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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

#511

Post by camgunz »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #401
jcranmer wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Northeast. Structural modifications for heavy snow are light (make sure the house is well-insulated, get yourself a nice heater, don't put any pipes in the exterior walls, and have sloped roofs rather than flat roofs), and they're not particularly dangerous if you're prepared to be cooped up in a house for a day or two (and you're not in the main lake effect snow belt, where snow can be rather constant).

So the proposal is for 350 Million people to move to New England?

Well, in good faith, if everyone in "dangerous" areas of the US moved to less dangerous areas, the resulting population density would still be less than Ohio's (~242/mi2, also LA's population density is ~8,000/mi2--well below places like Pittsburgh and Buffalo even--so keep that in mind), and I left Alaska out of both safe and dangerous lists because it's a cheat. And it's very OK there! Winter is fine. I grew up and lived in the Midwest for years; tornadoes, etc. are bad but they're not wildfires and hurricanes.

Is this a serious "proposal"? Definitely not. But a lot of people in this thread are acting like moving away from literal hellfire is impossible, and I respectfully submit that living in the interior is better than having everything you own burn down.

"Dangerous": California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Utah, Puerto Rico, Nevada, Mississippi, New Mexico, Idaho, Hawaii, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa

"Safe": New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Missouri, West Virginia, Minnesota, Vermont, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Iowa, Maine, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming

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

#512

Post by b0bb1z3r0 »

darth_avocado wrote: post #272
defrost wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears we agree that the details of the cuts matters.

More information since my last comment, at least half the budget cuts indeed impacted large scale disaster response capabilities. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california-wildfires/la-w... > 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,…

[dead]

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

#513

Post by throwup238 »

defrost wrote: post #212
Syonyk wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wildfires, unfortunately, have a way of "not caring in the slightest about what people think of them." Throw in the winds of southern CA, and a wildfire can go from "freshly started" to "a few thousand acres" by the time anyone manages to get their boots on and equipment started. You don't fight wildfires in 60-100mph winds. Firebombers can't fly in those winds (or at night, since it's close to terrain), and even if…

Where I live we routinely do prescribed (planned) burns and aim to mosaic the landscape | fuel load regions to break up high load buildups. See (for example): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKsLRNbczJY Cool burning's been going on for several thousand years (geolocked?): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM72NtXxyLs

That’s a political hot potato in California right now. CALFIRE has been advocating for prescribed burns for decades but it doesn’t have jurisdiction over all the lands owned by the federal government and the 35 California Air Districts mired in local politics are responsible for issuing the permits for those burns. Lots of NIMBYs who pressure the district boards to withhold those permits for air quality reasons.

There’s hope that this series of events will cause them to reevaluate but prescribed burns wouldn’t have helped in the Palisades anyway.

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

#514

Post by onemoresoop »

throwup238 wrote: post #504
gcanyon wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most houses in the US are made of wood. In Los Angeles they often have tile/concrete roofs, but I've read that in a situation like this the problem is the vents under the edge of the roof that lead into the attic: if anything burning gets through there, the house is toast. Source: used to live in a Los Angeles hilly suburb. If the fires get to where I used to live, that house will definitely burn despite having a cem…

Insurers require ember resistant vulcan vents and the like now. It’s a relatively minor upgrade for most homeowners since its just a mesh over the vent.

Would that have stopped this fire from spreading?

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

#515

Post by Yeul »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #495
throwbacktictac wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing questions about the location of Karen Bass and I don't understand the outrage. Did she fly to Ghana when the fires erupted? Is she not allowed to take vacations? Was she expected to magically reappear in California when things got out of hand? Has her responsiveness been extremely latent.

From behind a keyboard and who knows how far away from Los Angeles you are, you may look at it with other eyes than the people who lost their homes in the fires. And yes, in the end the mayor is responsible for the wellbeing of the city. And people see the mayor is nowhere to be found when their homes burned down. Who do you want them to be mad at?

Texas governor was in Acapulco and nobody blamed him.

Anyway on topic an aunt of mine is a mayor of a small city (55k). Her opinion is that firefighters fight fires and having a politician walk around a disaster area with a hundred journalists isn't helping.

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

#517

Post by leoedin »

deadbabe wrote: post #502

Can someone explain what efforts will be made to rebuild if any? How could they rebuild knowing this can just happen again next year? It’s not like hurricanes where buildings can be made to withstand category 5 storms.

Buildings can be built to higher levels of wildfire resistance.

The fire spreads because burning embers are blown downwind, settling and starting new spot fires. If they get blown into a house, the house burns. You don't need to make a house fireproof to stop wildfires, but just resistant to a shower of burning embers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvbNOPSYyss

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

#518

Post by tiahura »

bushbaba wrote: post #437
throwup238 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you lucky enough to be in a place where insurers in California are still operating? California has had a state fire insurer (FAIR) of last resort for over fifty years and fire insurance is practically mandatory for mortgages so there aren’t many places that are excluded. It’s entirely funded by premiums and has never been bailed out by state or federal funds. It’s not like the National Insurance Flood Program t…

Mortgage firms demand Home insurance policies which it covers some fires, but not all fires. E.g. if there’s an earthquake and it causes a natural gas fire, you’re not covered by home insurance. Same goes for if there’s a flood and it causes a fire, not covered. I suspect long term fire insurance due to wildfire will not be covered by home insurance policies. As it’s not a “random” event, and instead a risk of certai…

Your statement is not entirely accurate. Under the insuring agreement of a typical homeowner’s insurance policy, fire—including wildfire—is a covered peril, unless specifically excluded elsewhere in the policy. Standard policies are designed to provide coverage for direct physical loss or damage caused by fire, regardless of whether the fire is “random” or arises in wildfire-prone areas.

While some exclusions may apply to fires caused by excluded perils (e.g., floods or earthquakes) or to contributory factors like neglect, wildfires are generally not excluded in standard homeowner’s insurance policies.

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

#519

Post by [deleted] »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #455
martinpw wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#520

Post by friend_Fernando »

rayiner wrote: post #493
friend_Fernando wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Why would you want more decisions to be moved up to the state level, where officials will be elected by a low-information statewide electorate, instead of a local level, where there’s at least hope of an informed electorate that’ll hold the government accountable? That’s certainly been my experience living in a well-run county in Maryland. This guy is my county executive: https://www.aacounty.org/pittmanandfriends .…

It's not so much an informed electorate as a rent-seeking one.[1] The regulatory capture [2] of obscure local boards is much easier than that of state agencies. Voters who are part of a special interest group are much more aware of what and who they're voting for. The prime example are landlords and homeowners. They have managed to strangle the supply of housing to inflate prices, creating the crisis we're in now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

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