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There'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 weat

There'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 ago
You 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 ago
  We do. And we have setbacks you must maintain and keep brush cleared. But there's still only so much you can do.
  - kethinov 2y ago
    A 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 ago
      These 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.
      - onecommentman 2y ago
        Burning in a dense residential area…no. Draconian clearing of all trees and brush except for selective fire-aware landscaping…yes, but you are paying significant money to make the residential area look uglier (in some eyes, it’s just a High Desert aesthetic for others), a hard sell.
        kethinov 2y ago
        The residential area being on fire looks significantly uglier to me.
      - TheCapeGreek 2y ago
        Similar climates and geographies both either have the issue or manage it better. Greece is a good example of also not managing this properly with its own regular massive fires, while national parks around Cape Town and other parts of South Africa do regular controlled burns in very rocky, hill-y terrain.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    "There's only so much you can do" doesn't mean "we have done what we can" or even "we have done enough".
    - baq 2y ago
      Shouldn’t have built expensive houses for a start
      - mulmen 2y ago
        > Shouldn’t have built expensive houses for a start Why not?
        baq 2y ago
        They burn down the same as cheap ones.
  - gonzo41 2y ago
    My other suggestion, which isn't super popular in australia, is we should consider deforesting / reforesting eucalyptus trees. They are a lot of trouble.
- joe_the_user 2y ago
  This was a wealthy area built within canyons and other natural areas. Controlled burns are possible in some areas but I can't imagine it would have been possible there.
  - amluto 2y ago
    I’m not sure precisely where the fires started, but the neighborhoods in the Palisades are impenetrable hillsides with roads and houses are intervals. They’re about as densely developed as practical given the geography. A controlled burn would be unimaginable there.
    - lightedman 2y ago
      A controlled burn is impossible just from the sheer angle, you can hardly traverse those piles of conglomerate making following and pathing the fire impossible from anywhere but the air. I had problems hunting agates out of those hills due to the steepness, as I was on all fours and about 55 degrees off-horizontal most times.
- scarab92 2y ago
  Perhaps worth mentioning that Australia is doing less fuel reduction burns than in the past, especially near major urban centres with unfavourably wide directions. Fuel reduction burning often requires blanketing millions of people with carcinogenic smoke for several weeks each year. The greater good is to protect everyone’s lungs and accept that every few years we’ll have to rebuild a few homes.
  - Ancalagon 2y ago
    That makes no sense. A controlled burn shouldn't be as large as an out of control wildfire. For the cost of those burned down homes the government could hand out n95 masks by the basket-full. Not to mention you'll still have the smoke inhalation problem when you have those wildfire cases anyways - and in those scenarios you can't control what is being release in the burn.
    - scarab92 2y ago
      Hazard reduction burns need to occur on all land which is at risk of burning, whereas wildfires actually only occur on a small proportion of the land surrounding a population center each year. The result is much more smoke being emitted overall.
joe_the_user 2y ago
Two very wet winters caused fuel buildup followed by an extremely hot and dry year. References for the "hot and dry year" ('cause I hear it tossed around a lot). As far as I can tell, all of California had several relatively wet (but hot) years and nothing dry afterwards. I'm linking to NOAA's the California drought map, which shows "Abnormally Dry" (less than "moderate drought") for LA currently and I think showed "none" for much of the year [1]. The thing is, I agree this was to be expected. But only by the principle "climate change is going to cause disaster out of nowhere". We need to say this and let people understand. [1] https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...
- culi 2y ago
  This was also to be expected in the sense that forecasters for a week now have been warning about century long record wind speeds and the fire dangers those bring along with them
  - joe_the_user 2y ago
    Sure but that's quite different from implications that the conditions of the past year pointed to this. I follow the Dought Monitor regularly and as a California resident, I want to know if rainfall patterns point to danger. I don't see indications here (see link in my parent post).
    - tafda 2y ago
      Wind speeds and live fuel moisture level are the critical measures of fire risk in chaparral. Fuel moisture levels have been approaching critical this season in Southern California and, due to lack of rain, didn't follow the seasonal pattern: https://fire.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/All-Areas-Graph.pdf https://fire.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/All-Are... Some relevant research: https://moritzfirelab.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dennison_moritz_ijwf_2009-1.pdf https://moritzfirelab.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/denniso... Drought is a more comprehensive measure that includes snowpack, rainfall, resevoir levels, etc.
Mistletoe 2y ago
>very little that can be done in these situations I don't agree with that. People can choose to not live there. There is an entire country to live in and we keep crowding in what seem to the worst places to live and then act surprised when it goes badly. Climate change is going to make some places uninhabitable, that's why we tried to prevent it, but no one cares.
- mturmon 2y ago
  > … we keep crowding in what seem to the worst places to live … Malibu? Pacific Palisades? These are among the most pleasant places in the world to live. People are not going to stop wanting to live there — this isn’t a lost cause like a low-lying area exposed to floods. We have to find ways to mitigate the very real fire risk.
  - block_dagger 2y ago
    Correction: among the most pleasant _when natural wildfires don't burn everything down_. People need to take long-term conditions into account when choosing locations for habitation.
    - nox101 2y ago
      Does anyone do this? SoCal, NorCal, Seattle - Earthquakes SoCal, NorCal - Fires Midwestern States - Tornadoes North Easy - Blizzards South Easy - Hurricanes Which part do you suggest everyone move to?
      - jcranmer 2y ago
        Northeast. Structural modifications for heavy snow are light (make sure the house is well-insulated, get yourself a nice heater, don't put any pipes in the exterior walls, and have sloped roofs rather than flat roofs), and they're not particularly dangerous if you're prepared to be cooped up in a house for a day or two (and you're not in the main lake effect snow belt, where snow can be rather constant).
curiousgal 2y ago
> There is very little that can be done in these situations. Ah yes, same response to school shootings; "No way to solve this, says the only country where this happens every year". There's nothing that special about California that makes it different from many other places around the world with densely populated forested areas that do not get insane wildfires almost every single year.
- pjc50 2y ago
  Australia is now in this situation as well, and we've seen it in Spain. It's just that LA gets way better global news coverage.
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  There's nothing special indeed : this shrub biome gets devastated by firestorms on a regularish 30 to 150 years clock (looking at the past 520 years), regardless of what humans do (at least so far, uncertainty over the last few decades is of course high).
wtcactus 2y ago
In the old days, where I live (and I'm guessing most of Mediterranean Europe) we had goats. It was a superb utilization of resources really, goats eat almost any vegetation - even hard bramble - so the shepherds would take them to the forest, and they would eat the vegetation buildup that serves as the fuel for these fires. That would be a win-win situation for everyone. We would get goat meat/milk for free (minus the shepherd effort) and the forest would be mostly clean. This is quite rare now. Sure, in some places in the mountains we still have that because life is hard there and there's little else you can get from the land. But it's mostly disappearing.
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  Why didn't this happen in this region (over the last half a millennium) ? No goat equivalent in the Americas ? Population density too low ?
  - wtcactus 2y ago
    I’m guessing there were more profitable economic activities there. Gold mining, lumber industry, pelting, etc. Here, in the mountains, there’s basically nothing really profitable. So, husbandry (using goats since they are adapted to this environment) was basically the only way to go.
- throwup238 2y ago
  Caltrans uses goats to create fire breaks around highways: https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-4/d4-popular-links/forward-issue-2/goats-employed https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-4/d4-popular-li...

gonzo41 2y ago

You 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 ago
We do. And we have setbacks you must maintain and keep brush cleared. But there's still only so much you can do.
- kethinov 2y ago
  A 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 ago
    These 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.
    - onecommentman 2y ago
      Burning in a dense residential area…no. Draconian clearing of all trees and brush except for selective fire-aware landscaping…yes, but you are paying significant money to make the residential area look uglier (in some eyes, it’s just a High Desert aesthetic for others), a hard sell.
      - kethinov 2y ago
        The residential area being on fire looks significantly uglier to me.
    - TheCapeGreek 2y ago
      Similar climates and geographies both either have the issue or manage it better. Greece is a good example of also not managing this properly with its own regular massive fires, while national parks around Cape Town and other parts of South Africa do regular controlled burns in very rocky, hill-y terrain.
- mulmen 2y ago
  "There's only so much you can do" doesn't mean "we have done what we can" or even "we have done enough".
  - baq 2y ago
    Shouldn’t have built expensive houses for a start
    - mulmen 2y ago
      > Shouldn’t have built expensive houses for a start Why not?
      - baq 2y ago
        They burn down the same as cheap ones.
- gonzo41 2y ago
  My other suggestion, which isn't super popular in australia, is we should consider deforesting / reforesting eucalyptus trees. They are a lot of trouble.
joe_the_user 2y ago
This was a wealthy area built within canyons and other natural areas. Controlled burns are possible in some areas but I can't imagine it would have been possible there.
- amluto 2y ago
  I’m not sure precisely where the fires started, but the neighborhoods in the Palisades are impenetrable hillsides with roads and houses are intervals. They’re about as densely developed as practical given the geography. A controlled burn would be unimaginable there.
  - lightedman 2y ago
    A controlled burn is impossible just from the sheer angle, you can hardly traverse those piles of conglomerate making following and pathing the fire impossible from anywhere but the air. I had problems hunting agates out of those hills due to the steepness, as I was on all fours and about 55 degrees off-horizontal most times.
scarab92 2y ago
Perhaps worth mentioning that Australia is doing less fuel reduction burns than in the past, especially near major urban centres with unfavourably wide directions. Fuel reduction burning often requires blanketing millions of people with carcinogenic smoke for several weeks each year. The greater good is to protect everyone’s lungs and accept that every few years we’ll have to rebuild a few homes.
- Ancalagon 2y ago
  That makes no sense. A controlled burn shouldn't be as large as an out of control wildfire. For the cost of those burned down homes the government could hand out n95 masks by the basket-full. Not to mention you'll still have the smoke inhalation problem when you have those wildfire cases anyways - and in those scenarios you can't control what is being release in the burn.
  - scarab92 2y ago
    Hazard reduction burns need to occur on all land which is at risk of burning, whereas wildfires actually only occur on a small proportion of the land surrounding a population center each year. The result is much more smoke being emitted overall.

joe_the_user 2y ago

Two very wet winters caused fuel buildup followed by an extremely hot and dry year. References for the "hot and dry year" ('cause I hear it tossed around a lot). As far as I can tell, all of California had several relatively wet (but hot) years and nothing dry afterwards. I'm linking to NOAA's the California drought map, which shows "Abnormally Dry" (less than "moderate drought") for LA currently and I think showed "none" for much of the year [1]. The thing is, I agree this was to be expected. But only by the principle "climate change is going to cause disaster out of nowhere". We need to say this and let people understand. [1] https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?CA https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...

culi 2y ago
This was also to be expected in the sense that forecasters for a week now have been warning about century long record wind speeds and the fire dangers those bring along with them
- joe_the_user 2y ago
  Sure but that's quite different from implications that the conditions of the past year pointed to this. I follow the Dought Monitor regularly and as a California resident, I want to know if rainfall patterns point to danger. I don't see indications here (see link in my parent post).
  - tafda 2y ago
    Wind speeds and live fuel moisture level are the critical measures of fire risk in chaparral. Fuel moisture levels have been approaching critical this season in Southern California and, due to lack of rain, didn't follow the seasonal pattern: https://fire.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/All-Areas-Graph.pdf https://fire.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/All-Are... Some relevant research: https://moritzfirelab.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/dennison_moritz_ijwf_2009-1.pdf https://moritzfirelab.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/denniso... Drought is a more comprehensive measure that includes snowpack, rainfall, resevoir levels, etc.

Mistletoe 2y ago

>very little that can be done in these situations I don't agree with that. People can choose to not live there. There is an entire country to live in and we keep crowding in what seem to the worst places to live and then act surprised when it goes badly. Climate change is going to make some places uninhabitable, that's why we tried to prevent it, but no one cares.

mturmon 2y ago
> … we keep crowding in what seem to the worst places to live … Malibu? Pacific Palisades? These are among the most pleasant places in the world to live. People are not going to stop wanting to live there — this isn’t a lost cause like a low-lying area exposed to floods. We have to find ways to mitigate the very real fire risk.
- block_dagger 2y ago
  Correction: among the most pleasant _when natural wildfires don't burn everything down_. People need to take long-term conditions into account when choosing locations for habitation.
  - nox101 2y ago
    Does anyone do this? SoCal, NorCal, Seattle - Earthquakes SoCal, NorCal - Fires Midwestern States - Tornadoes North Easy - Blizzards South Easy - Hurricanes Which part do you suggest everyone move to?
    - jcranmer 2y ago
      Northeast. Structural modifications for heavy snow are light (make sure the house is well-insulated, get yourself a nice heater, don't put any pipes in the exterior walls, and have sloped roofs rather than flat roofs), and they're not particularly dangerous if you're prepared to be cooped up in a house for a day or two (and you're not in the main lake effect snow belt, where snow can be rather constant).

curiousgal 2y ago

> There is very little that can be done in these situations. Ah yes, same response to school shootings; "No way to solve this, says the only country where this happens every year". There's nothing that special about California that makes it different from many other places around the world with densely populated forested areas that do not get insane wildfires almost every single year.

pjc50 2y ago
Australia is now in this situation as well, and we've seen it in Spain. It's just that LA gets way better global news coverage.
BlueTemplar 2y ago
There's nothing special indeed : this shrub biome gets devastated by firestorms on a regularish 30 to 150 years clock (looking at the past 520 years), regardless of what humans do (at least so far, uncertainty over the last few decades is of course high).

wtcactus 2y ago

In the old days, where I live (and I'm guessing most of Mediterranean Europe) we had goats. It was a superb utilization of resources really, goats eat almost any vegetation - even hard bramble - so the shepherds would take them to the forest, and they would eat the vegetation buildup that serves as the fuel for these fires. That would be a win-win situation for everyone. We would get goat meat/milk for free (minus the shepherd effort) and the forest would be mostly clean. This is quite rare now. Sure, in some places in the mountains we still have that because life is hard there and there's little else you can get from the land. But it's mostly disappearing.

BlueTemplar 2y ago
Why didn't this happen in this region (over the last half a millennium) ? No goat equivalent in the Americas ? Population density too low ?
- wtcactus 2y ago
  I’m guessing there were more profitable economic activities there. Gold mining, lumber industry, pelting, etc. Here, in the mountains, there’s basically nothing really profitable. So, husbandry (using goats since they are adapted to this environment) was basically the only way to go.
throwup238 2y ago
Caltrans uses goats to create fire breaks around highways: https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-4/d4-popular-links/forward-issue-2/goats-employed https://dot.ca.gov/caltrans-near-me/district-4/d4-popular-li...