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The case for letting Malibu burn (1995)
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- czhu12 2y agoIt certainly feels like the need for climate change adaptation that's been foretold for years is starting to happen. There’s quite a bit of blame being thrown around regarding details like how much water was in the reservoir and the DEI stance of the fire chief, but does any of that really provide a sustainable solution? Maybe it’s time to confront the fact that people can’t continue to live in those areas without substantial changes in the build environment. The tragic reality of climate change is that despite well informed and well meaning people, no one actually wants to meaningfully change their own lifestyle to adjust to the consequences. Clear cutting trees for instance, can be a preventative measure, but I'm sure home owners in the area would protest the environmental impact, the loss of privacy, the change in their lifestyle. California has always been a state that, on paper, acknowledges the severity of climate change, but thus far, has been fighting tooth and nail to keep homes in wildfire prone areas. What I worry about is that California chooses to create a public option for homeowners insurance that is tax payer funded to subsidize at risk homes, increasing costs for everyone else. To me this would just be another form of climate change denial.
- fliglr 2y agoZoom out: >But in gauging the longer-term trend of what’s really happening with the fires, it’s necessary to go back much further. Data derived from written records from Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service dating back to 1919 show that wildfires, far from increasing, have actually declined over the last 100 years. And in fact the website of the National Interagency Fire Center previously noted that fires were at their very worst a century ago. (See data, research, and methodology for this article.) >The data on the overall, century-long trend suggest that most of the 20th century represented an unusually low amount of fire, and what we’re seeing now is a return to the “normal” levels of fire of the early 1900s. https://future.com/why-california-burns-the-facts-behind-the-flames/ https://future.com/why-california-burns-the-facts-behind-the...
- Amezarak 2y agoThanks for that link. The data also shows that, over a longer (millennia) timescale, California is currently in a wet period. Context is very important. Climate change is a critical issue, but solving it doesn't help California stop burning.
- bcrosby95 2y agoCalifornia leaving a wet period will make it burn less. The problem isn't a lack of water. It's that we get a ton of water for a year or two. A bunch of stuff grows. Then we get no water for many years. All that stuff that grew in the wet years dries out. Eventually it burns. If we just enter a dry period, there is only 1 step: no water, nothing grows. No more fires.
- Amezarak 2y agoYes, once it's fully into the dry period. The transition period involves a lot of fire.
- scarab92 2y agoClimate change is real, but people are vastly overstating the magnitude of its effect. This is simply a fire prone region, and this was inevitably going to occur at some point, with or without climate change. The government should have been more prepared for that.
- 01100011 2y agoThis. Fire is an integral part of CA ecosystems and the native plant communities are dependent upon it. It does burn more frequently thanks to man, but citing climate change as a reason for the fires only makes you sound smart to the ill-informed.
- bsimpson 2y agoI'm from a swing state, where you get used to smart people having conflicting opinions. The people I know who don't embrace climate fear, recycling, etc. always cite hypocrisy as their most salient motivation. They see people like Al Gore and Leo di Caprio talking a big game about a climate catastrophy and then using as much energy as a whole village. They see their friends nitpick composting and then buy single MPG trucks to go camping in. They see cities rolling out fines for recycling badly and then everything going into the same truck when the garbagemen come by. I don't think environmental activists realize the damage they do to their case by not living by what they preach relentlessly about. By being loudly critical of others without changing their own behavior, they give denialism space to entrench. "It can't be that bad if even the people who are mad don't seem to actually care."
- dullcrisp 2y ago> I don't think environmental activists realize the damage they do to their case by not living by what they preach relentlessly about. The ones who do that probably don’t care about their cause so much as having a cause.
- AshamedCaptain 2y agoAh, the millennia old argument of "you cannot successfully proselytize donating money to the poor unless you live like a monk yourself".
- daveguy 2y agoI am very in favor of climate change mitigations through careful legislation and believe we are doing nowhere near enough. But I think a closer analogy is "proselytizing donating money without donating any money yourself" or in the extreme of making the problem worse -- "proselytizing donating money while robbing from the poor." That proselytizing while making the problem worse is more a problem with the proselytizer than the critic. But the worst of all is making it worse and actively fighting against remediation.
- llm_trw 2y agoMore like the decades old argument that if you keep getting caught fucking men in toilet stalls being gay can't be all that bad.
- hindsightbias 2y agoSupport in CA for rebuilding is really county based. Butte County is fine with you making the same mistake over again. Sonomas cities are helpful by not rezoning to the fire codes they really should be. Napa is happy to let you keep a camper on your burned site for as long as it takes you to realize how you can’t afford to rebuild to 7A code. Malibu was marked 7A years back and those folks can afford it.
- robomartin 2y ago> The tragic reality of climate change Oh, please. I am so sick of this being shoved in front of people's faces as an indisputable cause for, well, everything. Might as well bring Odin and Zeus into it as causes...because they are just as valid. I have lived in the Los Angeles area for nearly 40 years. The Santa Ana winds happen every year, multiple times per year. It never fails. The winds are strong and mostly directionally constant. Some years are worse than others. Average speeds are not monotonically increasing. Guess what? Strong wind + a small fire + lots of fuel = massive fire. It's that simple. So please, pretty please, with sugar on top, stop with the nonsense. This was a case of bad governance, bad decision-making, misplaced priorities, complete lack of preparedness and, yes, some bad luck. Here's a simple example of that: Why is it that we have to rent firefighting aircraft from Canada every year? Seriously? I understand costs. Well, I look around Los Angeles today and it is easy to call that argument to be criminally demented. We should OWN a large fleet of these planes and have them ready to deploy en-masse as needed. Again, it isn't like these winds surprise us! Brush and vegetation (fuel) management are crucial. In our neighborhood, a few months ago, we received a notice from the fire department saying they were going to come around and inspect for overgrown vegetation. In this letter they said that the requirement was to not have trees or large bushes/plants within about 6 feet (~2 m) from the property line. NOBODY CAME! The inspections were not done at all, or, if they were conducted, they were done at an almost invisible scale. I have always been very responsible about this. I do not have large trees anywhere on my property. We live in a fire hazard zone with serious winds multiple times per year. My entire backyard is non flammable and my back fence is concrete block. My neighbors, on the other hand, they have massive highly flammable trees almost touching the fence we share and covering their entire property. Every other year massive branches break off due to strong winds. I have advised them that, if we ever have a fire, their trees are going to become massive ember manufacturing machines. They either don't understand, don't care or a combination of both. The point is: The fire department could have come around and enforced some kind of a reasonable safety standard. They have not. Ever. And so, if a massive fire takes out the entire neighborhood, this lack of bad governance is what is going to result in a high cost in property and lives. This isn't about climate change. That's ridiculous. This is about incompetence and misplaced priorities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Ana_winds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Ana_winds
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- downrightmike 2y agoI hope they only hook the taxpayers for the actual cost to rebuild and not the stupid crazy valuations that are not linked to any real costs.
- Thorrez 2y agoAre you talking about houses? Wouldn't insurance cover those, not taxpayers?
- aaomidi 2y agoInsurance in very high risk areas practically cannot exist without governmental subsidies.
- throwup238 2y agoThere’s going to be lots of cleanup that will be paid for by city and state governments because it’s shared infrastructure and they don’t want to leave cleanup of toxic materials to homeowners that might skimp on it so it washes into the sewer system next time it rains. It also depends on how many houses were insured by the state insurer CalFAIR. It’s over half a century old and has never been bailed out (funded entirely by premiums) but this is the most destructive fire in Calfironia history so we’ll see how well that holds up to this stress test.
- dkasper 2y agoCalfair will certainly need to be bailed out. The plans has over 5B in exposure in palisades alone, and only a few hundred million in reserves.
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- scoofy 2y agoNo. The insurance companies won't cover these houses. They called it an "insurance crisis" and then made a state insurance system which will likely go bankrupt and have to be bailed out because of this fire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_FAIR_Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_FAIR_Plan
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago(1995)
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- bruce511 2y ago>> So why do people insist on rebuilding in the firebelt? Why do Floridians keep rebuilding in the wake of endless hurricanes? Why do folks live in Tornado Alley? Why do Dakotans endure one tragic winter after another? Why did New Orleans build back after yhe flooding? Man seeks to tame nature - to bend it to our will. Plus we'll take "build now, great views now" over "possible disaster later ". One could argue that nowhere is completely risk free, but it seems like the homing instinct (Plus the cultural instinct to build out of wood) is strong. It might be time to consider alternate building methods suitable for the risk of the area.
- derektank 2y agoI would append to these explanations, "moral hazard". Many of the people rebuilding in these areas are being subsidized by the rest of us, particularly people with access to reimbursement from the national flood insurance program.
- bruce511 2y agoSure, the point of insurance is that the many subsidize the few. But I expect there comes a point where insurance companies say "enough is enough". Perhaps federal and state money will start to pay out, but the land gets bought as well.
- baq 2y agoGetting insurance is a making a bet bad stuff happens. The insurer makes a bet it doesn’t happen when it signs an agreement with you. If the bet is obviously negative expected value, it stops being a useful subsidy and it becomes instead throwing good money away.
- WalterBright 2y agoA rule of thumb is you'll pay twice in insurance premiums than you'll get in payouts. Insurance is only worth buying if you cannot afford the cost of the disaster. For example, I don't pay for collision protection on my car. I can afford losing the car. Over time I've saved far more in insurance premiums than the cost replacing the car. The same goes for insurance for appliances, etc.
- throwup238 2y ago> So instead of a long-overdue debate about the wisdom of rebuilding and the need to prevent further construction in areas of extreme natural fire danger, public attention was diverted into a discussion of the best methods for clearing vegetation (rototillers or goats?) and making homes fire-resistant. Does anyone honestly think that debate has any actual chance of hapenning, even now? Malibu and the Pacific Palisades are some of the best real estate in the state if not the country. There’s always going to be someone willing to pay the rising cost of fire insurance and take the risk to live there. Short of the state buying out all the property owners or making that area uninsurable by CalFAIR, people are going to build. Not to mention the political connections they have. Altadena, on the other hand, was built where and how it was built because of segregationist redlining in Pasadena and South Pasadena. It’s a historically minority neighborhood that was only built so densely with so little fire protection because they couldn’t afford it and the state never gave them much help. It looks like once again our power companies are responsible for starting a destructive conflagration because they siphoned maintenance money to shareholders and executives (many of whom probably live in Malibu or the Palisades). Any state policy that tries to solve the Malibu/Palisades problem is going to disproportionately screw these low income communities that have built out around the edges. I’m betting that entire neighborhood will sell out to real estate developers building apartment complexes that can afford more expensive fire mitigations, destroying a historical community as much as any freeway and opening the door to tenement fires. This has all happened before and will happen again. I don’t really see a holistic solution that has any chance of passing public scrutiny and working, other than chipping away at the insurance regulator and CalFAIR, which will screw over the most vulnerable and entrench the real estate NIMBYs.
- scarab92 2y agoCalifornia needs to get rid of its price controls on insurance, so that people building in high risk areas are exposed to the true costs of the risks they are taking, and have appropriate incentives to build to the conditions.
- dullcrisp 2y agoHow can there be price controls on insurance? The state subsidizes insurance in these areas?
- mullingitover 2y agoI always hear about how the region is evolved for the occasional wildfire, but the area also had far more large grazers keeping the fuel in check. The under-grazing is a big part of the fire equation.
- motohagiography 2y agothat's an interesting view. would a feral goats, sheep or another species population keep this specific vegetation down?
- 01100011 2y agoMaybe to a small degree. Grazers might keep the non native grasses and invasive weeds in check (although that has historically been the job of wildfires). Grazers aren't going to eat mature oaks, toyon and other woody natives though. The canyons near me have plenty of deer but the canyon is still overgrown and full of fuel.
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- r053bud 2y agoSo you think climate change is a hoax? Would love to hear more about this take.
- dehrmann 2y agoThe big, open question right now is how much of the California wildfires is due to climate change and how much is due to aggressive fire suppression over the pas 50+ years.
- convolvatron 2y agois that really that relevant? according to the climate change people this is just going to keep happening, and not just in California but in Washington and Oregon and across Canada and who knows how many other places. This on top of larger storm surges, heat waves, flooding, drought, heating and acidification of the seas, loss of sea ice, etc. All things that we have empirical evidence for. It only makes sense to stress this question if you reject that premise entirely, and think that if we just get California to to better managing its underbrush, then this whole thing goes away. otherwise the causality is a bit moot? except maybe it opens the discussion about how much we can afford to spend to clear brush given that this is going to keep being a problem.
- HPsquared 2y agoThey'll need to manage the underbrush better, regardless of how much of an effect was due to climate change. People are going to live there and need to take protective measures. Climate change only increases the amount of management required.
- tptacek 2y agoIs it an open question? This is an article from 1995 about how massive city-razing fires are endemic to the region and have been for decades. Decades later, it continues to be right. What does it matter whether the fires are monocausal?
- 01100011 2y agoYou're using arguments appropriate to other ecosystems. Please familiarize yourself with coastal sage scrub communities in so cal.
- exodust 2y agoClimate change is a distracting question because it can't be answered with any accuracy. Are you expecting an answer like "52% of the blame can be assigned to climate change"... how does that help? The super-dry brush needs controlled burning. California will need to put up with polluted air during the controlled burns. We have to in Australia at times. People complain and the authorities say "sorry but we need to do this, please stay indoors during the burnoff". Strategic placement of water tanks in the hills and around properties. Building codes, roof-top sprinklers with backup power so people can leave their house to fend for itself with better odds of survival. All of these measures matter. Bickering about climate change helps nobody.
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- notjoemama 2y ago> Today our horticultural firebreaks are gone, strawberry fields are now aging suburbs, and the quest for beach fronts, mountain view lots and big trees has created fire hazards that were once unimaginable. Being posted in a tech community with an ideology of constant improvement, I’m positive there will be a preponderance of solutioning in response. I grew very tired of the repetitive nature of the writing. I also noticed amongst its supposed specificity, none of the actual causes of the fires were given. For example, I recall the fire that burned part of Redding was from multiple fires burning together caused by both arson and a trailer chain left dragging against the pavement. I think some of use are aware of the arsonists caught in the current LA county fires. We can point to failures of leadership and forest management. But the author calls the behavior of mankind believing we can tame nature perverse. What a disappointing perspective. Were that true then we have no business ever exploring space, the ocean, or housing anyone for any reason on the Earth’s polar ice caps. The fact is we can and do tame nature in many MANY ways. Anyone that drives a car can understand this. So it’s not a matter of whether we do or not, but to what extent are we trying. That is not a perverse belief, as I’m sure you may know of will read in other replies. We, or those in leadership positions, know what can be done to mitigate destruction and loss of life. The challenge is, and as the history in this article suggests, is doing it.
- Analemma_ 2y agoThis comment is kind of deliberately missing the point. We can tame nature, but not to an arbitrary degree: to do so, we need to make compromises and mandate+forbid certain behaviors. Wildfires can be tamed, but it requires 1) controlled burns which aren't held up for years in red tape, 2) insurance priced appropriately to risk, which means not everyone who wants to live in a fire zone should be able to afford it and 3) construction codes with mandatory firebreaks, specific fire-resistant materials and vigorous enforcement punishing anyone not doing these (since one break in the firewall can lead to the whole town burning down). California refuses to do any of these things, never mind all of them, and pays the inevitable consequences.
- notjoemama 2y agoIf you say I’m missing the point…then go on to solution just like I predicted, then it’s you who missed the point. I’m sure you’ll have great ideas, and I’m also sure it won’t matter and does nothing beyond making you feel like you are more right than someone you don’t know on the internet. If you need a direct call to action, and why wouldn’t you as a good little techie, then call or write your representatives and officials with your solutions. At least when I commented I read the entire article, quoted a piece of it, then referred to other sections. Ya know, kinda following the rules.
- throttlebody 2y agoI live on a fault line, and we have overcome most issues by building seismic tolerant buildings. We have the knowledge to live in high-risk areas with some certainty, but it will never be without risk. Climate change, ie more frequent severe weather events, is definitely going to challenge our norms and how we do things. Fire tolerant buildings ?
- marze 2y agoFire suppression and lack of controlled burns leads to big fires. However in an environment with hot Santa Ana Winds, even with good forest land fuel management, a city like Pacific Palisades as it stood could conceivably burn from an accidental fire within the city. The real question is this: do we have the capability to build a house that would not burn down if the neighboring house caught fire? If so, a city could be build that would be impervious to wild fire, arson, and accidental fires. How much would this cost?
- dkasper 2y agoDefensible housing exists, there have been some viral photos of a few houses that survived this wildfire. But the embers from large fires can fly for miles in high wind, so it would likely have to be the whole city
- Axsuul 2y agoTechnically, but nothing miles away caught on fire. The ignition zone is likely only a few hundred yards even in intense Santa Ana winds. So that means only homes in fire prone areas (or adjacent) would need to be made very defensible.
- lightedman 2y ago"Technically, but nothing miles away caught on fire. The ignition zone is likely only a few hundred yards even in intense Santa Ana winds." Not true. Here in Riverside we were watching large still-lit embers floating in (some which caused a repeat fire in the riverbottoms north of the 60, first called Brown then called Holly.) The primary stopping zone currently is around Pomona but another hard uptick in wind and it can easily cover out to the badlands. These winds are absolutely insane, you just do not understand. When they were peaking on Wednesday morning, my Subaru was being blown almost out of lane while driving down the 91 to work.
- marze 2y agoProbably a more pertinent question would be: can you construct houses that would not burn in a Santa Ana if all the vegetation and landscaping nearby burned. If you have fire resistant structures and only vegetation burned, not any structures, it would be much less expensive to replace just the landscaping plants. In a 80 mph wind, it would be very challenging to design a structure that would survive a wooden house burning next door.
- kneath 2y agoMany comments seem to be under the impression that we do not know or do not choose to build fire-resistant buildings. We do know how. It is required by code. Chapter 7 of the IBC code is the specific section. It was adopted in 2007. Most houses in America pre-date 2007 construction. If only comments on the internet had the power to retrofit millions of structures across the country, we'd be set. https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IBC2018/chapter-7-fire-and-smoke-protection-features https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IBC2018/chapter-7-fire-and...
- idle_zealot 2y agoSurely the problem here is one of policy and political will. In terms of cost I can't imagine that the damage done by unplanned firestorms leveling cities is less than retrofitting or controlled burns.
- kneath 2y agoIt is never really that simple. Here is a thought experiment: How does the idea of defensible space work if your neighbor's walls are 5 feet from your walls? What happens when an entire neighborhood is that closely spaced? How do you retrofit the space between buildings? There are dozens of challenges like the above, and a lot of them delve into personal freedoms. Should you be able to choose what trees to plant on your property? Should you be allowed a shed? Should the government use air surveillance to enforce the cleanliness of your backyard? There's lots we can do, lots we should do, but it is far from a simple path with a singular solution.
- sio8ohPi 2y agoTownhouses with no intervening space would likely be an improvement. Browse Altadena in streetview and you'll see loads of houses with vegetation -- tinder -- stacked between them. Getting rid of those intervening spaces entirely would reduce the surface area exposed to embers while simultaneously depriving homeowners the temptation to store fuel in unwise places.
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- johnea 2y agoA lot of informative historical detail in this article, but the title is pretty much completely disconnected from the content of the text. There is almost no discussion of why, or how, letting natural fire processes go unchecked would help the situation. It may very well be the case that this would be a good idea (or not), but this article really doesn't talk much about it in any case. But still, some detailed historical context of fires in LA...
- exodust 2y agoAgreed, I noticed that too. Title is provocative 1990's clickbait. "Malibu" is the community, not the raw elements of wind and vegetation. Letting a town burn is of course absurd. Even if Olmsted’s proposal for a great public domain park in the Santa Monicas is a sensible idea, you still wouldn't sit back and let that burn naturally without rigorous fuel load management, thinning of tall trees etc. On that point, the right amount and spacing of tall trees (even eucalypts) are important for wind breaks and shade.
- throwaway657656 2y agoMy comment is off-topic, but I am unclear what insurance would pay in the case of a total loss of a home/neighborhood. For example, a small one bedroom home in the Pacific Palisades might have had a FMV of $2M. Let's assume the structure itself has a replacement value of $150k. On a typical policy, would insurance pay $2M in case of total loss, or $150k ? What if the neighborhood is destroyed and that land is now worth ~10% of what it was prior ? Would insurance then pay out closer to the $2M ?
- tptacek 2y agoHomeowners policies generally pay replacement cost, not market value.
- brewdad 2y agoInsurance is not going to cover the value of the land, except perhaps to the extent there are expenses related to making it suitable for rebuilding. If the land loses 90% of its value, that’s yours to absorb. I’m sure it is possible to get coverage that would help you in this case but that goes beyond a standard home insurance policy.
- exodust 2y ago> "total loss of a home/neighborhood" I don't think there's such thing as "total loss of neighborhood" in terms of home insurance. Your plumbing is still there. The land, streets & footpaths are still there; power can be restored to streets quickly, and a huge amount of employment and activity is generated in your devastated area. The missing part I'm unsure about is where people live while their house is rebuilt. In a trailer on the property might be an option if you can't afford to rent somewhere else during that time? Perhaps the state can waive rates, or some other benefit to allow fire victims to afford rent while they rebuild their homes.
- battle-racket 2y agoRelated, RIP Mike Davis, author of this article. Highly recommend reading some of his books, my favorite being Late Victorian Holocausts which discusses famine in relation to colonialism.
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- nunez 2y agoGreat read! I had no idea that the history of wildfires in this region was so well-entrenched. It's completely unsurprising that those who can afford to self-insure would flock to the area for it's irresistible views and would, then, run for government help when the leopards, predictably, come for their faces.
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 2y agoAs a child of 6-8 living in Malibu in the 50s, it was a paradise. We left the year before a fire took the home of one of my childhood friends in Malibu canyon. I am grateful for learning more of the the history of Malibu and am reminded once again that fuel management is key to prevent or at least mitigate conflagrations.