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We Know How to Prevent Megafires

propublica.org

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Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#41

Post by StreamBright »

dmurray wrote: post #10
perl4ever wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how a private individual would deal with the liability.

Here in Ireland farmers regularly burn fields and occasionally the fire gets out of control and destroys an entire mountainside. A couple of years ago one came within 100m of my parents' house - one more change of wind direction and they would have lost everything. No one ever seems to get criminally or civilly prosecuted for starting the fires. Often everyone knows who did it but there's no irrefutable evidence and…

Here is a more extreme example how legislation works against the best interest of people.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7678955/Black-Satur...

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#42

Post by 01100011 »

I'm not so sure this applies to much of coastal CA. Coastal sage scrub, chaparral, and similar biomes can build up sufficient fuel mass in a couple years. Combined with fierce, hot, dry autumn winds(aka 'Santa Ana' winds) you have conditions where 60mph walls of flame can regularly run from the mountains towards the sea. The solution there is to follow CalFire guidelines for fireproofing your home, force local governments to ensure adequate evacuation routes, and discourage living in the wild land interface.

Controlled burns can't reduce fuel because many of those plants can only recover when burned every decade or so. Between frequent burns and non-native plants, we could lose much of our native habitats if we do controlled burns wrong.

https://www.readyforwildfire.org/wp-content/uploads/Homeowne... https://www.californiachaparral.org/fire/

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#43

Post by icegreentea2 »

trhway wrote: post #37

Control burns look to me just like blood letting - a thing from the past when we didn't know better. how to prevent megafires? How about extinguishing them while they are just fires? A fleet of 100 tanker planes is just a few $B investment with couple hundred $M/year maintenance. Several round trips of those 100 tanker planes in the first day when these fires have just started would have solved the issue. They would…

I think what you might be missing in your analysis is that preventative approaches that only "stop" the spread of fires only contribute to reducing the occurrence rate of catastrophic events, but also contribute to increasing the severity of them as well (through build up of fuel).

Robust solutions should ideally both manage occurrence and severity of catastrophic events, and be able to scale through multiple magnitudes of risk. With the limitations we have, we're typically stuck with really only managing one of those levers - but we should absolutely hesitate from solutions that increase severity.

We should be spending money scaling our ability to actively fight fires once they start, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't also spend money and resources to try to reduce the scope and scale of fires that we do need to fight.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#44

Post by murgindrag »

jefftk wrote: post #29

It's amazing how many obstacles we put in the way of planned burns, to prevent problems that we've been just have to accept when they happen unexpectedly on their own: Planned burns are human-made events and as such need to follow all environmental compliance rules. That includes the Clean Air Act, which limits the emission of PM 2.5, or fine particulate matter, from human-caused events. In California, those rules ar…

One more odd thing is how fast we forget. There were no articles after-the-fact even indicating the fire was over, or how things were going. I searched major web sites like NY Times. Things were burning like crazy, and then reporting stopped.

Is it over? Is it contained? Are San Francisco, Mountain View, and Stanford just gone? Reading the newspapers, you just don't know.

I'd like to have a retrospective. How much damage was there? What's gone? What's still there? Etc.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#45

Post by luckylion »

Why is harvesting the trees not an option? Is the wood of such a low quality that you can't use it at all? Are the areas not reachable?

I understand burning it might be faster, but it has the obvious problems that are apparently stopping them from doing it today. But why not just allow trees to be harvested?

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#46

Post by luckylion »

umvi wrote: post #5
perl4ever wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how a private individual would deal with the liability.

When I lived in the suburbs of Naples people would burn their trash in big piles whenever the garbage collectors went on strike and "nobody" was liable, even though sometimes the fire would spread and burn/damage stuff on the neighbor's property. Then again, Europeans don't have the same litigious culture/attitude that Americans have.

At least Italians don't, but you get a lot of problems stemming from the "whatever, just burn it, not my problem, I just want my garbage gone"-culture.

You'd get into serious trouble doing the same further north in Germany, Denmark or Sweden.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#47

Post by mschuster91 »

samcheng wrote: post #22
dragonwriter wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's true that CDF firefighters make a decent living, but it's also true that every other fire department pays better. Except CDCR, which pays notably worse, but that's not really competing for firefighters. > There doesn't seem to be a mechanism for the state to require a prescribed burn through private lands, like you might do in a national forest or BLM holding. There's not mechanism for the state to require a p…

To save some people a search: CDF = California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, also known as "CALFIRE" CDCR = California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, which in this context supplies convict labor to fight fires. One issue this year is that the California State Prisons are all horrifically overrun with COVID-19, thereby incapacitating what had previously been a critical firefighting functio…

Ideally, the state should not require (it is what it is) slave labor to fulfill basic needs of society. Yes I know in theory it is voluntary and everything, but it is wage dumping using forced labor - because without said slave labor the state would have to pay a lot more for a real standing force.

As with most cost cutting measures, eventually the chickens will come home to roost, and there has been quite a horde of chickens that came home over the last months, across the world.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#48

Post by brudgers »

Academics believe that between 4.4 million and 11.8 million acres burned each year in prehistoric California.

Even the low end of this is several times what burned this year. I’m drawing a blank on how that level of burning would prevent “mega fires” unless the idea is to replace them with “super mega fires” several times larger.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#49

Post by brudgers »

jefftk wrote: post #29

It's amazing how many obstacles we put in the way of planned burns, to prevent problems that we've been just have to accept when they happen unexpectedly on their own: Planned burns are human-made events and as such need to follow all environmental compliance rules. That includes the Clean Air Act, which limits the emission of PM 2.5, or fine particulate matter, from human-caused events. In California, those rules ar…

Clean air is the problem?

Most people’s rational plan will be to breathing smoke because they can’t fly to the summer house, live in an apartment without central air, have to go to work, and don’t have the money for Marie Antoinette’s idea of “rational options.”

They don’t live in a bubble where that flavor of bullshit is palatable.

Re: We Know How to Prevent Megafires

#50

Post by perl4ever »

dmurray wrote: post #10
perl4ever wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how a private individual would deal with the liability.

Here in Ireland farmers regularly burn fields and occasionally the fire gets out of control and destroys an entire mountainside. A couple of years ago one came within 100m of my parents' house - one more change of wind direction and they would have lost everything. No one ever seems to get criminally or civilly prosecuted for starting the fires. Often everyone knows who did it but there's no irrefutable evidence and…

Regardless of what usually happens, there have been instances where someone who was negligent or started a fire for fun, was blamed for starting something that destroyed vast amounts of property and killed people. I think they can be/have been considered criminally and/or civilly liable.

If it's ok for people to just start fires without any particular authorization or restrictions, then it's not clear to me how you distinguish them legally if the consequences should be particularly bad.

I just don't understand logically, how you can define arson or negligence without clear rules.

It's clearly incorrect that California just doesn't care. After all after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018) PG&E was charged with 84 counts of manslaughter.

Also, remember Sergio Martinez? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Fire

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