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There is great pressure to build on designated flood plains all over the western world as population density increases. Rules are changed to enable building aft
by olivermarks 9y ago
There is great pressure to build on designated flood plains all over the western world as population density increases. Rules are changed to enable building after there are a couple of decades of people 'forgetting' the geographic realities.
You could make a case that the terrible northern california wildfires in Sonoma county are a variation on this theme. Virtually identical huge fires happened in 1964, when there was far less building and population.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/thetake/article/Wine-Country-fire-of-1964-Eerie-similarities-to-12267643.php http://www.sfchronicle.com/thetake/article/Wine-Country-fire...
People forget, subdivisions are built, and people assume someone somewhere did their due dilligence and that it is 'safe' land...
- olivermarks 9y agohttp://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/7534368-181/santa-rosas-devastated-coffey-park?gallery=7515439&artslide=8 http://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/7534368-181/santa-rosas-de... "Surprising as it was to residents, the destruction of Coffey Park wasn’t a mystery to fire scientists. They view it as a rare, but predictable, event that has exposed flaws in the way fire risk is measured and mitigated in California. Because it was outside the officially mapped “very severe” hazard zone, more than five miles to the east, Coffey Park was exempt from regulations designed to make buildings fire resistant in high-risk areas. California fire officials developed hazard maps in the 2000s that for the first time, tied building codes to geographies based on risk. Max Moritz, a fire specialist with the University of California’s Cooperative Extension, said the maps were an important step forward in assessing fire danger. But the Coffey Park catastrophe has shown that the methodology, and the law underlying it, were too narrow."