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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

#451

Post by tkgally »

tkgally wrote: post #217
bloudermilk wrote: post #170

We lost our house to the Eaton fire this morning. It’s difficult to describe the vastness of the destruction in our community. Everything within a couple square miles of us burned.

I feel really sorry for you. I grew up in north-central Pasadena and had many friends who lived in Altadena, and it’s been heartbreaking to watch the news from a distance and realize that many of their homes might have burned.

Later: I came across a streamer’s video taken from his motorcycle as he rode through Altadena on Wednesday afternoon. In this part, he passes through a burned-out neighborhood I used to know:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D29RXlm4yE&t=584s

From the street signs, I was able to identify a location where a high school friend of mine lived—the house now burned to the ground. (It’s been nearly fifty years since I graduated from high school, and I don’t know if her family still lives there or not.)

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

#452

Post by wtcactus »

pkulak wrote: post #406
s1artibartfast wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, I expect there are some foundational differences in world view at play. IMO, its not slavery because it is 100% optional. It is a restricted privilege that prisoners actively seek and compete for. It is sought after because it is an improvement over the alternative. I'm honestly unsure how this can be framed as a negative.

You can’t give someone only two options, one less bad, then claim there was a free choice made.

Yes, getting into prison after you committed a crime and were condemned for it, is usually not a free choice.

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

#453

Post by m0llusk »

lkjdsklf wrote: post #383
Izikiel43 wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven’t been to California right? Weather and location wise, it’s one of the best places in the world to live in

I mean... other than the fires ripping through and destroying everything.....

Don't forget the mud slides and earthquakes, but yeah.

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

#454

Post by m0llusk »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #367
wk_end wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This has been well-studied by disaster recovery and business continuity boffins. There are sites that are known to be (1) effectively disaster-free, whether earthquakes, severe weather, volcanoes, tsunamis, wildfires, flooding, etc, and (2) sufficiently connected to commerce and the economy that you can reasonably build and fully operate a business from there. Climate change has relatively little impact on the suitab…

Salt Lake City is about to be devastated by the drying up of the lake.

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

#455

Post by ZeroGravitas »

martinpw wrote: post #336
mturmon wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some harrowing before and after photos from a Maxar instrument via LA Times (may be pay walled): https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-08/shocking... This shows Altadena, just east of JPL, and Malibu (separate fires, of course).

This is a horrific satellite picture of Altadena: https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/06-closer-s...

The blue and green colour small areas suggest this is a false color image that maps colours to a value and coincidentally looks like a fire.

Presumably it's measuring heat or something vaguely relevant but I don't trust my immediate visceral reaction to it.

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

#456

Post by redwood »

majormajor wrote: post #188
segasaturn wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question, lets take a look at the 2024-2025 budget sheet for LA City: https://cao.lacity.gov/budget/summary/2024-25%20Budget%20Sum... (This PDF is great, props to whoever made it for making it so easy and accessible for normal people to read.) If you look at the pie chart on Page 11, you will see that by far the largest slice of the pie is the police budget. It's 45% of LA County's entire budget, totalling almo…

So the police budget is 2B. The fire budget is ~800M. Pretty significant by itself. You keep throwing around this 23M number like a 3% change would make a material impact on 3 fast-spreading huge fires in worst-case-scenario conditions. What do you think the budget would need to be to handle this? In a scenario that goes deep, such as how water pressure is low because of how much demand is coming from so many hydrant…

Factoring in inflation, anything other than positive is already a cut and there was an explicit cut on top

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

#458

Post by friend_Fernando »

rayiner wrote: post #273
darth_avocado wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that though is that the overall budget includes big ticket items like pensions and overtime. And cuts often directly are from live services. So even though it’s 2% of the overall budget, the cut could still be significant to the availability of firefighters and crucial things like response times.

I recommend to everyone to get out of cities and counties that have large pension liabilities. You will be less safe, your kids will be educated more poorly, and your quality of public services will be whittled away because the money is going to retirees and debt. E.g. Retirement benefits and debt service took up 43% of Chicago’s budget in 2022: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/30/opinion/chicago-illinois-... . A deca…

Local governance in general is FUBAR. Here in CA, housing supply policies from the legislature have gotten a lot better in recent years, but construction still gets bogged down at the local level.

Most budgeting should be moved to the state level, IMO. It's crazy for Western Springs, Atherton and Beverly Hills to waste money while Chicago and Oakland fall behind. If some magnates decide to move to Texas as a result, good riddance. The dependence on property taxes is particularly perverse, as it incentivizes the housing pyramid scheme.

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

#459

Post by jeroenhd »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #390
vFunct wrote: post #385

After hurricane Andrew Florida changed their building codes to account for hurricanes. But can California do the same for wildfires? Is it even possible to construct fireproof homes? (With stone construction or whatever?)

It’s absolutely possible, at least in theory, but it’s a lot more expensive. Concrete, stucco, brick, and (some types of) cement are fire resistant. Roofs can be made of metal, clay, or (some types of) asphalt. Not all fire-resistant materials are also earthquake-resistant. We had roof-mounted sprinklers installed on our house in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We haven’t had to test them in anger so far, but apparently th…

Even without changing construction materials, you can protect houses from many forest fires by making sure there's no flammable material anywhere close to your house. That requires space, which also comes at a premium, but it may still be cheaper than having to build earthquake-resistant concrete everywhere.

A lot of lives and properties (though certainly not all) can be saved if people and cities followed recommendations like https://www.nfpa.org/en/education-and-research/wildfire/prep... but measures like that can be unpopular (because people like to have pretty homes with plants near them) or expensive (because people, cities and property developers would need to set apart "unused" land to separate houses from vegetation).

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

#460

Post by jeroenhd »

curiousgal wrote: post #405
vFunct wrote: post #385

After hurricane Andrew Florida changed their building codes to account for hurricanes. But can California do the same for wildfires? Is it even possible to construct fireproof homes? (With stone construction or whatever?)

> Is it even possible to construct fireproof homes? Of course you can. This is a solved problem. The US chooses to use lumber because it's cheap and fast. You get what you paid for. Many poor countries use hollow red clay bricks for construction, which are fire proof. You don't need to break the bank to build a fire resistant house. It's just like with most think in the U.S., the "system" is built in a certain way to…

Lumber construction is hardly the only factor. Greece commonly uses brick/stones/cement but was hit heavily by forest fires. The things in/on/surrounding those unflammable materials can still light on fire and destroy homes. On the other hand, well-prepared lumber houses often survive forest fires in America and Australia.

Unlike brick or concrete, wood is easy to make earthquake resistant, which is very relevant in a state like California. No point in building a flame resistant building that crumbles to dust within a year when it's hit by a minor earthquake.

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