Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 691 posts

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

#661

Post by infecto »

friend_Fernando wrote: post #649
infecto wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This narrative about building houses out of sticks also rubs me the wrong way. It's an extremely naive take on why it happens. The reason most homes in America are wood framed is really down to economics. Europe does not have as vast of a forest stock for lumber as the US/Canada does. Over time we have specialized in building wood framed homes and because of lumber, its cheaper. These homes would have been destroyed…

See sibling posts for the cost argument. > These homes would have been destroyed regardless of building material. That's just not the case. Fire-resistant construction might not always help the first house at the subdivision's edge, but it will help the rest. One analogy is control rods in a reactor. As I said in another post, the problem with firestorms here in CA is the rate of initial spread. We always get massive…

I don’t think that is entirely correct in the cost angle but it’s ok.

As I said before the homes are of course an issue but the larger issue is basic fire prevention, not the fact that homes are as you say “built out of twigs”. It is certainly a factor but the more important piece are all the other steps that go before as I linked earlier.

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

#662

Post by drawkward »

baggy_trough wrote: post #576
drawkward wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% certain that no human deserves to be a billion times wealthier than the least wealthy human.

I don't know why you think that.

because i am a human who sees the inherent value of all humanity, divorced from their wealth. i see wealth hoarding as an addiction, a sickness, and a danger to others.

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

#663

Post by camgunz »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #613
camgunz wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the last ~7 years only Oklahoma has had a >= 5.0 earthquake (three of them). But even if you move it, you're still under Ohio. https://earthquakelist.org/usa/#latest-earthquakes-mag-5-dis...

Looking at only the last 7 years is a poor standard, and Oklahoma is a known active seismic zone with dedicated USGS risk models. Severe earthquakes occur much less frequently, often less than once per century. US Geological Survey seismic risk maps paint a different picture of actual risk than you are presenting. For example, you've deemed the New Madrid seismic zone[0] as "safe", despite multiple M7-8+ earthquakes…

(Sorry on phone) California famously also has earthquakes. You can't look at the USGS risk map and seriously say the risk between living in Missouri/Oklahoma and California is equivalent. Also I didn't include PNW states in the safe list. Also the NMSZ had only one >= 5.0 earthquake (5.4) in the entire 20th century. Also earthquake deaths are only around half wildfire deaths, and I'd guess the distance between them will only increase as wildfires are only gonna get worse.

https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/hazard-map-2023-50-state-u...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_disasters_by_cost

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

#664

Post by mulmen »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #655
mulmen wrote: post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time a fire of this scale and destruction occurred but wasn't headline news?

[flagged]

Larger in terms of acres but what about damage? When was a town wiped off the map by fire and there was no news coverage?

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

#665

Post by s1artibartfast »

pkulak wrote: post #650
s1artibartfast wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with what you said, but I don't think that supports the conclusion above. Trade-offs are different in all sorts of situations. All choices in life have consequence. The fact that one is better than the other does not negate anything or create slavery

So nothing can be slavery if there's any choice at all? By that logic slavery can never exist, because any slave can chose not to work and be killed, kill themselves, run, etc. At some point you have to draw a line and say, there is choice, but there's not enough choice to say it's not slavery.

Sure. I think for the case of firefighting, where there is no punishment or consequences whatsoever, it is an easy call.

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

#666

Post by mulmen »

xeromal wrote: post #631
mulmen wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly! And the presence of a choice in labor doesn’t change the fact that they’re slaves.

It sounds like you'd consider volunteers as slaves then.

Volunteers aren’t forced to work so no, they aren’t slaves.

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

#667

Post by baggy_trough »

drawkward wrote: post #662
baggy_trough wrote: post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you think that.

because i am a human who sees the inherent value of all humanity, divorced from their wealth. i see wealth hoarding as an addiction, a sickness, and a danger to others.

Inherit value has nothing to do with wealth, and billionaires are not hoarding.

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

#668

Post by immibis »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #547
immibis wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Work for us or we'll keep you locked up for 3 years longer than if you did" isn't really volunteering - more like extortion.

Everybody faces this dilemma: work for the job or face worse consequences. You can spin it negative if you like. What alternative is there to this? Not let anybody reduce their sentence with public service, to serve some armchair philosopher's notion of what's 'extortion'?

Kind of like a lot of people want to ban congressional stock trading, to serve some armchair philosopher's notion of what's 'fair'?

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

#669

Post by lend000 »

eesmith wrote: post #652
lend000 wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CO2 is a major hazard, but of all the ideas listed and that I've read elsewhere, it does seem to have the most potential when the hazards are managed. That and tarps (instead of throwing them on the fire, perhaps laying them down to create strategic barriers to the spread of the fire). But it's undoubtedly a very hard engineering challenge. Some of the photos of the fire show the flames dwarfing the planes used to dr…

There is no potential with CO2. Have you worked out how much CO2 would be needed? How to prevent mixing with air? How it will be stored and deployed? How many people might die should there be a container breach? The first two seem mind-boggling. "Strategic barriers to the spread of the fire" are called firebreaks. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebreak points out: > ... it is still sometimes possible for fire to…

CO2 is already used in many fire extinguishers, especially in industrial settings for class B and C fires. And we trust the average person with huge containers of explosive propane.

More is possible than you think, but obviously it comes with a lot of caveats because of the danger potential. But as a professional firefighting tool, "no potential" is a pessimistic take IMO.

Fire roads are often used as firebreaks, and in SoCal many follow the ridges of mountains. This is really the ideal case for CO2 that I envision, as the cold CO2 released from a compressed container will flow downhill into an evacuated area and smother the fire attempting to cross the ridge. Curious if you believe the current state of the art cannot be improved upon.

The tarps would have to be huge and ideally quite thin, hence why I wondered if modern materials science was up to the task. An advantage is that they could preserve foliage while still creating a firebreak, but again, mostly a materials science question. Probably infeasible, but just spitballing.

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

#670

Post by jandrewrogers »

camgunz wrote: post #663
jandrewrogers wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at only the last 7 years is a poor standard, and Oklahoma is a known active seismic zone with dedicated USGS risk models. Severe earthquakes occur much less frequently, often less than once per century. US Geological Survey seismic risk maps paint a different picture of actual risk than you are presenting. For example, you've deemed the New Madrid seismic zone[0] as "safe", despite multiple M7-8+ earthquakes…

(Sorry on phone) California famously also has earthquakes. You can't look at the USGS risk map and seriously say the risk between living in Missouri/Oklahoma and California is equivalent. Also I didn't include PNW states in the safe list. Also the NMSZ had only one >= 5.0 earthquake (5.4) in the entire 20th century. Also earthquake deaths are only around half wildfire deaths, and I'd guess the distance between them w…

Pacific Northwest earthquake codes are based on earthquakes that last happened more than 300 years ago. The New Madrid Seismic Zone has had multiple earthquakes more powerful than any in the Pacific Northwest during those intervening centuries.

Missouri could realistically experience a M8.0 earthquake tomorrow, just like Washington. That the NMSZ was relatively quiescent during the 20th century tells you little about the seismic risk. Geological risk isn't determined by what happened last week.

Mount Rainier has not been active since the 19th century either. Nonetheless, it is a Decade Volcano[0], one of the highest risk volcanoes in the world.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decade_Volcanoes

Post reply on HN