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>"which even a Calabasan could suffer sudden and catastrophic environmental injustice." What a crazy tactic to switch blame from the City of LA's total failure

>"which even a Calabasan could suffer sudden and catastrophic environmental injustice." What a crazy tactic to switch blame from the City of LA's total failure, to prevent and stop the fire, to the environment. Everyone knows that California is dry. Everyone knows that everything West of the Mississippi is dry. For how long? Much longer than industry has existed. I'd consider it to be a failure of environmental advocacy to be so ham-fisted so as to drive people away from policy support because you can't fight the impulse to abuse the issue to absolve the guilty.

estearum 1y ago
Neither the City of LA nor any city in the world has a municipal water supply equipped to combat an urban wildfire. Embers were blown miles ahead of the fire front onto new rooftops. Using guidelines from the National Fire Academy to suppress housefires, they would've needed to simultaneously deploy 10 or 12 thousand industrial-zone (not residential-zone) fire hydrants. Not only do those not exist, but there would've been no way to pressurize them simultaneously. At only hour 4 of the fire (1200 acres, assume 5% are structures), they already would've had to deploy 1800 industrial-zone fire hydrants to suppress it. Again using NFA's flow rate guidelines. The Santa Ynez Reservoir, had it been full, would've been emptied in about an hour assuming it could maintain pressure (which it couldn't). Wildfires are fundamentally fought with firebreaks and aircraft, both of which are extremely challenging in high-wind urban environments. They are contained until they burn out their fuel. They are not ever combatted with municipal water supplies. Can you state specifically what were obviously avoidable failures?
- WalterBright 1y ago
  > Can you state specifically what were obviously avoidable failures? Strategically removing/reducing fire-prone vegetation in the hills surrounding LA?
  - nradov 1y ago
    You've got to be kidding. Have you ever even gone hiking in those hills? Much of the terrain doesn't allow for heavy equipment use. The areas where the wildfires spread fastest are so rough and steep that even doing it by manual labor is extremely challenging. The state and local governments simply don't have that many workers (or goats), or the budget to pay for the work. The scale of the problem is immense.
    - WalterBright 1y ago
      > Much of the terrain doesn't allow for heavy equipment use Do the areas that are reachable. After all, somehow roads manage to get constructed. > or the budget Well, the budget for the devastation from the fires will be orders of magnitude more. Fences can also be constructed that will stop flaming debris from being pushed across the ground.
      - nradov 1y ago
        You're not making any sense. Even with roads, the terrain above and below the roads is largely inaccessible. If you haven't personally traveled through those areas then you might not be able to visualize the difficulty. As for fences, what a stupid and pointless idea. The wildfires spread largely by embers blown up in the air, not by flaming debris being pushed across the ground. And what exactly are you going to build the fences out of?
        WalterBright 1y ago
        In the vicinity of San Francisco, in the 80s, there was a big fire in a rural area, where every house but one burned to the ground. The one was untouched. One feature it had was a low masonry wall about 20 feet away from the house. The firemen quoted in the newspaper said that wall was instrumental in keeping rolling, burning debris away from the house. Fires aren't always accompanied by high velocity winds. Lower velocity winds will pile up the embers behind various obstacles, like a low wall. Masonry walls also are an obstacle for the wind, which will slow down near the ground, and behind the wall it will be still, which will result in debris falling to the ground. The wall can also be made of chicken wire. It would be appropriate to experiment with various forms of inexpensive fencing like chicken wire. As for hills, it isn't necessary to denude them completely of vegetation. Just the parts that are easily accessed, and alongside the roads. I seriously doubt experienced wildfire firefighters would agree with your assessment that it's completely hopeless.
hedora 1y ago
California is digging out of a combination of over a century of misguided forest management efforts (replacing thousands of years of work by indigenous people with fire suppression), and also unprecedented climate change. Should they do more? Of course. With what resources? I recently learned 82% of California fire fighters are unpaid volunteers. That doesn’t include the prison labor. The entire government has its priorities completely wrong, especially at the federal level. Blaming the city of LA makes very little sense. Blaming environmentalists for consistently sounding the alarm over this stuff for 50+ years and then being ignored also doesn’t make sense. One thing that does make sense: Look at the writings of the people that blocked wind and nuclear power in the 1980’s, and solar / batteries in the 1990s. They explicitly said they knew their actions would burn the planet down, and it didn’t matter to them. Now they’ve dismantling our democracy, eliminating emergency response groups like FEMA, and retasking the national guard (California’s last line of fire defense) as an illegal police force.
- duped 1y ago
  > California is digging out of a combination of over a century of misguided forest management efforts Including building in the chaparral hills in the first place. Sane policy would be to forbid new construction where fires have ravaged in the past or at least deny insurance, because it's like building in a floodplain. The problem is that the same area is suffering from systemic under-construction of housing.
- nradov 1y ago
  Your comment is quite disconnected from reality. Blaming the city of LA makes a lot of sense. The mayor Karen Bass was completely ineffectual. And even before she was elected the city had failed to properly upgrade their fire fighting infrastructure or building codes. Most volunteer fire fighters act as reserves in more rural areas and are only called up for major incidents. The city of LA and surrounding cities like Calabasas don't rely heavily on volunteers. Climate change might be a minor factor in the intensity of the 2025 Southern California wildfires but those have been happening periodically for millennia. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) will sometimes dump a lot of rain on Southern California for several years at a stretch causing extensive brush growth, then shift north for several years allowing everything to dry out. At that point any little spark will ignite a raging wildfire, especially when the Santa Ana winds are blowing. This is not "forest" that can be actively managed, it's chaparral in rough hilly terrain. It's simply impossible to clear much of the brush or conduct controlled burns. The only effective measures are building fire-resistant structures with defensible space around them — or simply not building in those areas at all.

estearum 1y ago

Neither the City of LA nor any city in the world has a municipal water supply equipped to combat an urban wildfire. Embers were blown miles ahead of the fire front onto new rooftops. Using guidelines from the National Fire Academy to suppress housefires, they would've needed to simultaneously deploy 10 or 12 thousand industrial-zone (not residential-zone) fire hydrants. Not only do those not exist, but there would've been no way to pressurize them simultaneously. At only hour 4 of the fire (1200 acres, assume 5% are structures), they already would've had to deploy 1800 industrial-zone fire hydrants to suppress it. Again using NFA's flow rate guidelines. The Santa Ynez Reservoir, had it been full, would've been emptied in about an hour assuming it could maintain pressure (which it couldn't). Wildfires are fundamentally fought with firebreaks and aircraft, both of which are extremely challenging in high-wind urban environments. They are contained until they burn out their fuel. They are not ever combatted with municipal water supplies. Can you state specifically what were obviously avoidable failures?

WalterBright 1y ago
> Can you state specifically what were obviously avoidable failures? Strategically removing/reducing fire-prone vegetation in the hills surrounding LA?
- nradov 1y ago
  You've got to be kidding. Have you ever even gone hiking in those hills? Much of the terrain doesn't allow for heavy equipment use. The areas where the wildfires spread fastest are so rough and steep that even doing it by manual labor is extremely challenging. The state and local governments simply don't have that many workers (or goats), or the budget to pay for the work. The scale of the problem is immense.
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    > Much of the terrain doesn't allow for heavy equipment use Do the areas that are reachable. After all, somehow roads manage to get constructed. > or the budget Well, the budget for the devastation from the fires will be orders of magnitude more. Fences can also be constructed that will stop flaming debris from being pushed across the ground.
    - nradov 1y ago
      You're not making any sense. Even with roads, the terrain above and below the roads is largely inaccessible. If you haven't personally traveled through those areas then you might not be able to visualize the difficulty. As for fences, what a stupid and pointless idea. The wildfires spread largely by embers blown up in the air, not by flaming debris being pushed across the ground. And what exactly are you going to build the fences out of?
      - WalterBright 1y ago
        In the vicinity of San Francisco, in the 80s, there was a big fire in a rural area, where every house but one burned to the ground. The one was untouched. One feature it had was a low masonry wall about 20 feet away from the house. The firemen quoted in the newspaper said that wall was instrumental in keeping rolling, burning debris away from the house. Fires aren't always accompanied by high velocity winds. Lower velocity winds will pile up the embers behind various obstacles, like a low wall. Masonry walls also are an obstacle for the wind, which will slow down near the ground, and behind the wall it will be still, which will result in debris falling to the ground. The wall can also be made of chicken wire. It would be appropriate to experiment with various forms of inexpensive fencing like chicken wire. As for hills, it isn't necessary to denude them completely of vegetation. Just the parts that are easily accessed, and alongside the roads. I seriously doubt experienced wildfire firefighters would agree with your assessment that it's completely hopeless.

hedora 1y ago

California is digging out of a combination of over a century of misguided forest management efforts (replacing thousands of years of work by indigenous people with fire suppression), and also unprecedented climate change. Should they do more? Of course. With what resources? I recently learned 82% of California fire fighters are unpaid volunteers. That doesn’t include the prison labor. The entire government has its priorities completely wrong, especially at the federal level. Blaming the city of LA makes very little sense. Blaming environmentalists for consistently sounding the alarm over this stuff for 50+ years and then being ignored also doesn’t make sense. One thing that does make sense: Look at the writings of the people that blocked wind and nuclear power in the 1980’s, and solar / batteries in the 1990s. They explicitly said they knew their actions would burn the planet down, and it didn’t matter to them. Now they’ve dismantling our democracy, eliminating emergency response groups like FEMA, and retasking the national guard (California’s last line of fire defense) as an illegal police force.

duped 1y ago
> California is digging out of a combination of over a century of misguided forest management efforts Including building in the chaparral hills in the first place. Sane policy would be to forbid new construction where fires have ravaged in the past or at least deny insurance, because it's like building in a floodplain. The problem is that the same area is suffering from systemic under-construction of housing.
nradov 1y ago
Your comment is quite disconnected from reality. Blaming the city of LA makes a lot of sense. The mayor Karen Bass was completely ineffectual. And even before she was elected the city had failed to properly upgrade their fire fighting infrastructure or building codes. Most volunteer fire fighters act as reserves in more rural areas and are only called up for major incidents. The city of LA and surrounding cities like Calabasas don't rely heavily on volunteers. Climate change might be a minor factor in the intensity of the 2025 Southern California wildfires but those have been happening periodically for millennia. The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) will sometimes dump a lot of rain on Southern California for several years at a stretch causing extensive brush growth, then shift north for several years allowing everything to dry out. At that point any little spark will ignite a raging wildfire, especially when the Santa Ana winds are blowing. This is not "forest" that can be actively managed, it's chaparral in rough hilly terrain. It's simply impossible to clear much of the brush or conduct controlled burns. The only effective measures are building fire-resistant structures with defensible space around them — or simply not building in those areas at all.