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If somebody in your neighborhood was being careless and accidentally burned your house down, would you handle that situation exactly the same way you would if y
by twblalock 8y ago
If somebody in your neighborhood was being careless and accidentally burned your house down, would you handle that situation exactly the same way you would if your house had caught on fire because it was struck by lightning?
Would it make a difference if that person had a history of disobeying safety rules, had been warned a number of times, and had caused significant damage in the past?
The fact that some subset of fires can't be prevented doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and never try to prevent any fires. When somebody causes one we should investigate and take appropriate action.
- jfoutz 8y agoSo, fuck pg&e. I’m not a fan. That said, this isn’t quite burned down a house, which they should absolutely be on the hook for, this is the whole city burned down. There is sort of a structural responsibility to limit blast radius of bad actors that also failed.
- adrianmonk 8y agoIf I improperly stored tons of firewood right against my house, and someone caught the firewood in fire, and then my house burned down, I think I'd share some of the blame. Some blame would have to go on the other person too.
- chongli 8y agoYour analogy doesn't quite fit. A wildfire zone with large amounts of flammable dry vegetation isn't analogous to an ordinary house. It's more like a house with a gas leak that's been left alone long enough for the entire building to fill up with natural gas. Now, in that situation, does it matter whether your house gets struck by lightning or your neighbour's cigarette lighter happens to set it off near a cracked window? Assuming your neighbour is miraculously unhurt, the answer is no.
- oasisbob 8y agoDrive onto ranch land with a hot exhaust system, pull off the road into tall grass, start a 200 acre grass fire, and try to use that line of reasoning with a with a straight face.