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It’s possible that solve the hurricane problems with proper building regulations and lower the risk of huge wildfires with controlled burning. But the US as alw

It’s possible that solve the hurricane problems with proper building regulations and lower the risk of huge wildfires with controlled burning. But the US as always prefers to pretend that there’s nothing to be done when other parts of the world has figured it out. We have cyclones here similar to the hurricanes in the US and usually it just blows over some trees maybe causes a power outage. The absolute worst I have experienced was 3 days without power. I have never seen a house destroyed by a cyclone here. As for wildfires, they do unfortunately claim a few houses most years.

skywhopper 2y ago
Where is “here”? Are you sure you aren’t confusing hurricanes and tornados? Hurricanes rarely destroy houses in the US, either.
- chillfox 2y ago
  Good to know. The news always seems to find footage of destroyed suburbs whenever the US is hit by a big one.
- alistairSH 2y ago
  How are you making this claim? Every time a hurricane hits Florida, there are photos of entire neighborhoods devastated by wind and storm surge. How many people were permanently displaced by Katrine? Etc. Maybe many of the homes weren't technically "destroyed", but each storm brings millions or billions in damage.
  - tetromino_ 2y ago
    Hurricanes usually don't affect the structure of a house. They might damage the roof, parts of exterior cladding, perhaps windows, and the flooding which accompanies hurricanes destroys personal possessions, interior furnishing, electrical wiring, and appliances. In the US, manual labor is very expensive, home construction or repair is highly regulated and requires permits and multiple inspections from the local government, and the amount of flood-destroyable stuff - material possessions, furnishings, appliances - in a typical home is massive. As a result, a cyclone which a poorer country would survive with a shrug in the US becomes an extremely expensive disaster.
    - alistairSH 2y ago
      It sounds like we're quibbling over the definition of "destroyed"... if a home is rendered uninhabitable for days/weeks/months, I'd consider that "destroyed" even if the framing is in fact salvageable. And certainly as it relates to insurance, the trend sure seems to be well on it's way towards "coastal Florida is insurable" (either the price goes up beyond the means of the residents, or the insurers leave the market). Something like 5% of the state is covered by Citizen's Property (the government insurer of last-resort). Some coastal areas are ~10%. I have to imagine it won't be long before it's cheaper to pay people to move elsewhere than rebuild where they are.
      - currymj 2y ago
        adaptation to hurricane winds has largely been done in many parts of Florida; adaptation to storm surge is possible and some cities are beginning to. the issue for Florida is that the state is made of permeable limestone, so it’s not possible to engineer around sea level rise. not so much an insurance issue exactly though, because it’s not a one-off disaster.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Hurricanes are common. The general case is they hit hundreds or thousands of square miles and destroy none or at worst a tiny fraction of the homes they hit. Take Katrina from my friends and family living in New Orleans, you’ll find city streets where none of the houses go significantly damaged. They lost power long enough you don’t want to open the fridge, but most of the city was fine in the hardest hit city from one of the most expensive storms on record.
    - jamroom 2y ago
      Over 200,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in Katrina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_of_New_Orleans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_of_New_Orleans Not sure how that is a "tiny fraction" of homes. $125 billion in damage (2005).
      - Retric 2y ago
        Moving the goalposts from destroyed to damaged gives different results. The issue is most to the city only sustained water damage, a solid chunk of the city is above the water level and was absolutely fine. Moving outside the city most homes in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama etc don’t need to worry about flooding.
  - currymj 2y ago
    A lot has to do with infrastructure. In most of South Florida basically anything left standing is pretty well built to withstand hurricanes. A category 1 storm hitting NYC or North Carolina is an unbelievable disaster. A category 1 storm hitting Broward County is usually disruptive to everyday life but that’s it.
horsawlarway 2y ago
Hurricanes are mostly just flood damage in the US, and some wind/debris damage exactly like the blown over trees you mention. Houses generally aren't destroyed by hurricanes in the sense of "the storm literally ripped them up", they're made uninhabitable by storm surges (flood). The scary ones are tornados. And tornados do genuinely fuck shit up. Even in those "enlightened" parts of the world you think have proper building regulations. If you're interested, go look at the recaps of tornado damage where they hit Europe here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_tornadoes_and_tornado_outbreaks#2000s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_tornadoes_and... Note the number of homes destroyed and people killed - plenty of both, even in those countries that prefer brick/concrete homes. Hurricanes throw branches. Tornados throw cars.
- blharr 2y ago
  Tornados might be more intense but only for a short period of time and in a small area. I don't see any of those where the tornado is lasting days, causing sustained damage. There are some where there are multiple tornadoes in a span, but each individual tornado is itself quick and violent but localized within a mile or so at most. Compare some incidents with, Hurricane Sandy, for example, where it traveled across the span of a thousand miles and lasted a week of damages.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Yes. Tornadoes seem like a phenomenon for which insurance is actually a pretty good part of the solution. I mean, it is very unlikely for anything in particular to get hit by a tornado, but it is really devastating. It might take an unreasonable amount of work to build everything to the level where it can sustain a direct hit by a tornado. The expected value of tornado damage is quite low overall, we just need to deal with the individual catastrophes that occur. Hurricanes… I mean, there are different sized hurricanes in different areas. For the ones that hit Florida, part of the solution is probably legitimately that we should have fewer people living there, because there’s going to be a widespread devastation there occasionally. And if you live in a hurricane-prone area, you are going to get hit by one eventually. (So like what’s the bet here? The insurance company knows they’ll probably have to pay out eventually). Just to put a number to it, 2024 was apparently an unusually busy year for tornadoes, around $6B. That isn’t nothing! But one single hurricane cost $7B in 2024… and there was a $34B one… and a $79B one… who’s insuring the southern coast of the US? Seems rough.
pclmulqdq 2y ago
As the governments in the US get increasingly incompetent, insurance prices are going to have to rise. Government services are largely there to protect you during black swan events, so if those services get less and less effective, you're going to need more insurance for those events.
- crawftv 2y ago
  This was the whole issue. California made it illegal for insurance companies to raise rates, so the insurance companies stop renewals. Leaving everybody uninsured. Homeowners couldn't buy insurance at any price.
  - Firaxus 2y ago
    It’s regulated, not illegal. “Experts say the insurance landscape in California is particularly tricky because, in addition to the wildfire risk, the state has a law that adds extra approval measures, including board approval and review by the insurance commissioner, if an insurance company wants to raise the rate of insurance by more than 7%. That’s been in effect since the 1980s.” https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/05/what-homeowners-need-to-know-as-insurers-leave-high-risk-climate-areas.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/05/what-homeowners-need-to-know...
    - dnissley 2y ago
      Illegal seems fine as shorthand though. Same with housing -- "illegal" to build in many instances. Not technically illegal of course, but enough hurdles makes it effectively so.
    - Analemma_ 2y ago
      If it's not permitted to raise the price of premiums to point where it covers the actual risk, then it's de facto illegal. Nobody will sell insurance policies at a loss.
      - amarcheschi 2y ago
marcosdumay 2y ago
It's so interesting to see the people in awe of that "fire hurricane" video in L.A.... We had a way more intense drought than they in my city last year (theirs are not that intense). We also had 50 km/h winds. We also had higher temperatures... And all of those to levels that we never saw before. Also, we have more trees in our cities. We had new "fire hurricane" videos every week (normally, every other year somebody films one). And we had to evacuate dozens of homes, luckily no one was destroyed and people could return 2 months later.
- taeric 2y ago
  It rather blunts your point when 50km/h winds are a far cry from 160km/h winds. Specifically, I'm now questioning if your drought was actually more intense. Not exactly sure how you measure that one.
- vantassell 2y ago
  You’re comparing apples to oranges. A Santa Ana wind is extremely dry and this one hit 100kmh (not 50). And it hasn’t really rained for 8 months (since May 2024). And we had a very wet winter last year, so there’s extra growth to fuel any fire. And finally, there’s 10 million people live in LA County, it’s a target rich space. Please let me know where else is having the same sort of fire without destroying homes.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    The 50 km/h was sustained, not peak, but ok, I don't think we reached 100. We have 7 million people living around, and yeah, only 6 months without a single drop of rain (19X days, where I don't remember what X was). Fire often destroys some homes, we got luck last year.
- ewhanley 2y ago
  It's not a competition. Both can be sights that people view in awe. Are you "Four Yorkshiremen-ing" wildfires?
  - 2y ago
sandworm101 2y ago
Wildfires are not the problem. They happen all the time without causing billion-dollar insurance claims. Insurance is always assets x risk. The issue is expensive flamable housing (assets) in a wildfire area (risk). We ask for trouble when we create million-dollar wooden houses surrounded by manicured gardens in desert enviroments. And build on a slope facing pervailing winds. The answer is concrete/brick houses with metal/ceramic rooves surrounded by sand/stone/concrete. Want a big green lawn? Move to the pacific northwest. Want to live near the beating heart of the movie industry, a town where it never rains? Get used to cactuses instead of rose gardens.
- doug_durham 2y ago
  That doesn't align with the reality of these areas. To get insurance in these areas you have to demonstrate that you have created a defensible space around your house. This is enforced by local fire department inspections. I know this because I live near a fire prone area. Despite these things the area still burned. The problem isn't "lawns" or "wooden houses". In the case of the LA fires you would have had the burned out husks of concrete houses that would need to be demolished if everything was made of concrete. This was a black swan event that will require a thoughtful response.
  - amonon 2y ago
    >This was a black swan event that will require a thoughtful response. Taleb would have a field day with this one. Broadly, I think a big part of the argument is driven by the assumption that the area will be rebuilt, despite being a known fire risk.
    - Alive-in-2025 2y ago
      Because of the Santa Ana winds (with this apparently being more than usual), you'll continually have very dry conditions with high winds and the danger of a fire getting out of control. I don't see it as a black swan either. This is a repeatable scenario, every few years they'll probably have conditions like this. The climate is changing, maybe this will spread or move to areas nearby. I live in an area that had a special warning last summer, we had a very very dry summer and there was a period with low humidity and high winds for a few days, it was considered an unusual scenario with extreme fire risk - but nothing happened this time. Now that I'm writing this I'm wondering what I'll do if it feels like an annual occurrence. Another parallel, the power company warned us they might shut off the power to reduce risk but I guess it didn't get that bad.
ryao 2y ago
I recall reading somewhere that the Indians had done controlled burns before Europeans settled in the parts of the U.S. where fires are now a problem. European settlers who displaced them did not continue the controlled burns and then fires became a problem. Apparently, if you do regular controlled burns, the severity of fires is reduced and healthy trees survive it. When you do not, when fires do occur, all trees die and the fires spread out of control.
- 0u89e 2y ago
  I recall reading the same thing, however I do recall that they were East coast native Indians, that cleared oak tree forests as a hunting grounds, so completelly unrelated to the problem in California. The story was about native land rights and if such looking after their hunting grounds can be seen as claims on property rights, which Indians did not knew as a concept, so it is a moot point anyway. The issues that plague CA seems to be chaos in organization level - from what I have read these wildfires are happening in the year, that did had moderate drought(compared to others), so I would look suspiciously in this with the mind, that if politicians are blaming climate, then it is a sign that they are absolutelly responsible for what they have not done and promised to people. But I do not own a house there and I have not voted for these people and I absolutelly would not hang them in the chimney of my house. PS Also, there are many opportunists, that were burning their houses to receive insurance or compensations, so not all of those houses were burned by wildfires. It all looks ugly, regadless from what angle you look, because if there is no responsibility - even from the ones that have taken upon resposibility, then catastrophe is expected - sooner than later.
  - onlypassingthru 2y ago
    Yosemite NP, especially the iconic valley, looked vastly different when the Europeans first arrived in the nineteenth century. It was sparsely forested and had lots of meadows. After a 150 years of no controlled burns, it's a dense forest down there. It turns out the native peoples were managing the forest, after all.
    - deleted 2y ago
bparsons 2y ago
Wildfire structure losses can be mitigated with cutting firebreaks, building material selection and removing flammable trees and plants from properties. A lot of communities in western Canada have learned this the hard way.
_DeadFred_ 2y ago
Theory: Damages in the USA have gone up because mold mitigation was incorporated as a serious consideration only fairly recently. If you increase your definition of what damage is and the work required to fix it then 'damage occurring' will appear to suddenly go up.

skywhopper 2y ago

Where is “here”? Are you sure you aren’t confusing hurricanes and tornados? Hurricanes rarely destroy houses in the US, either.

chillfox 2y ago
Good to know. The news always seems to find footage of destroyed suburbs whenever the US is hit by a big one.
alistairSH 2y ago
How are you making this claim? Every time a hurricane hits Florida, there are photos of entire neighborhoods devastated by wind and storm surge. How many people were permanently displaced by Katrine? Etc. Maybe many of the homes weren't technically "destroyed", but each storm brings millions or billions in damage.
- tetromino_ 2y ago
  Hurricanes usually don't affect the structure of a house. They might damage the roof, parts of exterior cladding, perhaps windows, and the flooding which accompanies hurricanes destroys personal possessions, interior furnishing, electrical wiring, and appliances. In the US, manual labor is very expensive, home construction or repair is highly regulated and requires permits and multiple inspections from the local government, and the amount of flood-destroyable stuff - material possessions, furnishings, appliances - in a typical home is massive. As a result, a cyclone which a poorer country would survive with a shrug in the US becomes an extremely expensive disaster.
  - alistairSH 2y ago
    It sounds like we're quibbling over the definition of "destroyed"... if a home is rendered uninhabitable for days/weeks/months, I'd consider that "destroyed" even if the framing is in fact salvageable. And certainly as it relates to insurance, the trend sure seems to be well on it's way towards "coastal Florida is insurable" (either the price goes up beyond the means of the residents, or the insurers leave the market). Something like 5% of the state is covered by Citizen's Property (the government insurer of last-resort). Some coastal areas are ~10%. I have to imagine it won't be long before it's cheaper to pay people to move elsewhere than rebuild where they are.
    - currymj 2y ago
      adaptation to hurricane winds has largely been done in many parts of Florida; adaptation to storm surge is possible and some cities are beginning to. the issue for Florida is that the state is made of permeable limestone, so it’s not possible to engineer around sea level rise. not so much an insurance issue exactly though, because it’s not a one-off disaster.
- Retric 2y ago
  Hurricanes are common. The general case is they hit hundreds or thousands of square miles and destroy none or at worst a tiny fraction of the homes they hit. Take Katrina from my friends and family living in New Orleans, you’ll find city streets where none of the houses go significantly damaged. They lost power long enough you don’t want to open the fridge, but most of the city was fine in the hardest hit city from one of the most expensive storms on record.
  - jamroom 2y ago
    Over 200,000 homes were damaged or destroyed in Katrina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_of_New_Orleans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_of_New_Orleans Not sure how that is a "tiny fraction" of homes. $125 billion in damage (2005).
    - Retric 2y ago
      Moving the goalposts from destroyed to damaged gives different results. The issue is most to the city only sustained water damage, a solid chunk of the city is above the water level and was absolutely fine. Moving outside the city most homes in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama etc don’t need to worry about flooding.
- currymj 2y ago
  A lot has to do with infrastructure. In most of South Florida basically anything left standing is pretty well built to withstand hurricanes. A category 1 storm hitting NYC or North Carolina is an unbelievable disaster. A category 1 storm hitting Broward County is usually disruptive to everyday life but that’s it.

horsawlarway 2y ago

Hurricanes are mostly just flood damage in the US, and some wind/debris damage exactly like the blown over trees you mention. Houses generally aren't destroyed by hurricanes in the sense of "the storm literally ripped them up", they're made uninhabitable by storm surges (flood). The scary ones are tornados. And tornados do genuinely fuck shit up. Even in those "enlightened" parts of the world you think have proper building regulations. If you're interested, go look at the recaps of tornado damage where they hit Europe here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_tornadoes_and_tornado_outbreaks#2000s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_tornadoes_and... Note the number of homes destroyed and people killed - plenty of both, even in those countries that prefer brick/concrete homes. Hurricanes throw branches. Tornados throw cars.

blharr 2y ago
Tornados might be more intense but only for a short period of time and in a small area. I don't see any of those where the tornado is lasting days, causing sustained damage. There are some where there are multiple tornadoes in a span, but each individual tornado is itself quick and violent but localized within a mile or so at most. Compare some incidents with, Hurricane Sandy, for example, where it traveled across the span of a thousand miles and lasted a week of damages.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Yes. Tornadoes seem like a phenomenon for which insurance is actually a pretty good part of the solution. I mean, it is very unlikely for anything in particular to get hit by a tornado, but it is really devastating. It might take an unreasonable amount of work to build everything to the level where it can sustain a direct hit by a tornado. The expected value of tornado damage is quite low overall, we just need to deal with the individual catastrophes that occur. Hurricanes… I mean, there are different sized hurricanes in different areas. For the ones that hit Florida, part of the solution is probably legitimately that we should have fewer people living there, because there’s going to be a widespread devastation there occasionally. And if you live in a hurricane-prone area, you are going to get hit by one eventually. (So like what’s the bet here? The insurance company knows they’ll probably have to pay out eventually). Just to put a number to it, 2024 was apparently an unusually busy year for tornadoes, around $6B. That isn’t nothing! But one single hurricane cost $7B in 2024… and there was a $34B one… and a $79B one… who’s insuring the southern coast of the US? Seems rough.

pclmulqdq 2y ago

As the governments in the US get increasingly incompetent, insurance prices are going to have to rise. Government services are largely there to protect you during black swan events, so if those services get less and less effective, you're going to need more insurance for those events.

crawftv 2y ago
This was the whole issue. California made it illegal for insurance companies to raise rates, so the insurance companies stop renewals. Leaving everybody uninsured. Homeowners couldn't buy insurance at any price.
- Firaxus 2y ago
  It’s regulated, not illegal. “Experts say the insurance landscape in California is particularly tricky because, in addition to the wildfire risk, the state has a law that adds extra approval measures, including board approval and review by the insurance commissioner, if an insurance company wants to raise the rate of insurance by more than 7%. That’s been in effect since the 1980s.” https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/05/what-homeowners-need-to-know-as-insurers-leave-high-risk-climate-areas.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/05/what-homeowners-need-to-know...
  - dnissley 2y ago
    Illegal seems fine as shorthand though. Same with housing -- "illegal" to build in many instances. Not technically illegal of course, but enough hurdles makes it effectively so.
  - Analemma_ 2y ago
    If it's not permitted to raise the price of premiums to point where it covers the actual risk, then it's de facto illegal. Nobody will sell insurance policies at a loss.
    - amarcheschi 2y ago

marcosdumay 2y ago

It's so interesting to see the people in awe of that "fire hurricane" video in L.A.... We had a way more intense drought than they in my city last year (theirs are not that intense). We also had 50 km/h winds. We also had higher temperatures... And all of those to levels that we never saw before. Also, we have more trees in our cities. We had new "fire hurricane" videos every week (normally, every other year somebody films one). And we had to evacuate dozens of homes, luckily no one was destroyed and people could return 2 months later.

taeric 2y ago
It rather blunts your point when 50km/h winds are a far cry from 160km/h winds. Specifically, I'm now questioning if your drought was actually more intense. Not exactly sure how you measure that one.
vantassell 2y ago
You’re comparing apples to oranges. A Santa Ana wind is extremely dry and this one hit 100kmh (not 50). And it hasn’t really rained for 8 months (since May 2024). And we had a very wet winter last year, so there’s extra growth to fuel any fire. And finally, there’s 10 million people live in LA County, it’s a target rich space. Please let me know where else is having the same sort of fire without destroying homes.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  The 50 km/h was sustained, not peak, but ok, I don't think we reached 100. We have 7 million people living around, and yeah, only 6 months without a single drop of rain (19X days, where I don't remember what X was). Fire often destroys some homes, we got luck last year.
ewhanley 2y ago
It's not a competition. Both can be sights that people view in awe. Are you "Four Yorkshiremen-ing" wildfires?
- 2y ago

sandworm101 2y ago

Wildfires are not the problem. They happen all the time without causing billion-dollar insurance claims. Insurance is always assets x risk. The issue is expensive flamable housing (assets) in a wildfire area (risk). We ask for trouble when we create million-dollar wooden houses surrounded by manicured gardens in desert enviroments. And build on a slope facing pervailing winds. The answer is concrete/brick houses with metal/ceramic rooves surrounded by sand/stone/concrete. Want a big green lawn? Move to the pacific northwest. Want to live near the beating heart of the movie industry, a town where it never rains? Get used to cactuses instead of rose gardens.

doug_durham 2y ago
That doesn't align with the reality of these areas. To get insurance in these areas you have to demonstrate that you have created a defensible space around your house. This is enforced by local fire department inspections. I know this because I live near a fire prone area. Despite these things the area still burned. The problem isn't "lawns" or "wooden houses". In the case of the LA fires you would have had the burned out husks of concrete houses that would need to be demolished if everything was made of concrete. This was a black swan event that will require a thoughtful response.
- amonon 2y ago
  >This was a black swan event that will require a thoughtful response. Taleb would have a field day with this one. Broadly, I think a big part of the argument is driven by the assumption that the area will be rebuilt, despite being a known fire risk.
  - Alive-in-2025 2y ago
    Because of the Santa Ana winds (with this apparently being more than usual), you'll continually have very dry conditions with high winds and the danger of a fire getting out of control. I don't see it as a black swan either. This is a repeatable scenario, every few years they'll probably have conditions like this. The climate is changing, maybe this will spread or move to areas nearby. I live in an area that had a special warning last summer, we had a very very dry summer and there was a period with low humidity and high winds for a few days, it was considered an unusual scenario with extreme fire risk - but nothing happened this time. Now that I'm writing this I'm wondering what I'll do if it feels like an annual occurrence. Another parallel, the power company warned us they might shut off the power to reduce risk but I guess it didn't get that bad.

ryao 2y ago

I recall reading somewhere that the Indians had done controlled burns before Europeans settled in the parts of the U.S. where fires are now a problem. European settlers who displaced them did not continue the controlled burns and then fires became a problem. Apparently, if you do regular controlled burns, the severity of fires is reduced and healthy trees survive it. When you do not, when fires do occur, all trees die and the fires spread out of control.

0u89e 2y ago
I recall reading the same thing, however I do recall that they were East coast native Indians, that cleared oak tree forests as a hunting grounds, so completelly unrelated to the problem in California. The story was about native land rights and if such looking after their hunting grounds can be seen as claims on property rights, which Indians did not knew as a concept, so it is a moot point anyway. The issues that plague CA seems to be chaos in organization level - from what I have read these wildfires are happening in the year, that did had moderate drought(compared to others), so I would look suspiciously in this with the mind, that if politicians are blaming climate, then it is a sign that they are absolutelly responsible for what they have not done and promised to people. But I do not own a house there and I have not voted for these people and I absolutelly would not hang them in the chimney of my house. PS Also, there are many opportunists, that were burning their houses to receive insurance or compensations, so not all of those houses were burned by wildfires. It all looks ugly, regadless from what angle you look, because if there is no responsibility - even from the ones that have taken upon resposibility, then catastrophe is expected - sooner than later.
- onlypassingthru 2y ago
  Yosemite NP, especially the iconic valley, looked vastly different when the Europeans first arrived in the nineteenth century. It was sparsely forested and had lots of meadows. After a 150 years of no controlled burns, it's a dense forest down there. It turns out the native peoples were managing the forest, after all.
  - deleted 2y ago

bparsons 2y ago

Wildfire structure losses can be mitigated with cutting firebreaks, building material selection and removing flammable trees and plants from properties. A lot of communities in western Canada have learned this the hard way.

_DeadFred_ 2y ago

Theory: Damages in the USA have gone up because mold mitigation was incorporated as a serious consideration only fairly recently. If you increase your definition of what damage is and the work required to fix it then 'damage occurring' will appear to suddenly go up.