One of the things that kills me is that whenever anything hits the news, everyone on the Internet becomes an instant expert. It doesn’t matter if the subject is the use of force, medicine, fire suppression, or engineering. Whatever the big news article, the Internet has an easy solution, and since no one has implemented your solution, it must mean that there is a conspiracy of rich guys who are not doing it because reasons.
The fires in LA are no exception. The latest I have been seeing is:
- how all of LA should be surrounded by a fire suppression sprinkler system that douses the buildings and surrounding countryside to ward off wildfires.
- Buildings should all be built of the same materials as kilns or perhaps of bricks, so that houses won’t burn.
- Neighborhoods should build their own reservoirs and hire their own fire departments to protect that specific neighborhood
- Establish volunteer fire departments where people who live in a neighborhood could defend it
I can think of half a dozen reasons why each of those ideas would fail spectacularly. I am sure that my readers can as well. The easiest and most effective answers are the ones that won’t be used. Again, I use Florida’s wildland forestry system as an example. I spent more than 25 years as a firefighter, have a degree in fire science, and a hold a Red card as a certified Federal wildland firefighter, but I clearly don’t know as much as a Liberal Arts major who works at Starbucks and spends his time solving all of the world’s problems on social media.
17 Comments
K9 Operator · January 12, 2025 at 2:02 pm
Proper management of the forest and brush would be a far more practical measure, but as you said, it won’t happen as long as the current batch of geniuses control the levers of power.
Banzaibob · January 12, 2025 at 3:20 pm
As someone who qualified basic and advanced damage control I know it takes a lot of training to know how to fight a fire and what equipment is needed. Speaking of equipment, who is going to pay for all of that stuff, who will be in charge and where will it be stored and maintained.
If you think it will be easy to volunteer and become a firefighter, I got news for you. You will probably need to pass a background check, sign a waiver for injuries and possibly turned down because you not diverse enough. The firefighters union may also have a say in wherther you can form a unit as well.
Last, after all that training will you be ready to fight a fire. It’s one thing to train, it’s another when everything is starting to come down all around you. Some roblems you run into is the same issues the professionals ran into, no water and no support by the politicians.
oldvet50 · January 12, 2025 at 3:41 pm
All I know about fighting fire is that water works pretty well. I also know that if an entity is sued for their actions/inactions they will respond accordingly in the future. The electric utilities were successfully sued in the past because their energized lines caused fires during high wind events. This time they took them out of service. It’s a shame they needed that electricity to run the pumps to fill the reservoirs that fed the hydrants, but here we are.
Beuregard Riffy · January 12, 2025 at 5:17 pm
I got my medical degree from Google. (sarc)
BlackRock will now build particle board section 8 apartments in time for the be all smart n’ shit olympics.
I would feel sorry for the comrades in CA but they vote/voted for communism.
Enjoy.
LargeMarge · January 13, 2025 at 11:11 pm
Beau,
The last legit election was never.
Dirty Dingus McGee · January 12, 2025 at 5:47 pm
” but I clearly don’t know as much as a Liberal Arts major who works at Starbucks ”
It’s about time you realized their superior intellect. Any day now your employer will also note their undiscovered talent, and hire them as your supervisor.
I ran into the same shit for years as a small business owner. Hire someone and within 3 days they had all kind of ideas on how my business SHOULD be run and the how that particular job should be done. All this while barely knowing which end of the screwdriver to hold, never mind how to track expense’s or manage manpower requirements. I guess I just got lucky to be able to make a living for 20+ years without their expertise.
Dan D. · January 12, 2025 at 9:44 pm
I can’t/won’t offer any solutions for the fire issue since it isn’t my bailiwick. But I will make two comments: 1) Govenment at any level is sure to get it wrong since they never face consequences for being inept, and 2) Those are the most retarded 4 bullet points I have ever read in my life.
Vlad the non-Impaler · January 13, 2025 at 4:38 am
“how all of LA should be surrounded by a fire suppression sprinkler system”
I suppose the cost of said sprinkler system (Billions) will gleefully be paid by the enviroweeies that think storing a water supply is BAD! No storage, no water.
The LA folks got what they voted for…loser policies that focus on BS and very much less focus on things that actually work!
God help those in need. They’re gonna need divine intervention to get the permits to rebuild anything.
Aesop · January 13, 2025 at 7:25 pm
Wait, so thousands of registered Democrats, who make up +/-90% of the voting bloc in that part of L.A., and give literal millions in campaign contributions to idiots like Gov. Gabbin’ Nuisance and Kamelknees Harris, can’t live in that district any more?
For a decade or more??
Be still my beating heart!!! Tell me the downside there; I’ll wait.
C · January 13, 2025 at 6:34 am
I am curious why building a house out of fire resistant materials wouldn’t work. Unless there is no management of the surrounding property. I’m guessing then you’ve just got a really expensive oven. Before anything metal softens and loses strength at least.
Divemedic · January 13, 2025 at 8:16 am
Cost
The roof will still be flammable, unless you use other building materials that are dangerous under other conditions like high winds (see the Galveston hurricane.)
TRX · January 13, 2025 at 1:18 pm
“My degree in Grievance Studies was a bullshit waste of time, so your engineering or forestry degree is no better.”
PB · January 13, 2025 at 2:19 pm
Hey DM, I chanced across this great piece via Substack. Written 25 years ago as part of a book.
It goes into detail about how devastating fires are inevitable (even without the woke and DEI nonsense revealed in the past week and “climate change” claimants).
These lands are not fit for large-scale human habitation. The insurance companies recognized this and GTFO.
one snippet:
“Malibu, meanwhile, is the wildfire capital of North America and, possibly, the world. Fire here has a relentless staccato rhythm, syncopated by landslides and floods. The rugged 22-mile-long coastline is scourged, on the average, by a large fire (one thousand acres plus) every two and a half years, and the entire surface area of the western Santa Monica Mountains has been burnt three times over the twentieth century. At least once a decade a blaze in the chaparral grows into a terrifying firestorm consuming hundreds of homes in an inexorable advance across the mountains to the sea. Since 1970 five such holocausts have destroyed more than one thousand luxury residences and inflicted more than $1 billion in property damage. Some unhappy homeowners have been burnt out twice in a generation, and there are individual patches of coastline or mountain, especially between Point Dume and Tuna Canyon, that have been incinerated as many as eight times since 1930.”
https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/
Divemedic · January 13, 2025 at 4:28 pm
That’s why proper management of the land is so important. If you do prescribed, controlled burns outside of peak fire season, you burn off most of the dead and decaying plant matter. That reduces the fire load and makes any wildfires that DO happen much less severe.
Aesop · January 13, 2025 at 7:55 pm
Let’s remember this is happening after New Year’s.
Peak fire season here runs from January to December.
Obviously, it’s hotter hereabouts in the summer months, but this all happened with nighttime temps than have been in the high 40s.
But Santa Ana winds, and humidity in the teens, happens any time of the year.
The only two things that stop these fires is rain, or the Pacific Ocean.
Expecting 100′ flames over dozens of square miles to be tamed in winds approaching hurricane strength is simply beyond retarded.
Better plan: You simply preclude human habitation in those mountains, and make it a permanent greenspace, knowing that every 2.5 years, it’ll be a blackspace, then a brownspace, then we’ll have a wet year or two, and it’ll be a greenspace again.
(And for all the internet climatologist/geographers, the affected area isn’t a desert. The Mojave is a desert. This area is chapparal, and evergreen forest, since before the Indians got here from Siberia. Yuuuuuuuge difference.)
So then, when a big fire inevitably happens, you just shut down PCH for a few days, let the fire(s) burn to the ocean, like it’s done for literally 50,000 years and more, before anyone had even learned to do much more than cave paintings, and it costs you – and everyone else – nothing.
80% of L.A. County doesn’t burn every other year.
97% of the inhabited regions don’t burn every other year.
Stop allowing rich idiots and suckers to build their McMansions in the 3% that does.
Make them live in the flatlands with the peons, and let everyone else enjoy the hills 24/7/365, and give the wildlife someplace to live that isn’t people’s back yard.
The insurance companies have already answered this question, so it’s pretty much going to preclude rebuilding, unless it’s on the people stupid enough to do it with no safety net.
No one is sad about this except the entitled idiots caught in the latest “I Live In A Wildfire Zone With A 200% Chance Of Burning Down Every Five Years” fiasco.
Boo frickin’ hoo.
And blacklist the entire zone from any future FEMA funds, in perpetuity.
You want freedom, you got it.
And full responsibility for the consequences of stupid life choices.
And if you catch homeless people camping in the canyons and starting fires
(homeless people cause 14,000 fires/year in L.A. County, per L.A. County statistics),
you put them on chain gangs doing hard labor in the deserts in the summer and mountains in the winter, with the initial sentence being 364 days, and doubling in duration for each subsequent count.
They will decamp, in haste.
QED
And that’s not internet expertise, it’s simply common sense, and having watched this all go down firsthand for well over half a century.
Brushfires in L.A. County are about as rare as cops and taxi cabs in NYFC.
The only thing new here is the number of idiots affected, because of how many we’ve allowed to be stupid, and the vastly increased property values compared to the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, etc.
Some people think tornadoes are because God hates trailer parks.
But, as it turns out, he hates millionaire Leftards in hillside homes too.
I’m good with that.
PB · January 14, 2025 at 12:14 pm
agreed. you can reduce the fire load, but that takes effort, discipline and resources CA politicians don’t possess. It also does not change the fact that this land is unsuitable for large scale urban/suburban development, like some coastal regions that are regular hurricane/flood targets. should taxpayers in the rest of the country be footing the bill so a minority can live in oceanfront splendor until the next regularly scheduled disaster?
Danny · January 13, 2025 at 6:33 pm
This LA catastrophe is a warning – maybe a harbinger – of difficult times ahead. Hope I’m wrong …
Comments are closed.