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LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

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Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#111

Post by trhway »

atonse wrote: post #49
crazygringo wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're currently being downvoted, but I'm genuinely curious -- is continuous IR monitoring from the sky an effective way to detect wildfires earlier? Or are small fires indistinguishable from a million other hot objects, until the point where they get large enough to detect reliably, it's already obvious to everyone on the ground from the smoke?

I'm not so sure. In nVidia's keynote, they had an example of small smoke plumes identified as potential fires. If you had a drone hovering over a particular city to monitor fires, it could potentially be an early warning system, no? And to others that said that the winds are dangerous, do quadcopter drones (which tend to be more stable anyway) have algorithms to account for that?

>And to others that said that the winds are dangerous, do quadcopter drones (which tend to be more stable anyway) have algorithms to account for that?

while they have such algorithms, a quadcopter wouldn't able to achieve needed stability in 100mph wind. A heavy plane would do much better.

The current issue is that all those existing water-carrying planes have to go low over fire - thus wind is a problem - as they can't dive-bomb and can't be retrofitted for that. It is just different types of planes.

A dive-bomber would do much better - would deliver the water precisely from a bit higher altitude and from a much more stable, even in the strong wind, trajectory. An unmannend dive-bomber is even easier, can go for even better trajectories.

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#112

Post by llamaimperative »

nxm wrote: post #91
mempko wrote: post #82

Global warming doing it's thing.

Wildfires have always occurred, just that mansions are now in the way

"Wildfires didn't occur before humans!" - the straw man who you just beat the daylights out of. Kudos!

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#113

Post by gamblor956 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

With much of California, Texas and Florida property damage is concentrated where folks built where they shouldn’t have [1]. (At times nudged on by subsidised insurance [2].) Is that true in this case, too? (Being so close to LA, it doesn’t strike me that it could be.) If not, is my general thesis off? [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/11/06/1204923950/arizona-california... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article…

Many of these houses are decades old and were built in areas that weren't fire risks when the houses were built; Altadena had the opposite problem: it generally received a lot of rain so people were concerned about flooding and mudslides and so a lot of the infrastructure is designed to maximize the channeled flow of water down the hillsides.

Also, a lot of the houses burning in the Eaton fire (especially in Altadena) are surrounded by miles of development, but very-low-humidity hurricane-strength Santa Ana wind gusts can carry (and keep alive) burning embers for miles.

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#114

Post by esalman »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #43
esalman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've actually stopped permitting new builds or rebuild of burned houses in Santa Ana mountains since last year's airport fire.

Huh, I’m actually surprised a high-risk area is that close to LA. (Santa Monica, no less.)

LA is surrounded by high fire risk areas. The wildfire risk is also really unpredictable. The rule of thumb is the closer you are to the beach, the lower the risk.

We were looking to buy a house in Orange or Anaheim Hills because those areas are comparatively affordable. But after the airport fire we steered clear. I took a fire insurance quote on an Orange property, their model says the fire risk is 4 on a scale of 15, but they treat it like 10 because the variance is too high.

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#115

Post by throwaway249281 »

There's a lot of fingerpointing but as Daniel Swain put it: 1. This was completely expected and forecasted both short and long term by regional climate and weather experts. Two very wet winters caused fuel buildup followed by an extremely hot and dry year. 2. There is very little that can be done in these situations. 100 mph gusts of embers can't be fought with hoses and air attack isn't possible in high winds. 3. Hard to believe but it could have been a lot worse. Daniel Swain points out there could have been several more major fires like the two big ones but they got put out quickly before they spread. 4. California's climate has likely been this way for millions of years, long before human habitation.

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#116

Post by Twisol »

rvnx wrote: post #102
Twisol wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an ex-JPLer, it would not have surprised me for this to be the case even in the early 2010s.

It looks down, yes the marketing website is fine, but the scientific tools seem to be down. It would be reasonable that they are locally hosted, like close to the sensors.

Well, most of the actual sensors are in space ;) but yes, telemetry collected via the DSN gets routed through JPL first.

Also, in addition to the SSD website linked upthread, the NAIF site [0] (where the SPICE library and kernels can be downloaded) also seems to be down. It would not surprise me in any way if some of these facilities are hosted on-prem and are in a power-down state due to the fires.

(Speaking of the DSN, their website [1] is also down.)

[0] https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/toolkit.html

[1] https://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#117

Post by llamaimperative »

Redoubts wrote: post #98
llamaimperative wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends: did it have a lot of excess capacity before the cuts?

That’s wholly immaterial to the word choice. Come on.

"Gutted" sure, but yes it's absolutely possible to go from functional staffing to totally non-functional with a 2% budget reduction depending on the org's structure and where the budget cuts come from.

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#118

Post by dmckeon »

bragr wrote: post #17
throwup238 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the big campuses here like JPL and the Getty are built for this (it’s more or less standard now for insuring anything high value). They have landscaping designed to slow down fires, dedicated water systems, and firebreaks all around the buildings. The civilian evacuation order is because the area south of the fire is densely built up with single family homes without much in the way of defenses and JPL has to comp…

The Getty Villa has reported that some landscaping burned, but the buildings and collections are safe. https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/getty-villa-threatened-pal...

Note that Getty Villa != Getty Museum. The Villa is near Malibu, the Museum is miles away near the 405.

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#119

Post by crystal_revenge »

segasaturn wrote: post #51

Los Angeles Fire Department funding was cut by over $23M only a few months ago. The fires are currently being fought by a skeleton crew of remaining fire fighters and volunteers. Can't say if that funding would have prevented it, but cutting it definitely has not helped. Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/08/los-angeles-fires-m... Edit: Changing a word, "gutted" -> "cut"

> by a skeleton crew of remaining fire fighters and volunteers.

I think you're missing a major contributor which is California's prison population [0]. Prisoners getting paid around $3-$5 a day make up ~1/3 of California's wildfire fighting service. Maybe you consider them to be "volunteers" but that seems to be missing some important context.

0. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-history-of-califo...

Re: LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

#120

Post by esalman »

wk_end wrote: post #60
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #14

With much of California, Texas and Florida property damage is concentrated where folks built where they shouldn’t have [1]. (At times nudged on by subsidised insurance [2].) Is that true in this case, too? (Being so close to LA, it doesn’t strike me that it could be.) If not, is my general thesis off? [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/11/06/1204923950/arizona-california... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article…

Unfortunately there's increasingly few places where natural disasters, of one sort or another, aren't inevitable. The PNW also burns regularly now, never mind the enormous earthquake looming under us that we're terribly unprepared for. Even the northeast is starting to get buried in smoke in the summer and hit by storms like Hurricane Sandy. Tornado Alley knocks out much of the midwest. What's left of the US? Desert…

South Texas? We lived in San Antonio for last 5 years, and the weather does not really get extreme. Well you get consecutive weeks of 105-110 highs in summer. But it is far enough from the gulf coast so no hurricanes, and apart from the 2021 snowpocalypse, we didn't get any extreme weather. Austin is also okay. If you get too far north up to Dallas you start to get the snowstorms and tornadoes though.
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