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> Can somebody fact check the LA firefighters running out of water despite being next to an ocean? It has been fact checked. Having more water is better than

> Can somebody fact check the LA firefighters running out of water despite being next to an ocean? It has been fact checked. Having more water is better than having less, but just because you have the reserves (or an ocean) does not mean your distribution can handle the volumes needed: > Water runs short: […] “There’s no urban water system engineered and constructed to combat wildfire,” said Michael McNutt, a spokesman for the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, which serves 75,000 people in northwest Los Angeles County. The system was intended to supply water to homes and businesses, he said, and to help fire crews defend a large structure or several homes, not multiple neighborhoods at once. […] * https://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/01/11/la-fires-unprepared-palisades-altadena-california/ https://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/20... > The firefighter clarified, "Well, we were flowing an amount of water that the system couldn’t … it was overbearing, just because of how much water these firefighters were utilizing." * https://www.tmz.com/2025/01/13/california-governor-gavin-newsom-elon-musk-los-angeles-wildfires-water-shortage/ https://www.tmz.com/2025/01/13/california-governor-gavin-new... * https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom/status/1878661950021960013 https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom/status/1878661950021960013 Another problem is that most folks do not (know to) shut off their main water connection when you evacuate: this is because if your how burns down all your pipes are now open and start spewing out water. And if the neighbourhood burns down all the houses start spewing water. So there's gallons/litres of water being sucked out of the system dropping pressure that taking up capacity that could be used for fire hydrants. Further, even if you had water and distribution, it may not be possible to have crews battling the fires due to other factors: > “I’ll be clear: We could have had much more water. With those wind gusts, we were not stopping that fire,” Pasadena Fire Chief Chad Augustin said. > When winds are as strong as they were Tuesday and Wednesday — reaching 100 mph on mountaintops and surpassing 60 mph along the coast — firefighters are severely limited in their tactics, experts said. They make it too dangerous and all but impossible to establish any fire perimeter. They blow flames as tall as 200 feet horizontally and send balls of red-hot embers flying at speeds that can carry them a mile or two away, where they start what are known as spot fires. […] > The lack of firefighting by air was a critical deficiency that persisted from Tuesday night through early Wednesday, fire officials said, and one that has allowed other devastating Southern California fires to spread in the past, including the Woolsey Fire, which burned across a footprint just to the west of the Palisades Fire in 2018. > “Without helicopters, this kind of a brush fire, we cannot stop it on the ground,” said Margaret Stewart, an LAFD spokeswoman. * https://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/01/10/la-fires-containment-winds-firefighter-challenges/ https://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/20...

Applejinx 2y ago
The high winds are really significant, especially when they are themselves arid and have a drying effect. This is another case where the behavior exists, has existed for a long time, but as part of a very large chaotic atmosphere system (I use that term formally: it's down to chaos theory that governs the range of behaviors you can expect) what was already a risky weather behavior has amplified strikingly, due to a relatively small change in global climate energy. And by that I mean relatively few degrees, not that it's a small change in energy. It's like a warming ocean: the actual amount of additional energy boggles the mind, completely eclipses anything humans can do with all their militaries. We're talking an amount of added energy (across all the oceans and atmosphere) that can combine to do more damage than a full-on nuclear war. And we only notice it when the chaos behaviors, the range of reachable extremes, get to points they couldn't reach before. Like how fast hurricane Otis ramped up before hitting Acapulco. How often do you see 100 mph Santa Ana winds in your daily life? You do now… when the conditions permit, and now that's just part of the reachable range that will sometimes happen, just as the explosive intensification of Hurricane Otis is just what will sometimes happen now. This and other effects like it are new because they're an epiphenomenon of what climate change means in practice. The seemingly few degrees of 'warmer', or the predicted general changes in climate across large areas of land (like the idea of Greenland being 'warmer' and thus able to sustain more agriculture) are insignificant or even misleading, compared to the increased range of chaotic oscillation manifesting in these events. We'll be making codes to mandate California buildings stand up to not only earthquakes, but sustained 100 mph winds along the coast. Because that'll become the norm… not constantly, but recurring, 'predictably'. Once you know what the chaotic oscillation can reach, you'll know that it'll be back… and that you may have underestimated how bad it'll get.

Applejinx 2y ago

The high winds are really significant, especially when they are themselves arid and have a drying effect. This is another case where the behavior exists, has existed for a long time, but as part of a very large chaotic atmosphere system (I use that term formally: it's down to chaos theory that governs the range of behaviors you can expect) what was already a risky weather behavior has amplified strikingly, due to a relatively small change in global climate energy. And by that I mean relatively few degrees, not that it's a small change in energy. It's like a warming ocean: the actual amount of additional energy boggles the mind, completely eclipses anything humans can do with all their militaries. We're talking an amount of added energy (across all the oceans and atmosphere) that can combine to do more damage than a full-on nuclear war. And we only notice it when the chaos behaviors, the range of reachable extremes, get to points they couldn't reach before. Like how fast hurricane Otis ramped up before hitting Acapulco. How often do you see 100 mph Santa Ana winds in your daily life? You do now… when the conditions permit, and now that's just part of the reachable range that will sometimes happen, just as the explosive intensification of Hurricane Otis is just what will sometimes happen now. This and other effects like it are new because they're an epiphenomenon of what climate change means in practice. The seemingly few degrees of 'warmer', or the predicted general changes in climate across large areas of land (like the idea of Greenland being 'warmer' and thus able to sustain more agriculture) are insignificant or even misleading, compared to the increased range of chaotic oscillation manifesting in these events. We'll be making codes to mandate California buildings stand up to not only earthquakes, but sustained 100 mph winds along the coast. Because that'll become the norm… not constantly, but recurring, 'predictably'. Once you know what the chaotic oscillation can reach, you'll know that it'll be back… and that you may have underestimated how bad it'll get.