Wildfire ‘24

[neufox47]

The people most screwed after fire are those uninsured or severely underinsured. The second most are the people whose house didn’t burn but they are in the middle of a disaster site. Insurance typically pays for cleaning and for additional living expenses for you to live elsewhere while that is happening. For a heavily smoked house they will remove and clean all clothes / fabrics, etc., throw away things that can’t be cleaned (couches if bad enough) and then scrub all surfaces with special cleaners and sponges. They may also use ozone and other air treatments. They are pretty good at removing the smoke but then they want you to move back in. And you still have fire debris all around, so how long until the house smells of smoke again? They may end up living in a house with a full time generator for power and your only neighbors are construction crews.


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[MultiVerse]

Fires can be ecologically damaging to all ecosystems. Providing context to your odd post (which misconstrues the context of the figure), here’s the State/federal wildfire task force web page where that figure came from:

https://wildfiretaskforce.org/southe...nt-shrublands/

You misunderstood the context. Jong made the good point clearing all vegetation increases mudslide risk. So the context is it's not about clearing all vegetation, but instead about clearing invasive species and fire hazards near structures. With other types of ecosystems people talk about doing things like controlled burns etc. And some ecosystems require fire as a natural part of their cycle. So the post might seem odd to you due to unfamiliarity.

California shrubland wildfires are not the result of natural fuel accumulation. With coastal shrublands prescribed burns provide little benefit. In fact, fires and burns tend to hurt shrublands by increasing fire frequency. The point of the graphic was to show different types of ecosystems require different types of management, "Management of chaparral ecosystems has been controversial because actions to improve its ecological resilience to wildfire are different from those recommended to improve forest ecosystems’ wildfire resilience."

[old goat]

It may be fine to leave the chaparral alone, but what do you do with the dense concentration of dead trees--i.e. houses. We can clear the forest floor and thin the standing timber but how much good does it do when houses are close enough together for fire to spread from one to the next, Historically, fires that wiped out whole towns and cities were not rare (especially fires that wiped out whole Chinatowns--several of those in Truckee's past.) Modern FD's and building codes have mostly eliminated those but in the face of recurring severe drought plus wind I doubt they can be eliminated entirely.

[MultiVerse]

Yeah, that's where strategic fuel breaks, defensive space next to structures, removing deadwood, and building more fire resistant homes comes in. That's why one of the biggest changes that needs to be made is the adoption of mandatory community-wide wildfire plans to replace ineffective patchwork plans. It's about adaptation. The types of adaptation will be different for Truckee than for coastal areas.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

What do you imagine a strategic fuel break looks like that would be effective for this specific terrain, weather and fuel?


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[MultiVerse]

Any number of things. You could use low-flammable, drought-tolerant native plants to create a natural barrier, or other types of natural barriers, access roads, are even bare strips of gravel etc. The fact that houses are built on hillsides means other types of things can be built there too. Research shows fuel breaks in Southern California stop up to 65% of fires depending on the type of forest and work well for shrub fires. And because fires damage shrublands, the benefits of fuel breaks are mutually beneficial

[MagnificentUnicorn]

So like the fire roads, chaparral, sage, and roads in the subdivisions that burned?


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[MultiVerse]

Everything burned, not just shrubs. So all the non-native trees, non-native grasses, the decorative plantings next to houses and so on. Rebuilding for wildfire mitigation would look a lot different, that's the point

[MagnificentUnicorn]

The point is that there are fire roads and large sections of native flora in the Santa Monica mountains and foothills surrounding the LA basin and fires can be contained under “normal” circumstances. Add drought conditions, low humidity and strong off shore winds, the other thirty five percent of fires, and there is no containing/controlling those fires until the wind dies down and/or the fuel is gone.


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[MultiVerse]

That's where Meadow Skipper's editorial comes in, "the fire disasters that we’re seeing today are less wildland fires than urban fires, Cohen said. Shifting this understanding could lead to more effective prevention strategies"

"No longer is it a matter of preventing wildfires but instead preventing points of ignition within communities by employing “home-hardening” strategies — proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding — and enjoining neighbors in collective efforts such as brush clearing"

In other words, it's not just one thing. It's not just about the wildland-urban interface. It's about the entire system both wild and urban


https://www.latimes.com/california/s...changing-times

[old goat]

That's like saying the solution to peace in the middle east is for Israel and the Palestinians to make an agreement.

[yeahman]

The people most screwed after fire are those uninsured or severely underinsured. The second most are the people whose house didn’t burn but they are in the middle of a disaster site. Insurance typically pays for cleaning and for additional living expenses for you to live elsewhere while that is happening. For a heavily smoked house they will remove and clean all clothes / fabrics, etc., throw away things that can’t be cleaned (couches if bad enough) and then scrub all surfaces with special cleaners and sponges. They may also use ozone and other air treatments. They are pretty good at removing the smoke but then they want you to move back in. And you still have fire debris all around, so how long until the house smells of smoke again? They may end up living in a house with a full time generator for power and your only neighbors are construction crews.


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This is good info, thanks.

[John_B]

Multiverse's postings read like a non self aware AI bot that thinks it's got everything figured out.

[MagnificentUnicorn]

I’m glad I’m not the only one…


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[Pow4Brains]

This is good info, thanks.

Having just gone through this on a personally with garage fire, it totally depends on the policy. Luckily for us the policy read, all contents must be restored to pre-fire condition including smell. Anything with plastics is junk. I.e skis, they look perfectly fine but still smell.


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[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

Is anyone going to ask where this valve is

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lgbwkcl4tw2m

[J. Barron DeJong]

Apparently the valve is hidden in Washington State.https://bsky.app/profile/qurwin1890..../3lgc6zuqrv22z

[TBS]

But…where is the pipe that moves the Washington water over (under?) the Columbia River?

[Meadow Skipper]

That's like saying the solution to peace in the middle east is for Israel and the Palestinians to make an agreement.

lol. ^He’s right you know.

[Meadow Skipper]

Apparently the valve is hidden in Washington State.https://bsky.app/profile/qurwin1890..../3lgc6zuqrv22z

Fuck that’s a funny post.

The sad part is that people believe him. Well, that and his new reinstatement.

[J. Barron DeJong]

Maybe MV is assuming a can opener. He studied Econ after all.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assume_a_can_opener

[MultiVerse]

That's like saying the solution to peace in the middle east is for Israel and the Palestinians to make an agreement.

Yeah, the 2018 Camp Fire was even more destructive and deadly than the LA fires (at this point). Only about half of the houses have been rebuilt since. And only about half of those have been built to be fire resilient. So there's all these empty lots with vegetation, next to houses with stick-built eaves, next to more resilient houses. It's not a recipe for success.

And in case it wasn't clear from the discussion above, when people see videos of the LA blizzard infernos in urban areas those billions of embers in 90mph winds are mostly urban combustibles, not chaparral. Chaparral burns fast but it's not very dense fuel. It's done emitting embers in minutes, then it's just smoldering. Structures are a much bigger problem. Structures fires are a lot harder to manage because they're denser and burn for much longer. A house or commercial structure will continuously emit millions of embers for hours.

It becomes an exponential headache. Once there are five, ten, hundreds of structures burning each emitting columns of embers then at that point even an army of firefighters can only do triage. What they're forced to do is try and make a stand to save things that might be defensible because the number of fires are constantly ballooning around them. It's many orders of magnitude harder to fight than a vegetation fire. That's why Trump's nonsense about water or too few firefighters or whatever is unhinged. That's also why there has to be a lot more focus on the built environment.

Ring camera footage of Eaton Fire embers:

https://x.com/hurricanejrnl/status/1880099592462799254

[MultiVerse]

Maybe MV is assuming a can opener. He studied Econ after all.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assume_a_can_opener

lol, these are called wicked problems. You should look it up. You might actually learn something instead of just parroting Krugman all the time

Multiverse's postings read like a non self aware AI bot that thinks it's got everything figured out.

I’m glad I’m not the only one

They're all singularity threads to me, cupcakes

[old goat]

Just rake the forest and you'll find the valve.

[old goat]

Meanwhile, as people all over the country donate for aid to LA fire victims, landlords are gouging renters.
https://apnews.com/article/la-fires-...494a9364ff60f2