Less than Ukraine, ask folks who got burnt out on MauiHow many billions of emergency funds will Biden send CA before he leaves office?
Easy to say, I live in the high desert and mountain plain. My neighbors have grass and mesquite everywhere. The insurance companies came through after the fire in 2020. All they did was drop poliices. people just had to pay more simple. My place in the tonto is the same. I love when you guys use the word defensible all while riding around and watching houses burn. I keep 44000 gallons of water on hand and pumps plus my loader. I'll take care of my own thanks. In 2020 when the fires were at our door step the FS ask if they could park in my pasture to watch. Really.I’m on the fence of wanting to go down there due to the pure chaos fighting fire in So Cal brings. Seems the media has more rights than fire personnel down there. My gear is packed and in the truck regardless.
The amount of politics over these fires is unreal. Elected presidents Musk and Trump can’t seem to grasp simple things about firefighting and really aren’t supporting the cause. You cannot stop a fire in the caliber of these winds until they die down. I know a few dozen folks on the frontlines currently and have seen footage from their eyes and wonder how some can be on hotshot crews down there. Homes are so closely stacked together in those subdvisions that you can hear your neighbor a few doors down fart.
Insurance companies not only in California, but Idaho and Montana as well are dropping clients like flies that don’t have defensible space around their houses.
No matter where you live, it’s the homeowners responsibility to be fire wise. Clear your brush and burn it during a good time of year, burn your property every few years with advice/help of the local state office or Fire Department, and possibly have a plan with sprinkler lays you can deploy before you, loved ones, or neighbors evacuate. At the very least if you have a water source the fire crews can throw a high pressure pump into, that’s a plus, If you’re place isn’t defensible and your neighbors place is, I’m going to focus on saving your neighbors first.
If you hear about fellow American’s house burning down and immediately launch into a political tirade or shit eating grin comments on the internet, pat yourself on the back….you are not a good person.
It was weird realizing that everywhere I’ve lived outside of Florida houses are built out of wood instead of concrete block.Watching what is happening in LA scares the living shit out of me as I watch the Boise foothills in town and also up 55 get filled up with houses. We can only build so much, take/divert so much water out of the system of a drying environment before we follow suit.
Last year the fires got damn close - next year? Who knows.
Not sure about your local, but around here structure protection is of top priority in wildfires, especially since the main play lately is to just let them burn. Living in the foothills of the cascades there is almost a zero chance of having a structure survive a moving wildfire without personnel present. The only homes with that chance are outside the timber, once you're in the timber the thermals and topography make it impossible. A full concrete structure with a metal roof would be the only play and even then...It's gonna be a long term process to adapt. Ignition resistant structures and smart landscaping are critical for these fire prone areas. The vast majority of home ignitions during events like this are from embers, not flames. Big, wind driven fires in forests where the natural fuel loads are extremely high will push embers miles ahead of the flaming front. We saw that in Oregon in 2020. And once the first structures ignite, they become the problem fuel not the trees. Structure to structure ignitions are what you generally see.
I've probably removed 1000 or more trees in the last 3 years in the name of wildfire mitigation, but forest management will only get you so far with 70mph winds. I've walked miles and miles of old growth Doug-fir stands that had minimal ladder fuels with near 100% tree mortality from Oregon's 2020 fires. That kind of wind will keep a crown fire rolling even when the forest looks well manicured.
Gotta think about the structures as much or more than the surrounding vegetation.
And "defensible space" is a poor term. It implies that there will be a human being with a hose pipe defending a structure. The best play is to try to create circumstances where the structure has a chance even if no one's available, because that's a way more likely scenario.
Nope not here in Cali. Governor Newsom loves destroying our State.I was in Thousand Oaks back in April and I must say, the fuel load was astounding.
Brush/Trees at 10-12 ft. high and so thick it was impossible to walk more than a few feet.
Do they NEVER do control burns?
Nobody should take pleasure in the suffering of others. But I understand it. When you keep re-electing a guy that is systematically destroying your state, you should not be surprised when people are not that compassionate to your cause. When people see the area, they immediately think of Hollywood actors who are constantly pushing their woke politics on everyone. They want every state to be just like California. Another thing to consider is the press this is getting. It's on every news channel. Meanwhile the hurricane victims got almost nothing, doesn't that make you angry? The media divides us all even with tragedies like this. The first thing I thought about was the homeless population and the regular Americans who live there that aren't that wealthy. They will suffer the most.If you hear about fellow American’s house burning down and immediately launch into a political tirade or shit eating grin comments on the internet, pat yourself on the back….you are not a good person.
Amen!!Nobody should take pleasure in the suffering of others. But I understand it. When you keep re-electing a guy that is systematically destroying your state, you should not be surprised when people are not that compassionate to your cause. When people see the area, they immediately think of Hollywood actors who are constantly pushing their woke politics on everyone. They want every state to be just like California. Another thing to consider is the press this is getting. It's on every news channel. Meanwhile the hurricane victims got almost nothing, doesn't that make you angry? The media divides us all even with tragedies like this. The first thing I thought about was the homeless population and the regular Americans who live there that aren't that wealthy. They will suffer the most.
How many hydrants, private fire connections, broken house faucets etc do you think were open? There isn’t a municipal water system in the world that could have kept up. They aren’t designed for county or city wide fire suppression all at the same time. As someone involved in the business, you already know that.How do you know? Have you designed or reviewed a large city fire water master plan? Of course any master plan system has flaws and limitations. The only way to know is for an inquiry to LA Water and Power’s master plan design, installation, maintenance, and operation, which should happen. There will be TONS of work for civil engineers to determine what happened, how to prevent it and how to rebuild everything. I’ve been involved in the design, project management, inspection, and construction management of large water transition systems, reservoirs, pipelines, pump stations and supervisory control and data acquisition, SCADA, and small distribution systems including fire hydrants and fire services in San Diego city and county for the last 34 years. We have had huge fires in SD, really bad ones 10 years or so and we didn’t have any dry hydrants. The big issue is we didn’t have enough water planes, but we do now. San Diego has been much better organized and managed than LA. However, we are turning blue from red just 20 or so years ago. San Diego has been run better than LA, because it’s leaders have been conservative.
I’m not just “someone in the business”. I’m a registered civil engineer in California with a MS in Civil Engineering in Water Resources with 34 years in design, planning, project management, and construction management in large and small water systems, and infrastructure. There was a huge failure of the system and we will probably never learn the truth. We can agree to disagree. Cheers!How many hydrants, private fire connections, broken house faucets etc do you think were open? There isn’t a municipal water system in the world that could have kept up. They aren’t designed for county or city wide fire suppression all at the same time. As someone involved in the business, you already know that.
And I maintain that municipal drinking water systems aren't designed to fight city wide wildfires for hours on end.I’m not just “someone in the business”. I’m a registered civil engineer in California with a MS in Civil Engineering in Water Resources with 34 years in design, planning, project management, and construction management in large and small water systems, and infrastructure. There was a huge failure of the system and we will probably never learn the truth. We can agree to disagree. Cheers!
With your education and 34 years of experience, what was the failure in the system? Why won't people ever know the truth?I’m not just “someone in the business”. I’m a registered civil engineer in California with a MS in Civil Engineering in Water Resources with 34 years in design, planning, project management, and construction management in large and small water systems, and infrastructure. There was a huge failure of the system and we will probably never learn the truth. We can agree to disagree. Cheers!
You are parroting what the DEI bureaucrats are saying on the news to cover their butts. Public water systems are designed and have been used successfully to fight wildfires in San Diego without running out of water or water pressure. Perhaps San Diego is the only county in the world to do this?And I maintain that municipal drinking water systems aren't designed to fight city wide wildfires for hours on end.
Maybe it was before you were born? Not as many structures as LA, 3,000 structures and 2,000 homes. At the time it was the largest and most destructive wildfire in California’s history. And the water infrastructure did not fail. The way the fire was handled was exceptionally well. https://news.caloes.ca.gov/looking-back-on-the-cedar-fire-20-years-later/#:~:text=Among them was the Cedar Fire, which,Diego County, burning more than 270,000 acresWhen did San Diego have a fire involving anywhere close to the number of structures as these LA fires?