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Comment by Teever | Hacker News Reader

Living near something doesn't make one an expert in that thing. I live near a school, but I'm still fairly worthless as an elementary school teacher or administrator.

The actual experts agree with the parent poster.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/06/how-fore...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-l...

https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-...

https://www.vox.com/2015/9/17/9347361/wildfire-management-pr...

(We could also do what Australia does, and set better standards for buildings and neighborhoods for surviving fires.)

The grandparent poster seems to be commenting about relative risk rather than personal expertise. You may not make a good elementary school teacher or administrator, but it would make sense for you to have an opinion on how the school manages traffic. Certainly you wouldn't value my opinion since I don't live by the school and even if I had expertise in school traffic management I might not have your interests in mind.

That said, I don't agree with the poster's attitude. (For the record, I live next to, and essentially in a large forest.) A controlled burn could get out of hand, but in general, controlled burns will do so less frequently than an unplanned wildfire if we aren't doing controlled burns. Or, in other words, whatever short term risk there is from a controlled burn near me is paid back by a reduced overall long term risk. Since I have no plans to sell my home (and even if I did, because I care about other people) controlled burns is a clear path forward from my point of view.

Controlled burns are a great idea. drones that can quickly put out unanticipated fires are also a great thing.

These ideas aren't mutually exclusive, I don't know why we are arguing about it.

> it would make sense for you to have an opinion on how the school manages traffic

No, we have traffic engineers for that.

Decisions should be made based off expertise, not proximity.

Indeed. Why even have voters?

To have some accountability for people who are supposed to make tough decisions and resolve tradeoffs in some responsible way.

Notably this isn’t a direct democracy, where direct democrats have an unfortunate tendency to demand freedom from the consequences of the policies they themselves enact, and ask for the irreconcilable.

In order to do that, you have to have an opinion.

I live in a location that is more or less impervious to the effects of climate change and rising sea levels but I still support the development of technology like dams that will save lives in the face of rising sea levels. This is no different

It is different. Its a solution to a symptom that will make the problem worse. This tech could be used to control small fires and direct them away from populated areas, but that's not how it's being sold. The saving grace for the company could be them educating customers on effective use to prevent large scale fires, but I'm unsure if they do such a thing.

AFAIK, it's now long (40+ years) that (at least on the west coast) periodic small fires are not only beneficial, but necessary, and that the US policy of "stop ALL fires" has been long-term extremely problematic. Mostly the "knowing" of this was finally accepting that the ways of those who originally lived here (first nations / native americans) were, in fact, better, since such periodic burns were the practice of those people.

AFAIK, the CA forest service have been trying to ramp up the number of small, controlled burns, but it's hard to not only get the funding to do it (in part because it's during the off-seasons) but because it's actually really hard to do because of the buildup up underbrush, which is the very problem the periodic burns address.

It's like a tech debt situation. There's enough tech debt that it's making it harder to pay it down.

I absolutely would not be surprised if forests on the east coast respond very differently to these kinds of burns.

This is only partially true, even in California. In Southern California, there is far less fuel than in prehistoric times, because there are more fires, and more high-severity fires from more ignition sources. In NorCal, the biggest blocker is often the local air quality district refusing permits for a controlled burn in the wildland, because it would cause unhealthful air. Which it would. So instead we wait for PG&E to accidentally a power line and make dangerous air quality.

None of this invalidates your argument, but adds IC engines to the list of tech debt. Long unsolved policy problems are usually unsolved for a reason :frown:.

Depends on where. Much of the east coast is wet enough the fires aren't a regular occurrence, and the dead underbrush rots away. I recall one in SE Pennslyvania in the past 30 years.

https://www.pottsmerc.com/2013/04/07/french-creek-state-park...

Hmm, this makes me question my dismissal of the concerns, but still supports the idea that it's not a long term concern on the east coast.

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