Los Angeles wildfires
Speechless. It's covered elsewhere far better than I could ever hope to do. Suzanne, from SoCal, knows people whose houses have been leveled, life's work lost.
2. The disinformation about why the wildfires started is similar to the disinformation the Murdoch media pushes in Australia to discredit climate change theories.
3. I didn't understand high winds til I came to Utah. Sometimes we experience ongoing winds of 70mph or more. In fire conditions this spreads embers beyond firebreaks, and also significantly speeds spread.
4. Yes, areas prone to fire, and/or difficult to respond to, should not be built upon.
posted by Richard Layman @ 7:30 AM&Permanent Link
21 Comments:
1. A lot of the disaster porn pictures are showing subdivisions. This was a true fire storm -- 100 MPH winds will do that. But in terms of changing where to build, these locations would seem relatively safe -- unless you want to go an ban most settlement patterns in the west.
2. Even with the firestorm, you can see true fire prevention was not taking place in building codes. Easy to do. Concrete walls. No windows. Metal roof. given the reasons why people move to LA that does seem like it won't be popular, and we'll continue to use wood and lot of fenestrations.
3. Your writing goes along with Mike Davis - in particular "let Malibu Burn" https://jacobin.com/2018/12/california-fires-let-malibu-burn-mike-davis-interview
The US midwest used to have a lot of forest fires; cutting down the trees solved the problem. Perhaps we need more golf courses which are basically giant fire breaks. Not where Mike Davis would end up.
(The idea of preserving the entire Malibu hillside as a park is a nice one, and one that was lost by Olmstead.)
Was listening to music for the first time in a long time. The music video for Malibu by Hole had tons of fire imagery.
2. I also forgot a point, of Trump as divider in chief.
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/1hxzgh4/this_house_remained_intact_while_the_neighborhood/
pulled from bloomberg article "These Homes Withstood the LA Fires. Architects Explain Why"
any taste coming back>
Oh yeah. I'm actually at a point where I think I can live a life into my 80s. While I was hospitalized in November it was determined my heart ejection fraction was 3x better than in June. Fluky reasons why I had to be hospitalized. Otherwise I was near a positive peak.
With intermittent problems likely over 20 years...
Taste improvements since late November. I am eating more. Gained about 10 pounds over 2 months so I'm 133. My target is at least 150.
But I still have fears about foods. The cough is still an issue, and it can go into reaching mode. But we went to an all you can eat sushi place a couple weeks ago and I ate a fair amount. The cooked wasn't so great, but the raw was quite decent.
I've said this before, get a GI to to an endoscopy to check for ulcer or obstruction. The throwing up is not normal.
Glad to hear some taste is coming back.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/los-angeles-shouldnt-rebuild-the-same-way-after-wildfires.html
Los Angeles Shouldn’t Rebuild the Same Way Again
1/13/25
LA Wildfires Push California Insurance Market to Its Limit
1/10/25, Bloomberg
https://archive.ph/vFUyr#selection-1259.0-1259.58
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/01/11/altadena-california-fires-climate-change-00197658
‘Half the Country’s Thinking Magically’: California Fire Victims Grapple with the Political Paralysis Over Climate Change
Off topic. Link through a scholar.google.com search on Gregory Shill
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/til-2022-0008/html
(Separately, he has an article about how the legal structure of society has been created to force automobility.)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-13/los-angeles-wildfires-why-these-homes-didn-t-burn
WRT this, it reiterates your points about building codes. Similarly, post Hurricane code changes in South Florida.
Long story. Endoscopy in the works. Suzanne was apoplectic doing it before Xmas out of her belief that sedation for a procedure in May led to my chf relapse.
Los Angeles Is Being Crushed Under the Weight of Inaction
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/opinion/los-angeles-fires.html
Lack of accountability on the part of elected officials because of the size of LA County. Lack of sense of urgency.
An unstated premise though is that this scale and type of fire was addressable, if they only planned better.
Actually that's true, but it would mean not building to begin with in many of the places that caught fire.
It's the end case of financialization.
The loss of life has been low given the scope.
Number of properties lost also high, but the problem is they are each worth over $2m.
(again, insurance won't cover land, just the structure, so it might be less)
Does anyone care? Everyone gets a check, nobody complains or does anything to fix the problem.
Granted the size may put a few insurance companies out of business, and in any case everyone in the state of California will be paying a lot more for home insurance next year.
You're at the point where you know your body and the reaction better than any medical provider.
That said, for a scope the anesthetic is different - more makes you compliant and loopy and doesn't knock you out. I asked my dad about that as well, he suggested a chest cat with contrast agents to see if there is blockages or masses. Might be easier if you don't want to do procedure. Worth asking about.
Thanks for this.
https://mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2025/01/47-years-later-the-palisades-disappeared-overnight
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-01-14/cal-fire-grant-funds-los-angeles-palisades-fire-prevention
Rural areas got millions in state fire prevention funds over parts of L.A. that burned
When I went to a public meeting about trails planning in Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons, which are part of the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache Forest, someone commented to me that Salt Lake City is rare in that it is an urban area with a large amount of acreage under the purview of the US Forest Service.
But the same goes for LA. Although I don't think USFS was an issue, the rural versus urban "forest " is probably a concept people have a hard time with.
(Over the years I've scored the Uinta, Wasatch, and Cache Forest Map publications before the forests were merged for budgetary reasons.)
https://www.kqed.org/science/1941685/this-california-neighborhood-was-built-to-survive-a-wildfire-and-it-worked
This California Neighborhood Was Built to Survive a Wildfire. And It Worked
Rancho Santa Fe, like so many other California communities, sits on the vulnerable border between development and open space.
Firefighters have a name for this: the wildland-urban interface. Essentially, it means things you don’t want to burn, like houses, have been built next to something that’s supposed to, the ecosystem.
On Oct. 21, 2007, the Santa Ana winds carried the Witch Fire into town, the flames funneled through low valleys or “avenues of fire,” as Cox calls them.
“It was like raining fire,” he said. “I remember going down some streets down here, La Breccia, and it’s like, man, if I go down there, I don’t know if I’m going to make it back out.”
Even before the fire actually hit, Cox had a problem.
“The fire wasn’t even close, but we had homes burning,” he said. “I would drive down the road and it was, like: How did that house catch on fire?”
The answer was embers, blown far ahead of the fire front. They’d land on a wood roof or leaf-filled gutter, or even get sucked into an attic vent. In many fires, the majority of homes are ignited this way.
... So Willis started drafting new building codes for his district, requiring installations proven to protect homes, like noncombustible roofs, noncombustible siding, fire sprinklers and double-pane windows.
The idea was far from mainstream at the time. It’s often more expensive to build homes with those features, and developers were concerned.
Then in 1996, fires broke out all over Southern California, including one in San Diego.
Homes in Rancho Santa Fe have noncombustible roofs and siding. There’s also no street parking on narrow roads. (Lauren Sommer/KQED)
“It’s generally much easier to get codes passed right after a fire,” Willis said. “So I took this code to our board right after that fire.”
The fire district’s board voted to adopt the new building codes. But the first real test didn’t come until 11 years later, with the Witch Fire. Willis watched it approach from a fire station.
... Still, even fire-resistant homes become less safe over time, because individual residents make small decisions that collectively put the entire community at risk.
So Rancho Santa Fe has tried to change how residents think about fire.
In some neighborhoods, street parking isn’t allowed in front of homes, since it would impede fire trucks on narrow roads. It’s not a popular rule when people want to throw a party.
The fire district also strictly enforces state regulations governing weeds and brush. Californians in high fire-risk zones are required to manage vegetation within 100 feet of their homes, with the toughest requirements within 30 feet.
That area is known as “defensible space,” and meeting the requirements for maintaining it means clearing out dead leaves and brush, mowing weeds or grasses and establishing gaps between trees and shrubs.
Enforcement of these rules is lax in some parts of the state, but not in Rancho Santa Fe. The fire district checks around 29,000 properties for compliance annually.
https://www.ocregister.com/2025/01/15/misinformation-about-california-fires-is-spreading-like-well-wildfire
Misinformation about California fires is spreading like, well, wildfire
'Even I was shocked by how much misdirection of information there is,' one expert said of the wildfires. Reliable information, she said, is 'not that easy to find'
The design legacy of Los Angeles that fell to the fires
(NYT article)
https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/the-design-legacy-of-los-angeles-that-fell-to-the-fires/
About insurance
The End of L.A.’s Magical Thinking
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2025/01/los-angeles-fire-california-insurance-prevention/681368/
A key ‘weakness’ in L.A.’s wildfire strategy went unaddressed for years, Post probe shows
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2025/01/18/2023-memo-la-fire-chief-warned-significant-gap-wildfire-defense/
In a memo that has not been previously reported, chief told city fire commissioners that L.A. relied almost entirely on overburdened “hand crews” from other jurisdictions to handle its brush fire emergencies.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/jan/15/criminally-reckless-la-wildfires-urban-sprawl
‘Criminally reckless’: why LA’s urban sprawl made wildfires inevitable – and how it should rebuild
A century of foolhardy development, including public subsidies for rebuilding in the firebelt, hugely contributed to this tragedy, writes our architecture critic. LA must rethink – and build upwards not outwards
t has been a shocking, saddening spectacle – but also one that was entirely predictable. Blame has been variously hurled at water mismanagement and fire department budget cuts, but little could have been done to stop these blazes. After a century of misguided urban development and flagrant disregard for climate change, it was only a question of when they would ignite.
The region’s extraordinary fire hazard, he pointed out, is shaped by the uncanny alignment of its coastal canyons with the Santa Ana winds, the strong, dry gusts that blow in towards the coast from the north-east. The valleys and gorges around LA act as giant bellows, accelerating the fire winds as they are funnelled through the landscape, made hotter and drier by the climate crisis. Over the last week, these winds have reached more than 80mph, blowing embers from ridge to ridge and street to street, making the fires virtually impossible to contain. As one emergency responder put it: “At 10 miles per hour, I’m a firefighter. At 30 miles per hour, I’m an observer.” Any higher, another added, you’re just a wind sock.
Rather than simply rebuild, as these fire-ravaged areas have done time and again, the cataclysmic events of recent days should trigger a rethink as to how the city could grow back. The insurance industry is already reticent to underwrite homes in fire zones, and there are questions over whether they will foot the multibillion dollar reconstruction process. Building codes are also likely to change, making construction in these areas even more expensive.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-01-16/la-fire-how-sprawl-complicates-wildfire-evacuation
In a City of Sprawl, Wildfire Evacuation Is Getting Harder
As climate change supercharges fire season and more people move to areas that are primed to burn, street design can make a life-saving difference.
Letters to the editor
Before rebuilding, we should recognize the fires’ tragedies and opportunities
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-01-23/rebuilding-pacific-palisades-altadena-los-angeles-fires
Lessons from economics for rebuilding
Uncertainty. The numerous families and business owners who have lost their homes and commercial spaces ask a similar set of questions: Should I rebuild? How will I deal with the various government agencies involved and find a contractor? How long will it take before I can move back in? Some of these uncertainties stem from the approval and regulatory processes of the city and state, which raise construction costs and cause delays: It takes an average of almost five years to bring a multifamily project from building permit to certificate of occupancy in the city of Los Angeles. To reduce uncertainty that stems from development approvals, that system must be redesigned and centralized, to shorten and simplify the process.
Externalities. These are community effects that result from individual economic actions — both positive, such as the vibrancy of restored neighborhoods, and negative, such as the challenges of uneven cleanup or environmental contamination. Among the appealing features of living in Pacific Palisades and Altadena are their community amenities, such as their vibrant culture and clean environment. But these amenities are the result of collective decisions over generations. Without external coordination, no single home or business owner will have the incentive to re-create these valuable places on their own, or mitigate the inevitable environmental problems. Where possible, we must coordinate the overall community impacts of rebuilding. For example, when it comes to environmental remediation, the cleanup effort must be harmonized on a scale that considers whole neighborhoods.
Construction labor. Replacing the 12,000 structures lost in the fires will represent a drastic increase in L.A.’s housing construction. Unfortunately, the shortage of skilled workers is already a huge impediment to building here. Scaling up the construction industry to meet the surge in demand will be even more difficult. One step that would help would be to create registries for labor resources brought in from outside the region.
Supply chain. A related challenge is the delivery of construction materials. Any builder or homeowner engaged in renovation can attest that waiting for materials — whether that’s lumber or a refrigerator — causes delays. New demand will be higher than ever before. Any hiccups in the supply chain will create interruptions and uncertainty. Adding to such disruptions will be price increases amplified by increased demand, especially for fire-resistant materials such as concrete and steel. Some of this will be unavoidable, but communities can minimize interruptions by working with “at-scale” home builders in the redevelopment process. These companies specialize in converting large parcels of land to residential developments; in addition to economies of scale, they also benefit from expertise and leverage in acquiring building materials and consumer products.
Financial burdens. The final economic issue facing rebuilding is its price tag. Some homeowners and business owners have insurance that will help finance reconstruction. In many cases, however, insurance payouts will fall short of the need. Some families may have personal savings to cover the difference, but many will be able to rebuild only by borrowing money. Given current interest rates, this debt will be expensive — for those lucky enough to get loans. Private lenders, state and federal housing finance agencies and local housing trust funds should establish programs providing construction or permanent mortgage loans to fire victims.
Like a war zone
There is a silver lining in the aftermath of traumatic events such as wars and wildfires. Researchers studying post-conflict societies have found that some communities emerge stronger, more resilient and more politically active. Facing a shared threat and working together to meet it inspires deeper in-group ties. Even after the threat dissipates, these community bonds inspire individuals to be more involved in their communities and to be more engaged in political activities, including voting. These effects are historically persistent and can last across multiple generations.
Can war foster cooperation?
Journal of Economic Perspectives
https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdf/10.1257/jep.30.3.249
The Legacy of Political Violence across generations
Am. J of Political Science
https://www.noamlupu.com/Lupu_Peisakhin_Crimea.pdf
Historical Legacies of Political Violence Forthcoming in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics
https://zhukovyuri.github.io/files/2020_WZ_OEP.pdf
A moment for good government
City leaders should set a goal of making Pacific Palisades a global model of resilience against future disasters. (This also should be considered for the fire-damaged Altadena area, which is outside the city.) While the cleanup of the Palisades is underway and before a single new building permit is issued, the city should establish a blue-ribbon panel of government and private-sector leaders and experts to:
Objectively review and reassess current development plans.
Evaluate and identify deficiencies in all current infrastructure including water supply, water storage, water distribution, sewer, power, cell service, internet service, gas lines, streets, sidewalks, electrical lines, etc.
Recommend improvements to current plans that will modernize all new infrastructure to meet the demands of today as well as those of an unknown future in full consideration of the unique challenges of L.A.’s varied topography and weather patterns.
This panel should seek input from outside experts on current best practices as well as input from our tech companies and academia on the use of emerging new technologies such as smart lighting and security systems, advanced construction materials and techniques, the Internet of Things, AI-based technologies and more.
As the panel makes its recommendations, it should incorporate a mix of housing types into the new plan that:
Reflect market demands.
Keep density levels safe and defensible considering local topography.
Retain the character and community appeal that has made the Palisades such a vibrant and desirable place to live and work.
While the Palisades recovery plan is being developed, the city should update local building codes to ensure that all reconstructed buildings meet the latest resilience standards.
To keep recovery moving forward, city leaders should augment government construction professionals with outside consultants who have expertise in managing large, complex infrastructure projects and keeping them to a tight schedule.
A chance to address climate and housing crises
By 2029, Los Angeles will need to have built 456,000 units — including 182,200 units for low-income renters — to make up for the past 50 years of underproduction, and we are only a small fraction of the way there.
The rebuilding process for burned areas is an opportunity to make big strides toward this goal. Hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent on recovery. Some of that will be public money, and it should be spent wisely — not used for short-term or low-impact projects. Public dollars should go toward solutions that will address the root causes of both the climate and housing crises.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-02-09/built-to-burn-a-history-of-development-of-los-angeles-hillsides
Post a Comment
<< Home