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LA wildfires force thousands to evacuate, NASA JPL closed
- zokier 2y agoI was wondering why JPL website was not working, I guess this answers that.
- carabiner 2y agoIt's working fine.
- zokier 2y agohttps://downfor.io/ssd.jpl.nasa.gov https://downfor.io/ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
- carabiner 2y agohttps://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/jpl.nasa.gov https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/jpl.nasa.gov
- Twisol 2y agoThe Horizons website at that domain [0] (which was on HN recently) seems to be down for me as well. FWIW, that's not "the" JPL website though, that's just one of many JPL-hosted websites. [0] https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/ https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons/
- mulmen 2y agoWhy would this answer that?
- edm0nd 2y agowat https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- KoftaBob 2y agoAre you under the impression that their website is hosted on-premises? This ain't the early 90s
- Twisol 2y agoAs an ex-JPLer, it would not have surprised me for this to be the case even in the early 2010s.
- rvnx 2y agoIt looks down, yes the marketing website is fine, but the scientific tools seem to be down. It would be reasonable that they are locally hosted, like close to the sensors.
- Twisol 2y agoWell, most of the actual sensors are in space ;) but yes, telemetry collected via the DSN gets routed through JPL first. Also, in addition to the SSD website linked upthread, the NAIF site [0] (where the SPICE library and kernels can be downloaded) also seems to be down. It would not surprise me in any way if some of these facilities are hosted on-prem and are in a power-down state due to the fires. (Speaking of the DSN, their website [1] is also down.) [0] https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/toolkit.html https://naif.jpl.nasa.gov/naif/toolkit.html [1] https://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/ https://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/
- mturmon 2y agoYou’re correct. The lab management sent out a message to this effect mid-day Wednesday. Many public-facing servers were taken down purposely due to the fires. Part of the lab HPC was also powered down, not sure what its status is now. The head nodes were up earlier today. There are generators for other critical servers, and in particular the DSN operations have been moved temporarily to another location so they could continue.
- 2y ago
- mrbluecoat 2y agoJPL would be a national loss. I hope it doesn't come to that. Stay safe, SoCal folks!
- fidotron 2y agoNo joke. I hope these days it's more spread out and backed up, but at one point they did a lot of phyical archiving related to space exploration there, including huge amounts of transparencies.
- markus_zhang 2y agoI hope nothing will be damaged! Those are priceless treasures.
- throwup238 2y agoAll the big campuses here like JPL and the Getty are built for this (it’s more or less standard now for insuring anything high value). They have landscaping designed to slow down fires, dedicated water systems, and firebreaks all around the buildings. The civilian evacuation order is because the area south of the fire is densely built up with single family homes without much in the way of defenses and JPL has to comply with that. Thankfully the wind has died down significantly from last night, so we’re in a better shape, but there are still high wind warnings till 6pm and the fires are 0% contained.
- cindycindy 2y agoWill look into options for supporting these folks. Thank you for the level-headed and informative response. I prefer HN over some other news sources, which seem less concerned about presenting information to the degree the news article can vouch for. Media literacy is a two-way street and we need better reporting standards. If reading and writing is a lot like parsing, then anyone who spreads misinformation is just a parsehole.
- bragr 2y agoThe Getty Villa has reported that some landscaping burned, but the buildings and collections are safe. https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/getty-villa-threatened-palisades-fire-20021094.php https://www.sfgate.com/la/article/getty-villa-threatened-pal...
- arschfick 2y ago[flagged]
- kaycebasques 2y agoMap of evacuation zones: https://protect.genasys.com/Search?z=9.689266971108566&latlon=34.1472563634854%2C-118.18528077090707 https://protect.genasys.com/Search?z=9.689266971108566&latlo... Looks like 3 independent fires?
- 0xffff2 2y agoYep, 3 separate fires. The first in West LA blew up late yesterday afternoon and blew through a bunch of residential areas by the looks of it. From watching Flight Radar, it seems to be getting most of the air resources, although that could just be because wind conditions are favorable on that fire today. The second fire near Pasadena started yesterday as well, but really blew up overnight. The third fire up North I think started overnight. There's been a huge amount of wind throughout So Cal today and yesterday that is driving the rapid spread of these fires.
- Gibbon1 2y agoI saw a video of of it burning down down houses and commecial building Altedena, unlike newscasts where the lip flappers are blabbing over everything you could hear the wind howling and see streams of embers blowing down the street and overhead.
- gamblor956 2y agoThe lip flappers, as you call them, are providing valuable information to people who lived and/or worked in the areas where the fires are occurring. As I type this, ABC7 is providing intersections-specific location information for their reporters-on-the-ground so that people can track the progress of the fire and hopefully determine the status of their houses.
- kaycebasques 2y agoThere are 4 now (can no longer edit my original comment) Edit: seems like 5 now. Another one near Hollywood
- magic_smoke_ee 2y ago
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoWith much of California, Texas and Florida property damage is concentrated where folks built where they shouldn’t have [1]. (At times nudged on by subsidised insurance [2].) Is that true in this case, too? (Being so close to LA, it doesn’t strike me that it could be.) If not, is my general thesis off? [1] https://www.npr.org/2023/11/06/1204923950/arizona-california-new-jersey-climate-flood-wildfire-drought-building-homes https://www.npr.org/2023/11/06/1204923950/arizona-california... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800906005179 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09218...
- Dalewyn 2y agoDeserts are generally uninhabitable by their very nature, but these persistent fires are primarily due to lack of proper underbrush care and other preventative measures. California fires are a classic case of "We tried nothing and we're out of ideas!", speaking as a former Californian I honestly think the faster solution at this point is for enough of the state to burn down that pretending the problem doesn't exist is no longer good enough.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Deserts are generally uninhabitable by their very nature Deserts don’t have wildfires. (EDIT: They do!)
- annoyingnoob 2y agohttps://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-31/york-fire-in-mojave-desert-grows-to-77000-acres https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-07-31/york-fir...
- JumpCrisscross 2y agoI stand corrected! I guess the rains caused the desert to burn?
- sapphicsnail 2y agoI was in Pacific Palisades when the fire started yesterday. I've never seen one spread so fast. It went from there being smoke way in the distance and people going about their lives normally, then 90 minutes later the fire was everywhere and people were panicking and evacuating en masse.
- tylerflick 2y agoIt’s definitely the worst fire I’ve ever seen here. Very surreal to watch houses burning while walking my dogs this morning. The only silver lining are the winds blowing the smoke out to sea rather than blanketing Santa Monica.
- bragr 2y agoI have a good view of the smoke column from Brentwood. I've also never seen a fire spread that fast. Same thing, in about an hour it went from a small fire to the smoke blocking out the sun. As a testament to the speed of the winds, I've never seen a smoke column visually move so quickly. Usually at that size and distance, they feel more like static objects. Edit: I'm preparing to evacuate tonight in case the order comes through. Checking the most recent maps, the fire has burned through almost all of the Palisades and is getting into Brentwood. The fire may also reach Santa Monica at this rate. I'm stacking go bags by the door.
- earnestinger 2y agoWhat is burning? Mostly bushes or mostly homes?
- bragr 2y agoBoth unfortunately. Many neighborhoods seem fully engulfed based on the maps: https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents.html# https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents.html#
- gdubs 2y agoIn the Palisades? Nearly everything. Homes, the iconic Pali high school, the shops, the bushes — it's reportedly devastated.
- throwup238 2y agoI live south of the evacuation warning zone and the wind and fires have turned the entire San Gabriel Valley into an apocalyptic scene. Detritus littered all over the roads (with tons of dry flammable eucalyptus branches, yay!) and there’s ash falling from the sky in big flakes. Air quality in the tank though it was even worse a few hours ago and everything smells like smoke. This is the worst fire I’ve seen in SoCal since the Valley fire.
- trhway 2y agoOne can imagine an IR monitoring (satellite or high flying drones like Reaper, one drone can see an IR source like a tank from 100km, so it would take just a few drones to monitor the the whole state for fires) with [almost] automated immediate dispatching of the fleet of drones (not small quadcopters, more like WWII size bombers) once the fire is detected. Would be much cheaper than having multi-billion dollar fires every year (these LA fires have already hit $50B as of today).
- jkaptur 2y agohttps://wifire.ucsd.edu/firis-in-depth https://wifire.ucsd.edu/firis-in-depth
- trhway 2y agothey use manned planes for monitoring - very costly and not scalable. And there is no "water-bombing" drone fleet. The manned "water-bombers" are extremely expensive, there is only small number of them and they actually carry pretty small amount of water as they are mostly helicopters or retrofitted passenger planes.
- jkaptur 2y agoKnowing how things actually work in reality can help guide the imagination.
- kristjansson 2y agoThe problem is not that the water bombers are retrofitted, the problem is that water is heavy, so you're up against the physics of flight. An aircraft loaded to its max weight with water (or water-like material like retardant) is going to look empty, visually. Even e.g. a cargo 747 has ~750 m3 (=~200k gal h2o) of cargo space, but 112000 kg (=~30k gal h2o) of payload, so one could only fill ~1/6 of the cargo volume with water. A drone is up against the same physical constraints - water is heavy, and you need a lot of it to have a material impact on a fire, even one you've caught early.
- chiph 2y agoSome coworkers had to evacuate. One of them was woken up last night by their doorbell camera sending multiple alerts because of the high winds. I hope everyone gets to safety.
- Gibbon1 2y agoFriend of mine had to evacuate and then watched his house burn down on the news.
- segasaturn 2y agoLos Angeles Fire Department funding was cut by over $23M only a few months ago. The fires are currently being fought by a skeleton crew of remaining fire fighters and volunteers. Can't say if that funding would have prevented it, but cutting it definitely has not helped. Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/08/los-angeles-fires-mayor-karen-bass-handling-criticized-00197137 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/08/los-angeles-fires-m... Edit: Changing a word, "gutted" -> "cut"
- timeon 2y agoI would be more concerned about Climate Change. No amount of money will help.
- thepasswordis 2y agoNever allowing the forest to burn, which is a part of its natural cycle, is a form a drastic climate change for the forest. Proper management of the forest means selecting a time to do these burns. If we don't select a time, mother nature will select one for us. Yes, global temperature rise is real, and could potentially have had some effect on the fire. Completely disrupting the natural cycle of the forest is a much bigger deal.
- sgustard 2y agoI was curious to learn why we "never allow the forest to burn", given that Cal Fire for example has a whole department of Prescribed Fire. Sounds like the problem is lawyers and property owners: > One of the primary obstacles to increasing the pace and scale of beneficial fire use in California is the difficulty for practitioners to obtain adequate liability coverage, although the rates and losses from escapes are very low. https://www.fire.ca.gov/what-we-do/natural-resource-management/prescribed-fire https://www.fire.ca.gov/what-we-do/natural-resource-manageme...
- baq 2y ago> Sounds like the problem is lawyers and property owners: Some of them might change their mind now that they’re owners of some acres of charcoal. You cannot not choose a time - it’ll get chosen for you. Schedule should be known, cost included in taxes, risks known when property was acquired, liabilities limited in state or federal regulation. Weather doesn’t care about lawyers.
- fakedang 2y ago[flagged]
- 383toast 2y agois there a wildfire tracker?
- xeromal 2y agohttps://app.watchduty.org/ https://app.watchduty.org/ This one is pretty good
- ninjha01 2y agoSeconding watch duty. Been invaluable as I evacuated. Happily donated/paid the subscription!
- jdbrown 2y agohttps://www.fire.ca.gov/ https://www.fire.ca.gov/
- tsbischof 2y agohttps://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents
- sva_ 2y agoYou can also search for wildfires in Google maps, but not sure if it is the best data.
- username135 2y agohttps://app.watchduty.org/i/40388 https://app.watchduty.org/i/40388
- onecommentman 2y agoI’ve used #FireMappers 3.1 by NAPSG Foundation, found at https://napsg.maps.arcgis.com/ https://napsg.maps.arcgis.com/. Would provide the full link, but the app value in the copied link is suspiciously long.
- keane 2y ago#FireMappers 3.1 is found here: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/instant/media/index.html?appid=a483112967f84db096e1c954f8249ad6 https://www.arcgis.com/apps/instant/media/index.html?appid=a...
- earnestinger 2y agoI see there are three separate fires several km apart. How do they start so synchronously?
- gamblor956 2y agoThey didn't. Palisades started Tuesday morning in someone's backyard. The Eaton fire started last evening near one of the campgrounds. The Hearst fire started late last night around 10pm (suspected cause was a vehicle fire from an accident that spread to the side of the road).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- harmmonica 2y agoHey there, do you have a source for the backyard? I'm not questioning it. I'd like to know the origin and what actually occurred in that yard to cause it.
- jpmattia 2y agoOne source is the news stations here in LA, eg https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california-wildfires/palisades-eaton-hurst-los-angeles-fires-wednesday/3597466/ https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california-wildfires/pali...
- gamblor956 2y agoFollowing up on this: - No source given for the Lidia fire that started in the Angeles National Forest this afternoon. - A specific house address was given on-air for the Sunset Fire in the Hollywood Hills that started this evening at around 5:40pm. The ABC7 copter crew had actually spotted the fire within the first minute or two of it forming (while they were trying to get in position to cover the Palisades fire after refueling), and (ABC and NBC) broadcast the first hour of the fire's growth (and provided live updates on new flare-ups). They may well have saved Hollywood from burning down.
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- mempko 2y agoGlobal warming doing it's thing.
- nxm 2y agoWildfires have always occurred, just that mansions are now in the way
- gdubs 2y agoIt's a multifaceted problem that includes development decisions, but Climate Change plays a large role in all of this.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- llamaimperative 2y ago"Wildfires didn't occur before humans!" - the straw man who you just beat the daylights out of. Kudos!
- llamaimperative 2y agowhy did no one warn us every minute of every day for the last 10 years?! But fret not, the right wing on Twitter is taking to blaming a minuscule water diversion to protect an endangered fish for the hydrants running dry. Not the fact that we built a sprawling megalopolis with ultra-expensive infrastructure maintenance costs... in a desert... where we use the vast majority of local water to feed cows...
- mulmen 2y ago10 years? An Inconvenient Truth came out in 2006, that's nearly two decades and Gore didn't invent climate change any more than he invented the Internet.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
- tonymet 2y agoPrayers go out to Snapchat, Riot, Naughty Dog, TigerConnect (nee TigerText) and other West LA / Santa Monica companies whose staff may live in the Palisades , Topanga & Malibu. I remember .XYZ & Headspace are also in the neighborhood. Any other Silicon Beach companies that I missed?
- ApolIllo 2y agoI frequently go past TigerText. I assumed they were related to TigerDirect!
- tonymet 2y agoTigertext (now -Connect) is a healthcare provider-side messaging company. they started out as ephemeral messaging and pivoted to healthcare.
- shreezus 2y agoGoogle, Oracle, many many others. I live in the area and have never seen a fire move this rapidly. The high winds were a major culprit.
- throwaway249281 2y agoThere's a lot of fingerpointing but as Daniel Swain put it: 1. This was completely expected and forecasted both short and long term by regional climate and weather experts. Two very wet winters caused fuel buildup followed by an extremely hot and dry year. 2. There is very little that can be done in these situations. 100 mph gusts of embers can't be fought with hoses and air attack isn't possible in high winds. 3. Hard to believe but it could have been a lot worse. Daniel Swain points out there could have been several more major fires like the two big ones but they got put out quickly before they spread. 4. California's climate has likely been this way for millions of years, long before human habitation.
- gonzo41 2y agoYou need to do fuel reduction burns during winter (when it's wet) so you can reduce the load. They do this near my house in Australia every few years, it's somewhat terrifying to have a slow roll bushfire roll around the house, but it can be managed with care.
- dawnerd 2y agoWe do. And we have setbacks you must maintain and keep brush cleared. But there's still only so much you can do.
- kethinov 2y agoA lot more could be done: https://www.slowboring.com/p/a-better-approach-to-forest-management https://www.slowboring.com/p/a-better-approach-to-forest-man...
- gammarator 2y agoThese aren’t “forests” like in other parts of the West so much as cliffs covered in dry, scrubby brush. I’m pessimistic that they could be systematically cleared or burned in a controlled way.
- chris_va 2y agoMap: https://app.watchduty.org/i/40335 https://app.watchduty.org/i/40335
- blondie9x 2y agoMost of these wildfires are caused by humans. Not just because of climate change but because of people intentionally starting fires who want to watch the destruction unfold. There were fires near these exact areas where fires in homeless camps were found to be the cause. Not enough was done to enforce the law and stop street people from intentionally causing destruction and being pushing for it.
- blondie9x 2y agoThis is happening and we need to discuss solutions - https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/la-homeless-encampment-fires-electrical-supply-wires/3408775/ https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/la-homeless-enc... We also need to discuss clearing plants and other fuel that comes back as part of the drought / rain weather patterns we are seeing. Goats and other firefighting clearing efforts need to be discussed.
- blondie9x 2y agohttps://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-05-12/surge-in-fires-at-la-homeless-encampments-growing-crisis https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-05-12/surge-in...
- immibis 2y agoWe know the solution - just give those people homes - but we don't want to do it because building homes makes them abundant and devalues existing homes.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- consumer451 2y agoNASA's FIRMS site shows the scale of both fires. They are huge given their proximity to the city. https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:24hrs;@-118.57,33.94,9.64z https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:24hrs;@-118.57,3...
- perihelions 2y agoNote that some of the small flagged regions are spurious triggers on industrial waste heat (oil refineries, power plants, and something else). There aren't as many fires as that map naively would suggest.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- sbohacek 2y agoThe relative humidity is 0.33 [1]. The previous lowest recorded relative humidity was 0.36 in Needles CA and Iran [2] [1] https://www.weather.gov/wrh/timeseries?site=KSMO https://www.weather.gov/wrh/timeseries?site=KSMO [2] https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/world-record-low-humidity-116f-036-humidity-iran https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/world-record-low-humidity-...
- earnestinger 2y agoMaximum being 1 or 100?
- BeefWellington 2y agoI believe 100, because lower than 36% humidity is fairly common while lower than 1% is incredibly rare.
- jazzyjackson 2y agoThe graph and chart indicate it's 0 to 100%, so 0.33 is indeed one third of one percent.
- gruez 2y agoWhat causes the humidity to be so low? Is the fire lowering the humidity? Or the lower humidity causing the fire?
- relwin 2y agoWiki Santa Ana winds. They typically bring <10% humidity as they blow towards the pacific ocean. This can happen overnight and you'll wake up with "raisin-eyes".
- volkse 2y agoYou have your units mixed up - Iran record is two orders if magnitude lower than in LA (30% vs 0.3%)
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- username135 2y agohttps://app.watchduty.org/i/40388 https://app.watchduty.org/i/40388 Altadena fire
- coding123 2y ago[flagged]
- bloudermilk 2y agoWe lost our house to the Eaton fire this morning. It’s difficult to describe the vastness of the destruction in our community. Everything within a couple square miles of us burned.
- bamboozled 2y agoSorry friend, may your new place be even better.
- jondwillis 2y agoThat’s devastating, and I hope you can stay strong through the recovery process. As a nearby neighbor a couple of communities over, do you know of anything that I can do or donate to help generally that won’t be a waste/too late? Like donate masks or water or something?
- bloudermilk 2y agoThe only guidance I’ve heard so far is that the shelters are in need of bedding. Neither of the press briefings today offered more opportunities for support.
- throwup238 2y agoI lived through another major wildfire in SoCal and the organization that provided the best support was the California Community Foundation: https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/953510055 https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/953510055 I’d wait until the smoke settles (because the CCF focuses on less well-off communities than Altadena or the Palisades) but donating to their wildfire relief efforts does a lot of good regardless. They frequently give grants to the local organizations running the evacuation shelters.
- blululu 2y agoI would second this and say donate today. Focusing on who has money and who doesn’t today is really not a good policy. It is a generalization that is bound to misclassify some old ladies on a fixed income (my mom has one sleeping on her couch because of this). People who lost their homes and all their possessions yesterday and today may not be as wealthy as they were 24 hours ago.
- kamikazeturtles 2y ago> The National Guard - along with thousands of firefighters (many of them prisoners working for $10 a day or less) - have been deployed to help tackle the conflagration. I hope their compensation is a little more than $10 a day! By the looks of the fire, those guys/gals are heros.
- mulmen 2y agoFrom the source link it's hard to tell if these prisoners are even working voluntarily. Prisoners can be enslaved under the 13th amendment.
- s1artibartfast 2y agoThey are volunteering and usually get time reduced for doing so.
- mulmen 2y agoI'm still uneasy about it. They're in a vulnerable position and the alternative is unpleasant because of the same people offering the "opportunity". The pay is only legal because they're prisoners. If it was a fair wage I'd be more comfortable although still uneasy.
- throwup238 2y agoAlmost everyone in California felt uneasy about it after the 2018-2020 fires. In 2021 the governor signed a retroactive law that allowed nonviolent offenders serving less than 8 years to expunge their records if they served as firefighters while incarcerated. I’d prefer they get paid at least minimum wage anyway, but they’re better off than most other prisoners because the expungement means their background checks can come back clean for any job, not just firefighting.
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- rafram 2y ago> With the fires still largely unconfined, and no sign of letup from the winds spreading the blazes, the loss of JPL is looking increasingly likely. This is unsourced conjecture. If JPL actually burned, it would be a tragedy, but there's nothing to suggest that a massive, fenced, landscaped facility with a fire station literally at its gate [1] is in any real danger. [1]: https://maps.app.goo.gl/B1F9ULKFrs7KvQa7A https://maps.app.goo.gl/B1F9ULKFrs7KvQa7A
- onecommentman 2y agoWe can look to the experience of Los Alamos National Labs during the Cerro Grande fire in 2000 to provide perspective.
- ridgeguy 2y agoEven at a remove of decades from when I worked at JPL, this makes me very sad.
- someonehere 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- culi 2y agoNewsom hasn't taken dams down unless you're talking about the useless Klamath River dam which is an environmental disaster and all the way on the border with Oregon. What helps water retention is less concrete and healthy soils (e.g. soils with mycorrhizal bacteria can hold 50x as much water as dead soils)
- kristjansson 2y agoSo Newsom made NorCal ship all its water to SoCal, but it’s Newsom’s fault the hydrants ran dry in the Palisades last night? Or that the brush was dry? Come on, at least try to be self-consistent if you’re going spout this stuff.
- anon291 2y agoIt's Newsom's (and Schwarzeneggers and Davis, etc...) fault that California hasn't meaningfully added to its reservoir capacity since 1979 yes.
- kristjansson 2y agoThe firefighting last night was a problem of neighborhood-scale water availability. There’s more than enough water in the LA area, but wasn’t enough in the Palisades storage tanks to sustain hours of 750gpm firefighting at dozens of locations. This event probably changes homeowners and insurers assessment of how much local water storage is enough, and removes local resistance to “unsightly” water storage. But these are muni/county scale infrastructure and policy decisions, basically disconnected from state-level environmentally-relevant decisions.
- anon291 2y agoCalifornia hasn't built a reservoir since 1979. They released all the water during the last season which ended the drought and left the reservoirs over capacity.
- jarsin 2y agoNow they are saying another fire broke out near hollywood hills. If winds don't stop how much worse can this get? Sixth fire: A new brush fire called the Sunset Fire broke out in the Hollywood Hills near Runyon Canyon Wednesday evening. A mandatory evacuation order is in place for Laurel Canyon Boulevard (on the west) to Mulholland Drive (on the north) to 101 Freeway (on the east) down to Hollywood Boulevard (on the south).
- zamalek 2y ago> how much worse can this get? We have a climate change denier going into office, so we're going to find out.
- pizza 2y agoMany neighborhoods and landmarks along PCH in Malibu just gone. There's nothing left. Hard to fathom or overstate what the impact of all this will be. Every year I go down to the beach at sunrise on January 1st with my dad. We pulled over somewhere, don't know where, along the way, to catch the sunrise. Today when I first woke up I opened twitter and saw a video of the charred skeletons of the houses right where we were standing just one week ago. Recognized it from the background of the picture I took of him. Fucking insane. edit: much of today has been giving me flashbacks of the Woolsey fire. the only way, probably, this fire today is better than the Woolsey fire, is that there likely won't be a mass shooting the very next day, like what happened back then, at the Borderline shooting.
- motoxpro 2y agoI remember that time. What a nightmare. Was saying the current one is probably the worst I have ever seen. Used to go to that place all the time, friend was working when it happened.
- anon291 2y agoCalifornia has a long history of failed forest management. At what point will the voters say enough is enough? But they keep electing the same people. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/25/1010382535/gavin-newsom-misled-public-about-wildfire-prevention-work-report-says https://www.npr.org/2021/06/25/1010382535/gavin-newsom-misle...
- 7e 2y agoSevere drought brought on my climate change is not going to be fixed by “forest management.” There is no forest around any of these fires.
- lightedman 2y ago"There is no forest around any of these fires." That is absolutely incorrect, the Los Angeles National Forest is currently on fire. I live here.
- anon291 2y agoI've heard so many on twitter claim there's no forest around LA in some kind of attempt to seem smart. As someone who grew up there i am honestly kind of shocked that these are the same intelligentsia that want us to listen to their pontifications on climate change
- proc0 2y agoPeople are blaming it on climate change, and making excuses for the state's management. When you point this out they get angry or passive aggressive like you are some kind of evil person like those evil republicans. It's unbelievable really.
- kristjansson 2y agoWe need to manage the forest! We need prescribed burns, fire roads, lookouts, etc. But we also need sensible development at the interface, stricter brush-clearance laws, emissions restrictions to attempt to mitigate climate change, etc. But people get angry because 'forest management' has become a shorthand for the former without the latter (or in denial of the latter). It's been promulgated as an _alternative_ policy, not a _complimentary_ policy.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoIt’s interesting to me how much attention these fires are getting because it affects relatively rich and tourist friendly areas. There are many, many wildfires every year across several states but most don’t even get their governor’s attention, let alone make national news. People seem shocked by what the fires can do but this is what many communities have had to deal with.
- mulmen 2y agoWhen was the last time a fire of this scale and destruction occurred but wasn't headline news?
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago[flagged]
- mulmen 2y agoLarger in terms of acres but what about damage? When was a town wiped off the map by fire and there was no news coverage?
- johanam 2y agoFor those in need of support or who want to donate, there are some resources at https://fireaid.info/ https://fireaid.info/
- tobinfekkes 2y agoA cousin works at JPL leading the Mars Rover program. Her house burnt down this afternoon :( She's moved to an RV on her parent's property an hour away, temporarily. Thankful for backup option, but she put a lot of sweat and tears (and money) into fixing that little house up!
- lend000 2y agoThis saga has led me to do some research on the state of modern firefighting. From what I've gathered, we're still using the same methods (more or less) we've been using since the 1960's when Phos-Chek was introduced. There have been significant improvements in information (locating fires early with satellites and drones as such), which is no doubt valuable, but I was underwhelmed by the lack of advancements in actually putting out an aggressive fire. Perhaps someone who knows the state of the art can correct me. However, I feel like there are some startup opportunities here, either for endpoint structure defense or firefighting equipment. There is a real need that will likely continue to grow over time. Some things that came to mind: - Easily deployable, compressed CO2 canisters coordinated to smother fires from crossing strategic lines e.g. at a fire road on a ridge - More effective use of high powered drones for firefighting delivery - Use of special explosives or projectiles in remote / inaccessible terrain *yes, this comes with major caveats - Has materials science advanced to the point where we can launch reusable tarps on fires to smother them?
- pluto_modadic 2y agothis has to be parody. what?!
- lend000 2y agoI genuinely don't understand what happened to HN. When did curiosity, hypothetical discussion, and an interest in solving problems with technology become a source of derision and insecurity? Are you on the right forum?
- quesera 2y agoThere's a disaster going on today, this very hour, and your suggestions are absurdly impractical. There's a time for "just spitballing here", or "divergent thought, no bad ideas". And you can probably find some folks today who want to think about this tragedy in that frame of mind. But. There's a disaster going on today, this very hour, and your suggestions are absurdly impractical. I did not downvote you, but I suspect the others who did are conveying a distaste for such abstract thought about this extremely visceral ongoing disaster.
- codezero 2y agoWildfires of this magnitude are not fixed by larger fire fighting forces, but by preventative measures.
- renewiltord 2y agoIt’s grown quite far actually. We have family who had to evacuate in the Hollywood Hills.
- pstorm 2y agoThat’s a new fire as of a couple hours ago - Sunset Fire. There are 5 going on in LA at the moment.
- deegles 2y agoI live thousands of miles away and I can't help but wonder what natural disaster will hit me, eventually.
- vFunct 2y agoAfter hurricane Andrew Florida changed their building codes to account for hurricanes. But can California do the same for wildfires? Is it even possible to construct fireproof homes? (With stone construction or whatever?)
- LeoPanthera 2y agoIt’s absolutely possible, at least in theory, but it’s a lot more expensive. Concrete, stucco, brick, and (some types of) cement are fire resistant. Roofs can be made of metal, clay, or (some types of) asphalt. Not all fire-resistant materials are also earthquake-resistant. We had roof-mounted sprinklers installed on our house in the Santa Cruz Mountains. We haven’t had to test them in anger so far, but apparently they really work.
- jeroenhd 2y agoEven without changing construction materials, you can protect houses from many forest fires by making sure there's no flammable material anywhere close to your house. That requires space, which also comes at a premium, but it may still be cheaper than having to build earthquake-resistant concrete everywhere. A lot of lives and properties (though certainly not all) can be saved if people and cities followed recommendations like https://www.nfpa.org/en/education-and-research/wildfire/preparing-homes-for-wildfire https://www.nfpa.org/en/education-and-research/wildfire/prep... but measures like that can be unpopular (because people like to have pretty homes with plants near them) or expensive (because people, cities and property developers would need to set apart "unused" land to separate houses from vegetation).
- curiousgal 2y ago> Is it even possible to construct fireproof homes? Of course you can. This is a solved problem. The US chooses to use lumber because it's cheap and fast. You get what you paid for. Many poor countries use hollow red clay bricks for construction, which are fire proof. You don't need to break the bank to build a fire resistant house. It's just like with most think in the U.S., the "system" is built in a certain way to benefit certain establishments.
- usrnm 2y agoWhat are the chances that the affected areas will be rebuilt with something else than single family homes? Something denser
- dataflow 2y agoRealistically -- how likely is this to go into the city? What is likely to stop it, if not water (given they're running short)?
- freen 2y agoClimate change is watching photos of disasters start at a great distance from you, but year after year they get closer and closer until you are there, taking the picture yourself.
- prennert 2y agoThis is probably a naive question because I am not local, but how usual are wild fires during the winter? There seems to be snow large parts of the US and freezing temperatures. In LA it is currently 8°C (46°F), which is not freezing, but also not hot. Does this suggest even bigger fires are to be expected in the summer this year when it is actually hot?
- eric-hu 2y agoGrew up in LA. I don't recall wildfires in the winter, generally. There were Santa Ana Winds this past week though, and I'm pretty sure that's the cause. In the mountains near me, wind speeds were said to be 80-100 mph. They were probably lower where I am, but my neighbor's backyard canopy blew over the wall to my backyard. I helped them hoist it back over the wall today and we estimated it was about 100 lbs. These are gusty and dry winds coming from the desert, so I assume these fires spread from some manmade source. > Does this suggest even bigger fires are to be expected in the summer this year when it is actually hot? I would assume so, yes. Some insurers have been pulling out of CA in 2024.
- BlueTemplar 2y agoThe issue here seems to be that human memory is going to be just short enough to be dangerously useless against a natural phenomenon that is decently regular, but happens in a 30 to 150 years intervals. (See also : epidemics ?)
- nonelog 2y agoI find it astounding how almost nobody points out the obvious: Arson.
- harmmonica 2y agoThey rarely happen in winter (in modern times at least) because it usually rains starting in late fall. But there's been zero measurable precipitation since, I think, May 2024. It's that issue combined with the extreme winds this week that made the conditions on the ground ripe for this type of fire. Note that the winds themselves are somewhat typical (they're called Santa Ana winds and they happen every year like clockwork), but the severity of the winds this week was extreme. Don't think there have been winds as severe in decades. It was a somewhat predictable cocktail and all of these ingredients aided the severity. No moisture + high winds = high fire risk. High winds = embers easily carried forward igniting additional fires. High winds = grounded firefighting planes and helicopters.
- beernet 2y agoThis is sad, devastating, and not surprising. Yet, people voted for policies that will further accelerate climate change and its consequential destructions in the next four years. As someone not living in the US, this is unbelievable to witness. Where did it all go wrong inside of people's heads?
- nprateem 2y agoBecause no one thinks their house will burn down or flood, or that they will starve. We're supposed to be self-interested individuals, but sadly most people only seem to wake up the moment their own safety is directly threatened. Such a shame that 50 years of climate warnings have done practically nothing to stop us reaching the tipping point. If we aren't there yet, we will be in our lifetimes no doubt.
- Xenoamorphous 2y agoMost people that voted for Trump I’d say is not that they don’t think climate change will affect them, it’s that they don’t think there’s climate change at all, or even if it there is, it’s not caused by humans.
- immibis 2y ago"climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it" - @PerthshireMags on ex-twitter
- baxtr 2y agoSuch a tragedy. I am very sorry for anyone affected by this :( As a non-local it’s hard to judge how big this is. Can anyone point to map or explain to what extend LA is affected? Is it 5% of the area/population or rather 50%?
- input_sh 2y agohttps://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents.html https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents.html Not particularly snappy, but feature-packed. You can see evacuation zones, look at live cameras, see which parts have already burned to the ground, see which parts are in danger.
- harmmonica 2y agoI saw a sibling comment posted a link to a map, but I wanted to provide you some context. As you can see on those maps, these fires are quite big in terms of land area/acreage. The thing it's important to understand about Los Angeles, though, is that there's a "mountain" range that runs east/west literally right through the city itself (mountain in quotes because as it bisects the city the mountains aren't very tall). Where it bisects the city itself you may recognize the names of some of the areas with houses plastered all over the "mountain:" Hollywood Hills, Beverly Hills, Bel Air. As you get east and west of the city, though, those mountains get a bit taller and way less populated. The Palisades fire, the first one that started, is the literal western/northwestern end of the city of LA. Its northern border is, albeit low elevation in mountain terms, mountainous and is more or less the definition of urban/wildland interface. That's part of the reason the fire spread so quickly, though in this case not even the primary reason. The other major fire is not in the city of LA, but just north of the city of Pasadena, which is east of Los Angeles. But the geography/topography is nearly identical (down to a similar east/west mountain range, but with much taller mountains). A majority of the area that's burning out of control there is largely mountainous with very little habitation (if anyone who lost a home there reads this, I don't mean to diminish how much damage has occurred in Altadena; I'm just pointing out that the massive land area of the fire is not representative of the impact on inhabited areas).
- baxtr 2y ago
- deadbabe 2y agoCan someone explain what efforts will be made to rebuild if any? How could they rebuild knowing this can just happen again next year? It’s not like hurricanes where buildings can be made to withstand category 5 storms.
- leoedin 2y agoBuildings can be built to higher levels of wildfire resistance. The fire spreads because burning embers are blown downwind, settling and starting new spot fires. If they get blown into a house, the house burns. You don't need to make a house fireproof to stop wildfires, but just resistant to a shower of burning embers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvbNOPSYyss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvbNOPSYyss
- deadbabe 2y agoOk so they will rebuild
- gadflyinyoureye 2y agoI hear how Californian laws make building difficult. I also hear that there is housing shortage. Will the complex and possibly convoluted build process limit the restoration of burnt communities? For example, my understanding is that all new home construction requires solar. I assume that is about $60,000. Then the permitting process is something like $50-100,000. That is a sizable chunk of the insurance money just to meet new code.
- consumer451 2y agoPeople have lost their lives and many more have lost their homes. Elon Musk has chimed-in on the matter. I don't post this flippantly. As a huge fan of Tesla and SpaceX, someone please explain to me what is happening. https://i.redd.it/iasdlw98tzbe1.png https://i.redd.it/iasdlw98tzbe1.png
- kristjansson 2y agoApparently a fire chief wrote in her boilerplate online bio that her top priority was equity and inclusion with the fire department, so clearly firefighting wasn't her top priority, so clearly the entire disaster is her fault, and so DEI caused the wildfire.
- consumer451 2y agoBaltimore bridge disaster, Musk: DEI. Nothing supporting that. Alaska Flight 1282, door blows off, Musk: DEI. Nothing supporting that. I want an electrified future. I want a multi-planet civilization. Read Alex Jones' text that Musk says is "true." It is objectively insane. Why is he doing this? He is discrediting the species-level important things. He used to be the best of us, the clearest thinker. What in the heck happened?
- kristjansson 2y agoHonestly? My wholly-unsubstantiated pet theory is that engaging with a large following on social media is as unhealthy for the followee as an intense parasocial relationship is for a follower. That or he thinks the United Federation of Planets has to form _now_, and he's playing the part he thinks is required to get there.
- consumer451 2y agoI used to watch every single video regarding him. I recall one where the interviewer asked him what was his biggest fear. He replied something like "that I will be surrounded people who just kiss my ass and don't call me on my shit." Man, at that point he was such a clear thinker. Truly a victim of his own success in the worst ways. As far as my own unsubstantiated pet theory, he went publicly nuts right after the time he had to write a multi-billion dollar tax check. Humans are just not evolved for that. It should be part of tax withholdings to avoid that mental trauma.
- worik 2y agoLots of blame to go around. But in the end, it all comes back to climate change