6 ms·

"Previous major wildfires have been sparked by: mower blades, rims of flat tires sparking on pavement, catalytic converters parked over dry grass, sparks from a

by jerf 7y ago

"Previous major wildfires have been sparked by: mower blades, rims of flat tires sparking on pavement, catalytic converters parked over dry grass, sparks from a hammer. And electrical equipment." Honestly, at that point, you have a fire, it's just not burning yet. The idea that we can prevent fires from happening by preventing all sources of ignition in hundreds and hundreds of square miles is completely absurd. Even though Man is responsible for a lot of ignition, he's not responsible for all of them. Even if you completely removed civilization, it's still going to be a fire. I don't have a solution, or any good news here. Best thing I can think of at this point is spending a shit ton of money and creating some very large fire breaks around cities and then burning on purpose, but California probably can't do that either. By the time the eminent domain lawsuits and counterlawsuits happened, the environmental review happens ("we plan on killing lots of things, and then we're going to set the rest of the stuff we didn't kill on fire" isn't exactly going to sail through the review process), and everyone gets their beaks wetted, it'll just end up being a giant waste of money that gets ended with the fires occur anyhow. And the fire breaks would have to be huge; we're probably measuring the necessary widths with miles fairly reasonably. (Possibly <1 mile, but certainly multiple tenths of a mile.) And the liability. Nobody sane would take that job.

rsync 7y ago
"Even though Man is responsible for a lot of ignition, he's not responsible for all of them. Even if you completely removed civilization, it's still going to be a fire." Actually, other than a one-in-a-billion naturally occurring compost pile that, by chance, falls into place and reaches burning temperature, internally, the only natural source of wildland fire ignition is lightning. Which is interesting because in many parts of coastal Marin/Sonoma/Mendocino/Napa counties, there is, essentially, no lightning. I have lived in Marin for ten years and have seen lightning exactly one time - and that was during the rainy season when ignition would have very low consequence. Wildland fires in the north bay / Sac Delta / Wine Country are ignited by people ...
- jerf 7y ago
  My core point is that if your "fire prevention" plan is to drive the number of ignition points to zero, you don't have a fire prevention plan, because even the impossible isn't going to be enough. It's not a sensible answer, and it's not really sensible to blame the fires on the individual ignition events. Or, to put it another way, when we set off an explosive, the explosion isn't really "caused" by the electrical spark; the unusual thing that happened that primarily caused the detonation is the collection of a lot of explosives in one place. Explosives experts are careful around any concentration of explosives, because that's the real cause. By contrast you can play with the electrical detonation system in isolation all day long and at most you'll shock yourself a bit, and that only with extreme carelessness. The primary cause of these fires is the accumulation of huge amounts of easily-burnable material, not which of the thousands+ of ignition events was the unlucky one to set it off.
- dredmorbius 7y ago
  Human sources are about 85% of wildfire ignitions in California. That still leaves 15% of ignitions from natural sources. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-29/how-do-wildfires-start https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-29/how-do-w... Removing the human ignition would likely mean that the blazes from natural sources would take up the slack, and become larger. Another fact that I'm reminded of was that native Americans would themselves set deliberate blazes which would burn over lands fairly frequently. This would mean that there was a history dating back over centuries, possibly several thousands of years, in which large-scale burns were relatively frequent. This would have phased out beginning with the first European settlements in 1769. By 1900, there had been up to 130 years of diminished fire activity already, not from suppression, but from reduced ignition (though intentional burns by early Europeans were also practiced). Reference with multiple further citations: http://www.californiachaparral.com/enativeamericans.html http://www.californiachaparral.com/enativeamericans.html The big change seems to be with the 20th century belief that fire is an invader, undesirable, and should be massively suppressed.
dredmorbius 7y ago
The point that any ignition source no matter how small can spark a major wildfire is precisely my point. I don't think you're contesting this, but I want to clarify the agreement. As to clearing and preemptively burning regions ... one of the more terrifying items that I ran across in the past day was that the Kinkaid fire was burning through areas in which a prior burn, 2017's Tubbs fire, had already burned out: https://sfist.com/2019/10/28/kincade-fire-doubles-in-size-tubbs-territory/ https://sfist.com/2019/10/28/kincade-fire-doubles-in-size-tu... It's not clear how thorough the Tubbs fire was in those areas, or if spread of the Kinkaid fire was moderated. But the fact that two major wildfires can burn through the same area only two years apart is ... sobering. What's effectively NIMBY opposition to wider prescribed burns, firebreaks, expanded evacuation routes, evacuee housing/facilities, structure code and inspection requirements, etc., does seem to be a major factor. But that's still not addressing the fact that fires are simply bigger, hotter, faster, and more unpredictable than they were even just 20 years ago.
nostrademons 7y ago
"The idea that we can prevent fires from happening by preventing all sources of ignition in hundreds and hundreds of square miles is completely absurd." That's true, but PG&E equipment has started more than 1500 fires between 2014 and 2017. That's over one fire per day. 17 out of the 22 biggest California wildfires in the last 5 years have been started by PG&E: https://outline.com/5bxFLb https://outline.com/5bxFLb Arguably the power shutoff was the right short-term move here: during this wind event 4 fires have been traced back to PG&E (so far), but they had 50 incidents of damaged or downed power lines. It could've been a lot worse. Think of it like buffer overflows in C. It's naive to think that you're going to eliminate all security bugs by any one intervention. However, if one class of bugs is responsible for 80% of breaches, isn't it worth investigating to see what you can do about that one class of bug? Here we have an organization that's responsible for 80% of forest fires: you're not going to eliminate all forest fires by firing its management, but shouldn't you at least investigate and see what they might be doing wrong?
- jerf 7y ago
  "However, if one class of bugs is responsible for 80% of breaches, isn't it worth investigating to see what you can do about that one class of bug?" Fires become bigger and bigger the more fuel they accumulate. Security vulnerabilities lack this attribute. Arguably, the best solution wouldn't be to try to extinguish the sources of ignition, but greatly increase them so that it's just something that happens all the time. (Another thing they definitely don't share in common with security vulnerabilities.) Of course, the best solution is to hop in a suitably tricked-out De Lorean and start that policy a hundred years ago. The steady-state of this plan is probably pretty nice. However, getting there from here is a real problem. But I'm not sure there's any way around that problem anymore. That's another part of what I mean by "there's already a fire, it just isn't burning yet"; trying to pretend that there's some solution that doesn't involve fire is just fooling oneself. It's only a question of when, not if. If California could be trusted to do something useful with the time, enough so that they get meaningfully ahead of the still-accumulating fuel, "buying time" would be a viable option, but I see very little evidence that anything useful is being done. Links solicited to the contrary; I haven't gone looking. But if the solution is just "try to never ever spark anything and thus The Problem Is Solved!", yeah, that's not a solution. It does nothing to stop the fire-in-waiting from getting bigger.

by jerf 7y ago

rsync 7y ago

"Even though Man is responsible for a lot of ignition, he's not responsible for all of them. Even if you completely removed civilization, it's still going to be a fire." Actually, other than a one-in-a-billion naturally occurring compost pile that, by chance, falls into place and reaches burning temperature, internally, the only natural source of wildland fire ignition is lightning. Which is interesting because in many parts of coastal Marin/Sonoma/Mendocino/Napa counties, there is, essentially, no lightning. I have lived in Marin for ten years and have seen lightning exactly one time - and that was during the rainy season when ignition would have very low consequence. Wildland fires in the north bay / Sac Delta / Wine Country are ignited by people ...

jerf 7y ago
My core point is that if your "fire prevention" plan is to drive the number of ignition points to zero, you don't have a fire prevention plan, because even the impossible isn't going to be enough. It's not a sensible answer, and it's not really sensible to blame the fires on the individual ignition events. Or, to put it another way, when we set off an explosive, the explosion isn't really "caused" by the electrical spark; the unusual thing that happened that primarily caused the detonation is the collection of a lot of explosives in one place. Explosives experts are careful around any concentration of explosives, because that's the real cause. By contrast you can play with the electrical detonation system in isolation all day long and at most you'll shock yourself a bit, and that only with extreme carelessness. The primary cause of these fires is the accumulation of huge amounts of easily-burnable material, not which of the thousands+ of ignition events was the unlucky one to set it off.
dredmorbius 7y ago
Human sources are about 85% of wildfire ignitions in California. That still leaves 15% of ignitions from natural sources. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-29/how-do-wildfires-start https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-10-29/how-do-w... Removing the human ignition would likely mean that the blazes from natural sources would take up the slack, and become larger. Another fact that I'm reminded of was that native Americans would themselves set deliberate blazes which would burn over lands fairly frequently. This would mean that there was a history dating back over centuries, possibly several thousands of years, in which large-scale burns were relatively frequent. This would have phased out beginning with the first European settlements in 1769. By 1900, there had been up to 130 years of diminished fire activity already, not from suppression, but from reduced ignition (though intentional burns by early Europeans were also practiced). Reference with multiple further citations: http://www.californiachaparral.com/enativeamericans.html http://www.californiachaparral.com/enativeamericans.html The big change seems to be with the 20th century belief that fire is an invader, undesirable, and should be massively suppressed.

dredmorbius 7y ago

The point that any ignition source no matter how small can spark a major wildfire is precisely my point. I don't think you're contesting this, but I want to clarify the agreement. As to clearing and preemptively burning regions ... one of the more terrifying items that I ran across in the past day was that the Kinkaid fire was burning through areas in which a prior burn, 2017's Tubbs fire, had already burned out: https://sfist.com/2019/10/28/kincade-fire-doubles-in-size-tubbs-territory/ https://sfist.com/2019/10/28/kincade-fire-doubles-in-size-tu... It's not clear how thorough the Tubbs fire was in those areas, or if spread of the Kinkaid fire was moderated. But the fact that two major wildfires can burn through the same area only two years apart is ... sobering. What's effectively NIMBY opposition to wider prescribed burns, firebreaks, expanded evacuation routes, evacuee housing/facilities, structure code and inspection requirements, etc., does seem to be a major factor. But that's still not addressing the fact that fires are simply bigger, hotter, faster, and more unpredictable than they were even just 20 years ago.

nostrademons 7y ago

"The idea that we can prevent fires from happening by preventing all sources of ignition in hundreds and hundreds of square miles is completely absurd." That's true, but PG&E equipment has started more than 1500 fires between 2014 and 2017. That's over one fire per day. 17 out of the 22 biggest California wildfires in the last 5 years have been started by PG&E: https://outline.com/5bxFLb https://outline.com/5bxFLb Arguably the power shutoff was the right short-term move here: during this wind event 4 fires have been traced back to PG&E (so far), but they had 50 incidents of damaged or downed power lines. It could've been a lot worse. Think of it like buffer overflows in C. It's naive to think that you're going to eliminate all security bugs by any one intervention. However, if one class of bugs is responsible for 80% of breaches, isn't it worth investigating to see what you can do about that one class of bug? Here we have an organization that's responsible for 80% of forest fires: you're not going to eliminate all forest fires by firing its management, but shouldn't you at least investigate and see what they might be doing wrong?

jerf 7y ago
"However, if one class of bugs is responsible for 80% of breaches, isn't it worth investigating to see what you can do about that one class of bug?" Fires become bigger and bigger the more fuel they accumulate. Security vulnerabilities lack this attribute. Arguably, the best solution wouldn't be to try to extinguish the sources of ignition, but greatly increase them so that it's just something that happens all the time. (Another thing they definitely don't share in common with security vulnerabilities.) Of course, the best solution is to hop in a suitably tricked-out De Lorean and start that policy a hundred years ago. The steady-state of this plan is probably pretty nice. However, getting there from here is a real problem. But I'm not sure there's any way around that problem anymore. That's another part of what I mean by "there's already a fire, it just isn't burning yet"; trying to pretend that there's some solution that doesn't involve fire is just fooling oneself. It's only a question of when, not if. If California could be trusted to do something useful with the time, enough so that they get meaningfully ahead of the still-accumulating fuel, "buying time" would be a viable option, but I see very little evidence that anything useful is being done. Links solicited to the contrary; I haven't gone looking. But if the solution is just "try to never ever spark anything and thus The Problem Is Solved!", yeah, that's not a solution. It does nothing to stop the fire-in-waiting from getting bigger.