| overgrown and full of fuel.
| dehrmann wrote:
| The big, open question right now is how much of the California
| wildfires is due to climate change and how much is due to
| aggressive fire suppression over the pas 50+ years.
| convolvatron wrote:
| is that really that relevant? according to the climate change
| people this is just going to keep happening, and not just in
| California but in Washington and Oregon and across Canada and
| who knows how many other places. This on top of larger storm
| surges, heat waves, flooding, drought, heating and
| acidification of the seas, loss of sea ice, etc. All things
| that we have empirical evidence for.
|
| It only makes sense to stress this question if you reject that
| premise entirely, and think that if we just get California to
| to better managing its underbrush, then this whole thing goes
| away.
|
| otherwise the causality is a bit moot? except maybe it opens
| the discussion about how much we can afford to spend to clear
| brush given that this is going to keep being a problem.
| HPsquared wrote:
| They'll need to manage the underbrush better, regardless of
| how much of an effect was due to climate change. People are
| going to live there and need to take protective measures.
| Climate change only increases the amount of management
| required.
| tptacek wrote:
| Is it an open question? This is an article from 1995 about how
| massive city-razing fires are endemic to the region and have
| been for decades. Decades later, it continues to be right. What
| does it matter whether the fires are monocausal?
| 01100011 wrote:
| You're using arguments appropriate to other ecosystems.
|
| Please familiarize yourself with coastal sage scrub communities
| in so cal.
| notjoemama wrote:
| > Today our horticultural firebreaks are gone, strawberry fields
| are now aging suburbs, and the quest for beach fronts, mountain
| view lots and big trees has created fire hazards that were once
| unimaginable.
|
| Being posted in a tech community with an ideology of constant
| improvement, I'm positive there will be a preponderance of
| solutioning in response. I grew very tired of the repetitive
| nature of the writing. I also noticed amongst its supposed
| specificity, none of the actual causes of the fires were given.
| For example, I recall the fire that burned part of Redding was
| from multiple fires burning together caused by both arson and a
| trailer chain left dragging against the pavement. I think some of
| use are aware of the arsonists caught in the current LA county
| fires. We can point to failures of leadership and forest
| management. But the author calls the behavior of mankind
| believing we can tame nature perverse. What a disappointing
| perspective. Were that true then we have no business ever
| exploring space, the ocean, or housing anyone for any reason on
| the Earth's polar ice caps. The fact is we can and do tame nature
| in many MANY ways. Anyone that drives a car can understand this.
| So it's not a matter of whether we do or not, but to what extent
| are we trying. That is not a perverse belief, as I'm sure you may
| know of will read in other replies. We, or those in leadership
| positions, know what can be done to mitigate destruction and loss
| of life. The challenge is, and as the history in this article
| suggests, is doing it.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| This comment is kind of deliberately missing the point. We
| _can_ tame nature, but not to an arbitrary degree: to do so, we
| need to make compromises and mandate+forbid certain behaviors.
|
| Wildfires can be tamed, but it requires 1) controlled burns
| which aren't held up for years in red tape, 2) insurance priced
| appropriately to risk, which means not everyone who wants to
| live in a fire zone should be able to afford it and 3)
| construction codes with mandatory firebreaks, specific fire-
| resistant materials and vigorous enforcement punishing anyone
| not doing these (since one break in the firewall can lead to
| the whole town burning down). California refuses to do _any_ of
| these things, never mind all of them, and pays the inevitable
| consequences.
| throttlebody wrote:
| I live on a fault line, and we have overcome most issues by
| building seismic tolerant buildings. We have the knowledge to
| live in high-risk areas with some certainty, but it will never be
| without risk. Climate change, ie more frequent severe weather
| events, is definitely going to challenge our norms and how we do
| things. Fire tolerant buildings ?
| marze wrote:
| Fire suppression and lack of controlled burns leads to big fires.
| However in an environment with hot Santa Ana Winds, even with
| good forest land fuel management, a city like Pacific Palisades
| as it stood could conceivably burn from an accidental fire within
| the city.
|
| The real question is this: do we have the capability to build a
| house that would not burn down if the neighboring house caught
| fire? If so, a city could be build that would be impervious to
| wild fire, arson, and accidental fires.
|
| How much would this cost?
| dkasper wrote:
| Defensible housing exists, there have been some viral photos of
| a few houses that survived this wildfire. But the embers from
| large fires can fly for miles in high wind, so it would likely
| have to be the whole city
| Axsuul wrote:
| Technically, but nothing miles away caught on fire. The
| ignition zone is likely only a few hundred yards even in
| intense Santa Ana winds. So that means only homes in fire
| prone areas (or adjacent) would need to be made very
| defensible.
| marze wrote:
| Probably a more pertinent question would be: can you
| construct houses that would not burn in a Santa Ana if all
| the vegetation and landscaping nearby burned.
|
| If you have fire resistant structures and only vegetation
| burned, not any structures, it would be much less expensive
| to replace just the landscaping plants.
|
| In a 80 mph wind, it would be very challenging to design a
| structure that would survive a wooden house burning next
| door.
| Axsuul wrote:
| Also, older homes that are not up to date with the latest
| defensible technologies.
| marze wrote:
| Does anyone know if the insurance companies gave discounts to
| houses that had fire resistant improvements, in the areas
| that burned in these fires?
| timewizard wrote:
| I can build you a fire proof house; however, you almost
| certainly do not want to live in it. It will be uncomfortable
| and unsightly. Avoiding disaster at all costs is not the reason
| we build cities or invest in homes.
|
| The better question is, do we have the capacity to build a
| _city_, that would limit spreading fire damage even if one of
| it's neighborhoods completely lit on fire?
|
| That will cost a lot less and still be a beautiful place to
| live.
| kneath wrote:
| Many comments seem to be under the impression that we do not know
| or do not choose to build fire-resistant buildings.
|
| We do know how. It is required by code. Chapter 7 of the IBC code
| is the specific section. It was adopted in 2007. Most houses in
| America pre-date 2007 construction. If only comments on the
| internet had the power to retrofit millions of structures across
| the country, we'd be set.
|
| https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IBC2018/chapter-7-fire-and...
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Surely the problem here is one of policy and political will. In
| terms of cost I can't imagine that the damage done by unplanned
| firestorms leveling cities is less than retrofitting or
| controlled burns.
| kneath wrote:
| It is never really that simple. Here is a thought experiment:
|
| How does the idea of defensible space work if your neighbor's
| walls are 5 feet from your walls? What happens when an entire
| neighborhood is that closely spaced? How do you retrofit the
| space between buildings?
|
| There are dozens of challenges like the above, and a lot of
| them delve into personal freedoms. Should you be able to
| choose what trees to plant on your property? Should you be
| allowed a shed? Should the government use air surveillance to
| enforce the cleanliness of your backyard?
|
| There's lots we can do, lots we should do, but it is far from
| a simple path with a singular solution.
| sio8ohPi wrote:
| Townhouses with no intervening space would likely be an
| improvement. Browse Altadena in streetview and you'll see
| loads of houses with vegetation -- tinder -- stacked
| between them. Getting rid of those intervening spaces
| entirely would reduce the surface area exposed to embers
| while simultaneously depriving homeowners the temptation to
| store fuel in unwise places.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Didn't that vegetation actually end up less flammable
| than the houses ? (Or was that just cherry picking by
| journalists ?)
| ajuc wrote:
| Legislating the lessons most medieval cities learnt in dark
| ages only in 2007 is still wild.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Plenty of newer buildings in Altadena also burned just as
| easily. One of the high end assisted living facilities that was
| built in the last five years is almost completely gone and they
| could afford a lot more fire mitigation than the individual
| home owners.
| giantg2 wrote:
| If I remember correctly, those protections are tailored mostly
| to interior fires. I believe there are additonal
| recommendations (not required in code) for homes in fire prone
| areas.
|
| Edit: when I say not in code, I mean not in the IBC. I think CA
| has their own code for fire prone areas. I'm not sure if that
| code only applies to rural areas or not. One would hope that it
| applies universally and the rebuilding will be done with the
| fire hardening methods. Insurance might influence
| reconstruction too.
| kneath wrote:
| Chapter 7 addresses both interior and exterior fires.
| Exterior fires are a danger to buildings everywhere (see:
| Great Chicago Fire).
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, but the external shit is basically "if it's wood, is
| it treated with fire retardant". It's not like vinyl siding
| is great for fires.
| kneath wrote:
| Not going to enter into anymore baiting, but no -- that
| is not at all the extent of Chapter 7's protections
| against external fire.
|
| https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IBC2018/chapter-7-fire-
| and...
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not baiting. You can compare chapter 7 to the CA
| wildlands code and see the dramatic difference in fire
| prevention. As others have pointed out, the newer
| construction made under the code you are referencing are
| still burning to ground.
| johnea wrote:
| A lot of informative historical detail in this article, but the
| title is pretty much completely disconnected from the content of
| the text.
|
| There is almost no discussion of why, or how, letting natural
| fire processes go unchecked would help the situation.
|
| It may very well be the case that this would be a good idea (or
| not), but this article really doesn't talk much about it in any
| case.
|
| But still, some detailed historical context of fires in LA...
| throwaway657656 wrote:
| My comment is off-topic, but I am unclear what insurance would
| pay in the case of a total loss of a home/neighborhood. For
| example, a small one bedroom home in the Pacific Palisades might
| have had a FMV of $2M. Let's assume the structure itself has a
| replacement value of $150k. On a typical policy, would insurance
| pay $2M in case of total loss, or $150k ? What if the
| neighborhood is destroyed and that land is now worth ~10% of what
| it was prior ? Would insurance then pay out closer to the $2M ?
| tptacek wrote:
| Homeowners policies generally pay replacement cost, not market
| value.
| battle-racket wrote:
| Related, RIP Mike Davis, author of this article. Highly recommend
| reading some of his books, my favorite being Late Victorian
| Holocausts which discusses famine in relation to colonialism.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-01-12 23:02 UTC)