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Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut





I am surprised the media hasn’t been more focused on this, but the Camp Fire literally destroyed an entire town and some 7,000 homes, and is still out of control. I saw video of parts of Malibu burning up too. The stories I am reading about people trying to get out is pretty unreal. I can’t imagine a more terrifying way to go out. Anyone live near the area or know anyone who is? Saying a prayer for all those affected.

I swear living in Cali comes with some high prices. No pun intended.

https://apple.news/ADzRlokC0SneoLt5whOVKDA

https://apple.news/ARfLR56ELQb-ta09a1LrzYw

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/11/12 15:01:05


 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle






California has fires every year. The ecosystem has evolved to burn periodically, though climate change is making it worse right now. Also the overwhelming majority (like over 90% majority) of people do not live in an area where there is a significant fire risk. These factors mean it is not particularly news worthy as compared to other natural disasters.

This one is particularly bad because it burned so fast.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/11/12 17:46:20


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KTG17 wrote:I am surprised the media hasn’t been more focused on this

What media are you referring to? The fires started out taking up half of any half-hour news show I've seen for the last week, and they still spend a good 5-10 minutes on them every night.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

This one is particularly bad because it burned so fast.

These two are particularly bad because one destroyed a town (Paradise, CA up north) and the other is inconveniencing celebrities in Malibu (and burning out homes of other people, but that's fairly downplayed).
Between them, the death toll is up to about 30 already.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2018/11/12 18:05:40


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I see the Paradise (really ironic name there) one as the severe fire and the other is more run-of-the-mill piggybacking on the news of the former. I feel like we should be adjusting our standards for what an 'average' fire is upward every year due to climate change making things more arid. Ditto for east coast hurricanes.

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Some crazy photos coming out of the Camp Fire. It is like something out of Walking Dead or Road Warrior.

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 KTG17 wrote:
I am surprised the media hasn’t been more focused on this
It's been a front page event on the BBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC websites for a couple of days now...


That said, be fair, having lived in southern California most of my life, this is a yearly occurrence. Instead of snow days, we had fire days. Had to evacuate my home at least a half dozen times as a kid due to fires, a couple more times as an adult, and watched streets that friends lived on burn live on CNN more than once.


I swear living in Cali comes with some high prices. No pun intended.
Very high indeed. It also doesn't help that lots of people still dont clear their property lines of shrubs or build mcmansions and 4000 unit developments of million dollar tract houses among what is essentially a tinder and matchbox landscape of dry chaparral.

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When the costs of living in Cali are evaluated, fire risk is low on the list. It is something one can reliably avoid by moving out of/not moving to the at-risk areas. Compare to the southeast; you cannot exactly avoid a hurricane zone. I count ourselves quite lucky on the scale of natural disasters that affect us. And as Vaktathi mentioned, when it is rich people's homes being burned down there is little need for sympathy as they fully had the ability to protect themselves but chose not to spend the money.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/11/12 19:45:54


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Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut





Yeah I have only see bits and pieces of the news on tv. It’s only been online that I have gotten any information.

Fires may not be on the list of things to consider when living in Cali, but between the high cost of living, growing homelessness, earth quakes hanging over your head, and then this. I mean, if this was a isolated fire that took out some ranches, not really news worthy. But it took out a town. 7000 homes gone and that number will grow. That is some serious gak to me.

And due to global warming, I imagine these fires will increase in number in the coming years and cause more destruction.
   
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...this is made worst because of the Santa Ana winds.

Be safe Californian dakkaroos!

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Made in nl
Pragmatic Primus Commanding Cult Forces






It is been a news item for several days now on this side of the big pond as well.
Pretty bad for a wildfire, although not as bad yet as the fires we got this summer in Europe. I hope that those missing will be found alive, or else this one may turn out to be a whole lot worse.
This year seems like a bad fire year.

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Made in us
Omnipotent Necron Overlord






Unfortunately the prognosis is pretty grim. Unless something drastic is done - or the vulnerable areas start getting more annual rainfall (unlikely) the problem will get worse.

What does drastic mean? Drastic means go in to vulnerable forest areas with expensive fire prevention techniques / controlled burning / clearing dry Forrest floor fuel for the fire by hand if you have to. It could even be made profitable if logging companies were allowed to go in and clear declared areas of Forrest to create fire barriers.

It really is crazy how much damage a simple camp fire can cause in these conditions. This does category 5 hurricane level destruction if it gets out of control. More needs to be done to prevent this.


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Brushfires have always been an occurance in So Cal because a lot of it is basically desert. Each fall you have the Santa Anna winds coming through the mountains which is like dumping gas on the lower half of the state. All it takes is one spark and everything rages out of control, plus a number of the recent fires have been deliberately set.

CA has also been in a drought cycle for the last 25 years which is made worse b the urban sprawl of LA. All of the concrete and blacktop elevates the air temp along the coast and it's created a high pressure heat zone that actively diverts rain clouds away and further north so they're receiving even less rain then normal which is already sparse. Some of it is natural but a lot of it is due to people altering the local enviroment and building in scrubland which shouldn't be allowed for housing to start with. Those Malibu mansions all have green lawns because they are watered but everything else that grows there naturally is dry brown scrub. While it's sad to see people have died its hardly surprising as they just keep rebuilding in the same spots after each round of fires.
   
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 stanman wrote:
Brushfires have always been an occurance in So Cal because a lot of it is basically desert. Each fall you have the Santa Anna winds coming through the mountains which is like dumping gas on the lower half of the state. All it takes is one spark and everything rages out of control, plus a number of the recent fires have been deliberately set.

CA has also been in a drought cycle for the last 25 years which is made worse b the urban sprawl of LA. All of the concrete and blacktop elevates the air temp along the coast and it's created a high pressure heat zone that actively diverts rain clouds away and further north so they're receiving even less rain then normal which is already sparse. Some of it is natural but a lot of it is due to people altering the local enviroment and building in scrubland which shouldn't be allowed for housing to start with. Those Malibu mansions all have green lawns because they are watered but everything else that grows there naturally is dry brown scrub. While it's sad to see people have died its hardly surprising as they just keep rebuilding in the same spots after each round of fires.

True - lots of compounding factors. Drought being the main factor. The next being human negligence of building where they shouldn't then not doing enough to protect those who build where they shouldn't.

Really Pistachios are to blame. Or at least the last documentary I watched on this issue lead me to believe that. In any case I think we can both agree this is only going to get worse.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/11/12 21:35:34


 
   
Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut





I was in Deadwood, SD some years ago not long after a fire nearly hit them. You could see where the fire stopped just short in the hills above the town. Deadwood is a really small place but with the casinos and motels there, and not much else around, I thought at the time how devastating it would be to lose your employment due to something like that, in the event that Deadwood itself was burned down.

So I can only imagine how tough it has to be to lose both your home and maybe your place of work if the whole town you were in went up. Maybe that’s why I am so taken back by the whole thing.
   
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 Xenomancers wrote:
Unfortunately the prognosis is pretty grim. Unless something drastic is done - or the vulnerable areas start getting more annual rainfall (unlikely) the problem will get worse.

What does drastic mean? Drastic means go in to vulnerable forest areas with expensive fire prevention techniques / controlled burning / clearing dry Forrest floor fuel for the fire by hand if you have to. It could even be made profitable if logging companies were allowed to go in and clear declared areas of Forrest to create fire barriers.

It really is crazy how much damage a simple camp fire can cause in these conditions. This does category 5 hurricane level destruction if it gets out of control. More needs to be done to prevent this.

The prognosis is not that grim--unlike other disasters the occurance of a fire or earthquake 'resets the timer' so to speak. An areas that burns is unlikely to do so again for years or even decades. If it burns during a drought and the drought continues than the returning plant growth is more limited, further reducing fire risk. Earthquakes are a result of pressure buildup and release so their occurance is a reseting of the timer in a pretty literal sense. Meanwhile a hurricane has no impact on the likelyhood of formation the following year.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/11/13 00:34:59


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When the fires are extinguished I'd be concern with the next major rainstorm causing mudslides...

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Made in au
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/11/13 00:44:57


   
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Southern California, USA

People really need to stop building and living in homes in the dry scrubby hills in SoCal. I hope everyone makes it out okay but this happens all the time and something should be done about it besides... y'know. Shrugging our shoulders and doing a rain dance every year.

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 TheCustomLime wrote:
People really need to stop building and living in homes in the dry scrubby hills in SoCal. I hope everyone makes it out okay but this happens all the time and something should be done about it besides... y'know. Shrugging our shoulders and doing a rain dance every year.
Could say the same about any number of flood zones too, or more long term near volcanoes. Something about human nature I guess.

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Or it's simple economics and affordability in real estate. Malibu excepted, of course.

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 whembly wrote:
...this is made worst because of the Santa Ana winds.

Be safe Californian dakkaroos!


I don't remember santa Anna's in the winter. When did that start?

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Voss wrote:
Or it's simple economics and affordability in real estate. Malibu excepted, of course.
Human nature being the lack of risk-acknowledgement when purchasing said real estate. Yes it is cheaper--human nature has us overlook the part where it is not cheaper once one's home has been destroyed. Raw economics would have demand be so low that purchases would only be made when building and rebuilding the home was cheaper.

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Pleasant Valley, Iowa

 KTG17 wrote:
Yeah I have only see bits and pieces of the news on tv. It’s only been online that I have gotten any information.


Regardless of what venue you choose to get your news from, I pretty much never watch the live cable version of it, and have browser scripting set to stop autoplay videos. I read fast and would way rather read the news than listen to some talking head waste 2 minutes fluffing in that weird newscaster voice, then the actual news part, then more filler and inanery.

As has been said, this has been a huge story for days, but the takeaway should really be that any version or flavor of cable news is hot garbage imo for the presentation and delivery aspects alone.

Do they have those trees there that start fires "on purpose", so to speak? The ones that exude highly flammable grease and have evolved to mostly survive fires?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/11/13 06:23:25


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Somewhere in south-central England.

Eucalyptus trees, from Australia.

Yes, part of the problem is that a southern mediteranean semi-arid climate has been combined with western European land use concepts which don't suit the environment.

It's all covered in City of Quartz (1990) by Mike Davies.

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 TheCustomLime wrote:
People really need to stop building and living in homes in the dry scrubby hills in SoCal. I hope everyone makes it out okay but this happens all the time and something should be done about it besides... y'know. Shrugging our shoulders and doing a rain dance every year.


People should stop living in the vast flood plains if the Mississippi River as well, but here we are, farming this incredibly fertile soil so people can eat.
   
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Somewhere in south-central England.

It's possible (and necessary) to live in all kinds of places with different natural hazards, providing the planning and building takes these into account and mitigates them.

Part of the problem in California is that a lot of the human land use actually works against the natural environment, rather than with it, and increases the hazards.

The planting of eucalyptus trees is only one example.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/11/13 08:31:44


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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
 TheCustomLime wrote:
People really need to stop building and living in homes in the dry scrubby hills in SoCal. I hope everyone makes it out okay but this happens all the time and something should be done about it besides... y'know. Shrugging our shoulders and doing a rain dance every year.
Could say the same about any number of flood zones too, or more long term near volcanoes. Something about human nature I guess.


With volcanic areas and flood plains there's benefits to farming as those tend to be very fertile ground. It does place the people living in those areas at risk but there are legit beneficial reasons that people have been drawn to those regions throughout history. Malibu's draw however is strictly the scenic view and location it has little to do with the viability of the land itself. It's like purchasing beachfront property and being surprised when a large storm comes through and wipes everything out. People are ruled by their emotions and can be incredibly short sighted and willing to take risks because they are lured in by the sights or status of a location.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/11/13 09:44:24


 
   
Made in gb
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UK

The other issue is that sometimes the risk changes over time. In the UK many old villages in Suffolk and Norfolk are on sandy soils and as the sea has advanced the cliffs have eroded away. So houses and property that once were quite a decent distance back are now right on the edge or falling in. The problem is that people who own such properties wind up stuck with them. No one will buy them for a good price (or even buy them at all), so the owners can't sell them and can't get insurance for the house falling in the sea; which means they can't get the money to get on the property market to buy another home. So they are stuck.

It doesn't help that erosion rates have increased significantly (they now think its due to unregulated, legal offshore dredging of gravel and sand banks which is eating into the beach building supply material in the ocean system in that region) over the years.


So sometimes its not that people are setting in bad places, but that their families and historical settlers settled in decent or only light risk areas and that risk has changed over time.



Another good example is where housing is built in a floodplain or high flood risk area and the builders build in flood protections (either before or after a first flood). This means that the floodwaters can no longer flood a region they traditionally used too and thus the surge ends up bursting in an area which never used to flood before. So suddenly once safe housing gets flooded out. Of course this can result in more protections so somewhere else gets flooded!

Another issue is the loss of tree cover which results in a much faster surface run-off rate which, again, results in historically safe areas getting flooded.


Then you've got the councils who approve building right in a flood rich area and builders who don't care once they've sold the house and moved on.





So there are all sorts of reasons why people can end up living in dangerous or high risk areas; and why people end up stuck there

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https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/scientists-wind-drought-worsen-fires-not-bad-management/ar-BBPCUx2

Just to put the forest management thing to bed. And FYI, eucalyptus trees were not a notable factor in any of these fires, nor any Cali fire I have ever heard of. In socal fires it isn't even forest. This is all natural ecosystem tendancies exacerbated by global warming.

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