481–490 of 691 posts
Such a tragedy. I am very sorry for anyone affected by this :( As a non-local it’s hard to judge how big this is. Can anyone point to map or explain to what extend LA is affected? Is it 5% of the area/population or rather 50%?
Not particularly snappy, but feature-packed. You can see evacuation zones, look at live cameras, see which parts have already burned to the ground, see which parts are in danger.
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"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." Take 23M and tell me how many firefighters that'd hire, plus equipment to support them. then tell me if that equipment would've been sufficient to at least contain the fires instead of having the damage we have now. Protip as a former Memphis FD Volunteer: Every da…
It was a 17M cut from a greater than $800 million Fire allocation, not 23M. Of that: > The budget reduction, approved last year by Mayor Karen Bass, was mostly absorbed by leaving many administrative jobs unfilled, but that left about $7 million that was cut from its overtime budget that was used for training, fire prevention, and other key functions (see up thread peer comment for source) Further, with a constrained…
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And go where exactly? To towns that don't even have the tax base to support themselves and lack jobs? It's not like suburbs aren't sitting on financial bombs either.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/fiscal-stab... I moved to unincorporated exurban Maryland. The state government is a mess, but it’s mostly preoccupied dealing with Baltimore. Our county is great. Good schools with modest per student spending, the friendliest police I’ve ever interacted with. Even our county landfill is one of the cleanest and most orderly facilities I’ve ever seen. Nicer than most of…
And of course, even if you were willing to spend several hours a day commuting, if you're in California exurban areas aren't exactly safer from wildfires.
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> Patrick Soon-Shiong, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Times, slammed Bass in an X post claiming the mayor slashed the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget, despite the high risk of wildfires in the region, and raised questions about reports that some fire hydrants in the Pacific Palisades had run dry. It's kind of rich that a local billionaire would complain about this. I'm going to guess that the $23M was…
"fair share" is always defined as more than they pay now, I've noticed.
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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…
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Are there estimates for the cost of fireproofing Californian construction?
The problem with fireproofing one building in a fire-prone area is that neighboring buildings that aren't fireproof will build, and they will release toxic substances that make your fireproof building toxic.
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Worse, upon release, none of them will be able to gain employment as a firefighter; you need a clean record for that.
Well good, since professional and volunteer firefighters are the most common arsonists. People with violent criminal records should not be in those fields at all.
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I never experienced an earthquake, in Tokyo, but those who have, say that the buildings wave around like drunk dancers. Things fall off of shelves, but the buildings seem to come out OK. The Japanese are hard core about building standards. Compared to other nations (deliberately not gonna name them), that have corruption problems, as well as frequent earthquakes, you always have a bunch of buildings fall down, there'…
>The Japanese are hard core about building standards. Note that this has been built on their fair share of blood and tears[1]. Japan gloated in the wakes of the 1989 Loma Prieta[2] and 1994 Northridge[3] earthquakes that such structural destruction[3][4] would be impossible for them, but then they got their gloating ass burned off.[6] Japan has been dead fucking serious about earthquake measures ever since, never tak…
"such structural destruction[3][4]" should be [4] and [5] instead, apologies.
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To violate your privacy an IR sensor would have to be able to pick out people (98 degrees Fahrenheit, approx.) and put them on a map. Versus a sensor tuned to an actual fire which is substantially hotter and larger.
> Versus a sensor tuned to an actual fire which is substantially hotter and larger Again, at that point you’re no longer adding value over the status quo . We don’t have a problem detecting large fires near population centres.
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Crime is rampant, cut the police budget. I hear ya'.
Judging by the history of the Los Angeles Police Department and their own gangs, run by members of the department, policemen, getting rid of cops might actually help reduce crime!
"...why are we cutting fire department budgets when wildfires are becoming more frequent..."
If you're going to say we need more money budgeted to the Fire Dept. because fires are becoming frequent and then say in your next breath we need to cut the budget of the Police because crime is becoming more frequent....