Inconvenient truths about the fires burning in Los Angeles from two fire experts | Hacker News Reader

Inconvenient truths about the fires burning in Los Angeles from two fire experts

latimes.com

34 pointsandsoitis63 comments

I don't really see what is an "inconvenient truth" here, and their "prevention" seems to be basically "we need better fireproofing standards in homes." The thing is, many of the homes in these areas are already fireproofed! I struggle to understand how anyone can think this is entirely preventable when you're dealing with 60+ mph winds and these kind of dry conditions. That, to me, is the inconvenient truth here - that this area may not be habitable long-term to the degree and density in which it is.

Fireproofing isnt mandatory, so people dont do it

People like lawns and shrubberies, and they hate spending even one dollar extra on roofing when they know a taxpayer-backed insurance policy will cover their substandard construction

> they hate spending even one dollar extra on roofing when they know a taxpayer-backed insurance policy will cover their substandard construction

So people would prefer to lose all of their belongings and be displaced?

You never think it's going to happen to you...

Yes.

They are clearly preferring to save their money on insurance and keep the chance to lose all their belongings and be displaced. That is a fair way to say what happens when people with the option to buy insurance don't. Including people both whose houses burnt down and whose houses didn't burn down.

In economics there is a difference between stated preferences and economic or "revealed" preferences. It shows what people say they want and what people do with their money are not always the same thing.

Sometimes especially what people say and what people do with their money differ in predictable ways.

It can be fun to juxtapose the observed behaviors with what people say. Makes for very compelling and sometimes cynical commentary.

OP added taxpayer-backed insurance policy part for fluff and/or agenda. It has zero to do with the valid part of their point:

> they hate spending even one dollar extra on roofing

replacing my roof in a low cost of living area is $25k. I can't imagine what it is down there. It's also an expense that comes up and people don't tend to plan well for. I don't think taxpayer backed insurance even comes into peoples' thoughts at all let alone their justification for lack of planning for property maintenance expense.

In my area of Southern California, fireproofing is mandatory for new construction, meaning new homes have to be built to very strict fire safety standards that get updated all the time. However, yeah, for existing homes, it's highly recommended to clear brush or whatever, but it's not mandatory.

In my experience, if you've got significant brush on your property and you don't clear it, the FD asks you to take care of it pronto.

In the middle of nowhere mountain/inland northwest insurance companies fly drones over your home and send you letters with pictures telling you changes you need to make if you want to keep your insurance. Crazy that isn't a thing in California yet.

Not sure about policing and drones in California, but I know it's extremely expensive to get home owners insurance in canyon-bordering areas. A buddy of mine couldn't get his property insured at all; he was forced to utilize some sort of state-run program, which, of course, was extremely expensive.

> Fireproofing isnt mandatory, so people dont do it

100%

> and they hate spending even one dollar extra on roofing when they know a taxpayer-backed insurance policy will cover their substandard construction

That just doesn't follow. More likely is that people building the homes (possibly on spec) are motivated by their bottom dollar, so only do what is mandatory (per your first point) or that people who own the homes simply _don't know about these mitigations_.

Blaming all behavior on a last-resort insurance fund misses a lot of steps between, and I don't think tracks to how people actually behave in the real world.

"simply _don't know about these mitigations_"

Yes, but if insurance rates were to be free of government interference, the cost of insurance might start factoring into homebuyers' research and decision processes.

While I agree that parts of the Palisades are much more difficult to protect from these events given the geography (but even then, well-built houses survived), that's just not the case as to what happened in Altadena. Most Altadena homes were built before fire prevention standards were in place, and there are tons of pictures where all the houses in a neighborhood burned but the trees are still standing.

Here is an article about homes that survived specifically due to their fire-prevention strategies, https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/property/these-homes-withst.... And note, of course nothing is 100%, but good fire prevention is like vaccination: it not only lowers your risk of catastrophe by some percentage (say 80%), but it also greatly lowers the risk of you spreading the contagion to others.

Altadena is in a tough position with the mountain wave wind it sees.

Part of my parents neighborhood burned down in a similar (but much smaller) firestorm a number of years ago. Similar situation to the Palisades fire, where the homes were destroyed but the landscaping mostly survived. Most of the homes were built in the 70s, and almost all of those burned down. One block in the middle of the development was built in the mid-2000’s, and none of these homes were lost.

> that this area may not be habitable long-term

Or we may have to change building materials. In Asia, houses are built using granite foundation, brick and cement walls, and concrete slab roofs. Houses built using those materials don't go up in flames.

Yes, and then we can all complain about inconvenient truths when an earthquake levels everything.

Concrete slabs have steel rods, which makes it resilient to earthquakes. In an earthquake-prone zone you will need more steel. The structure will be supported by concrete columns which also have steel.

Concrete is rampant in developing nations as it's cheap, scalable, and hardy. It is only cheap because of purchasing power parity, labor costs, resource parity. (For example, construction workers in IN are part of the servant class, and essentially are not paid. they live in the construction sites before it's completed/move on to the next.)

In the west.....a concrete/rebar home would cost more per sq foot than a modern hardwood/brick luxury home, because a contractor would have to do some pretty insane procurement, and work...a lot.

Plastics/Vinys/Composites used in the west satisfy 2 of those 3 qualities listed earlier, anyway You could even call them hardy as compared to old thatched roofs, sod walls etc.

Now.....let's be realistic. 70 MPH firestorms are historically devastating. Your concrete home in this scenario is destroyed and no longer structurally sound due to the heat stress, exploded water pipes, carcinogens. Everything is fuel when the heat/wind is that high. And if it isn't fuel, it's getting beat up by it.

I have problems with the way this fire waas handled (IE, not maintaining a properly paid wildland force or AIR corps of said force), but I really can't see mass concretization as away out. Simply put: anyone building in LA right now is on some good drugs.

- As far as labor cost, this is where we need to bring in cheap labor from south of the border, legally, on temporary visas. Win-win for everyone.

- 70 MPH firestorms: Currently houses made of wood are fuel for the fire. When houses are made of concrete and steel the fuel is taken away and fires don't spread as easily. Why don't we hear of fire devastating homes in the Middle East? Because buildings in the Middle East are constructed using concrete and steel. These materials are less likely to ignite and spread fire compared to traditional wooden structures.

Buildings in the Middle East are constructed using concrete and steel mostly because wood would need to be imported from 1000 miles away and because the thermal mass of the concrete is very useful for moderating the extremely continental climate.

Is this where I indulge my inner hippie annoyingly advocate for straw bale homes?

Inconvenient truths about the big bad wolf disaster of 2027

Or superadobe homes, the structure that broke the California seismic testing equipment: https://calearth.org/pages/what-is-superadobe

They are also fire resistant

I think what is more likely to happen is people just start considering the home disposable in disaster prone areas. The land is most of the value so if you can afford to finance the cost of construction in some way, you don’t even need disaster insurance coverage to stomache the one wildfire or hurricane, if that, that might actually directly strike your property over your ownership.

Isn't this the Japanese approach to homes? They are basically disposable after X years and part of that is related to natural disasters somehow?

If this area is "not habitable", what are the chances we could ever live on Mars?

The cognitive dissonance here...

Who said we can live in Mars?

There's no cognitive dissonance here. The chances that "humans" "live" on Mars any time during the next 10,000 years is zero. Humans might live in underground habitats on Mars within a century, without being exposed to the Martian environment. Something genetically descended from humans and tailored for Martian conditions might live-ish on Mars in under a few thousand years.

Then start by living underground in California or genetically modifying Californians and see how it goes.

TLDR: Events like this aren't really a wildfire problem, even if they provided some initial sparks. It's an urban/developed-area problem, and we need to look at those layouts and building materials etc.

“Some initial sparks” is a gross under-characterization by the original author. “Almost all of the millions and millions of burning embers as flying ignition sources, one the three necessary elements of the fire triad” is more accurate to my ears. Without the wildfires providing the ignition, those millions of ignition sources for urban fires simply aren’t there, until an urban conflagration starts creating them for themselves.

But there is no major urban conflagration without these initial embers from wildfires…except in certain exceptional scenarios (of which the LA fires and most others cited by the author are not one). Firebombing, coordinated arson, industrial accident…. Which is why almost all urban areas in the US without a wildfire risk have had no urban conflagrations in, say, the last 100 years. Seems to me suppressing the fire triad element of sources of ignition by clearing shrubs and trees is much more economical and less disruptive than multidecade urban redevelopment.

On a going forward basis, more thought could be given to newer fire-aware building, if it doesn’t take the bureaucratically clogged housing approval process in CA into full blockage. (What’s the chance of that?)

This article sounds either like a grift or AI or both.

It meanders as an article, it does repeatedly return to the core message:

  This fundamental misunderstanding has likewise led to a misunderstanding of prevention.

  No longer is it a matter of preventing wildfires but instead preventing points of ignition within communities by employing “home-hardening” strategies — proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding — and enjoining neighbors in collective efforts such as brush clearing.

This aligns with the post urban fire recommendations in Canberra, Australia some years back - hardened homes, clean gutters, fewer easily ignited shrubs close to flammable buildings, etc.

Wildfires will happen, embers will rain from the sky .. how prepared is your home to be ignition resistant when that happens?

Felt a little like AI to me as well

Yeah, this article made me feel a little vindicated about this comment I made a couple days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42676441

Especially in Altadena (most of which is in a flat valley), it was very clear this was an urban fire - tons of pictures with every house burnt to the ground, but trees standing all around unscathed.

I am a little worried about how things get rebuilt, given the political incentives are now to make rebuilding as easy (read: cheaply) as possible. I'm all for waiving a lot of the environmental rules that are just a Byzantine labyrinth that are primarily used by neighbors to restrict growth they don't want, but I think that replacing Altadena with a bunch of densely packed, wood framed, shingled roofs is just adding kindling, literally, to the next fire.

Shockingly little insight or information in that article. A word salad with no new insights.

I think it's funny that the current top 2 comments on this article completely contradict each other.

I.e. the top comment is basically dismissing the article, saying that in these types of firestorms that there is essentially nothing you can do - which I strongly disagree with, and which the article points out is demonstrably not true.

And now your comment basically says "there is no new insight or information", which I find highly amusing because I see so many comments online, like the top comment, solely blaming the geography or the "wild-urban" interface, so it's clear this is information that people should be aware of: even if fire-prone Southern CA, the problem is not inevitable, and most of the destruction in these latest fires were urban fires, not in wild areas surrounded by trees.

"... warnings to clear dead vegetation and to wet dry brush within 10 feet of the house with periodic, prolonged sprinklings."

I thought watering lawns and plants was banned in much of California, to conserve water?

I lived in California for 26 years. If this is true, nobody listens.

They do. In my HOA we let the grass go brown to conserve water and, at a domestic level, we rarely took baths (vs showers).

It's not. There are often limits on watering frequency and more folks are switching to native plants/drought tolerant plants.

Like many things with California, sensible policies that are very effective and will eventually be standard in other states are presented incorrectly for many different (usually financial) reasons in order to turn public opinion against them to delay their spread.

Commercial/industrial properties are not permitted to water grass lawns with drinkable water.

Commercial/industrial properties are not permitted to use drinkable water to water lawns within 48 hours of 1/4" of rainfall.

Commercial/industrial properties are not permitted to use drinkable water to water lawns with so much water that it runs off the lawn into streets or storm drains.

https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/conservation/regs/docs/2023/F...

Landscaping businesses and landscaping supply retailers launched a campaign several years ago framing the above as "watering lawns and plants is going to be banned in much California".

It appears that campaign was partially successful.

Commercial/industrial properties can install water recycling systems and use all of the greywater they can get to water their lawns.

There are additional local restrictions that depend on the severity of the water supply situation but those are too numerous to list, but at worst none of them prevent weekly watering of plants and lawns adjacent to dwellings.

Alfalfa farming uses 40% more water than all lawns in the entire state of California. If every California resident paid $5 per year, they could buy out the entire alfalfa industry and never have to worry about residential or commercial water usage.[1]

California doesn't have a shortage of water. It just allocates water in an extremely inefficient manner.

1. https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/05/11/california-water-you-d...

Ok, but the alfalfa gets eaten. A lawn doesn’t.

I don't really mind agricultural consumption because there has never not been enough water for human consumption.

And agricultural water consumption produces food.

You can't eat a lawn, or a swimming pool, or a long shower.

Well, I suppose you can try to eat anything once but the point stands.

There are very few places as ideally suited to agriculture as California so the water distribution priorities should be:

1. Humans: drinking and cooking

2. Farms

3. Humans: personal hygiene

4. Nothing this far down really matters so I don't care if they get a single drop. yes that includes data centers ps: kill your lawn

Also, I don't care if #2 gets 99.999999999% of the water and the agribusinesses make a quadrillion dollars so long as #1's (and #3's) needs are met.

It sounds like you’re referring to drought measures. We’re no longer in drought, so many drought measures have been lifted.

https://archive.ph/2025.01.11-122128/https://www.latimes.com...

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42674440

In an environment where everyone is quick to point their finger at their favorite villain -- whether that's "wokeness" or climate change or whatever -- I'm happy to finally read something which aligns with my biases.

Blame it on Big Ember ?

Those damn laws of physics!

The inconvenient truth is that California’s electrical infrastructure is woefully out of date because of utility company greed and malfeasance. The Democratic Party machine here in the state is too corrupt and asleep at the wheel to do anything about it. See also the management of state’s water resources.

Instead of proactively shutting off power during the high wind period, they left it on, and of course the decrepit equipment up in the bone dry mountains exploded and set everything on fire again.

That's not the fault of the party you're blaming it on. The utilities fail to do so and have (and continue to) face lawsuits and repercussions. If the state were to intervene with their operation further I imagine you'd take issue with that meddling.

It's certainly not caused by Delta smelt or a failure to rake leaves in the forest either.

The government is already a utility provider, and the absence of LADWP shut offs is the likely cause of the Palisades Fire. Same thing with the Eaton Fire and Southern California Edison. So yes, actually, it is very much the fault of both parties I named.

Fires can get caused by all kinds of things beyond power lines. Its added risk but its only really a risk because the wind, humidity, and fuel load were so ideal. At that point it could be a cigarette butt or freak lightning storm or an arsonist and it would do in the hillside all the same.

The recent (across several years) major fires have been caused by utility companies, so while you might live in fear of hypothetical arsonists, freak lightning storms, and cigarette butts, it seems more productive to direct our attention to the actual causes.

And the solution is? More privatization?

I wasn’t aware the government owned SCE.

I’m not aware of any republican policies to address the issue. Last I saw they were complaining about ASL translators being available during news conferences about the disaster.

> the absence of LADWP shut offs is the likely cause of the Palisades Fire

And I’m not a Republican or right winger of any fashion.

How is it greed when CPUC[1] sets what prices utilities can charge, sets how much revenue they can collect, and has line item veto over their spending? See the 2020 PG&E GRC for an example of how much control the California government has over utility companies.[2]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Public_Utilities_Co...

2. https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M354/K...

The fact that you think the CPUC is over-regulating PG&E while they rake in sky-high profits and do fuck all to modernize their infrastructure only further demonstrates my point. Google “PG&E Profit 2024” and get back to me.

If you're going to blame anyone for that, blame CPUC. They're the ones who dictate what rates PG&E can set, what their yearly revenue should be, and what they're allowed to modernize. This often causes problems, such as in 2014 when CPUC vetoed PG&E's plan to improve gas leak detection.[1]

> We adopt TURN’s forecast reducing PG&E’s MWC FI forecast by $27.8 million composed of $14.1 million (based on a lower leak find rate) and 13.7 million (based on a five-year survey cycle). We base the adopted forecast on TURN’s combined (traditional and Picarro survey) leak find rate of 2.547% instead of PG&E’s find rate of 3.56% of services.

The language itself is quite dry, but in short: CPUC stopped PG&E from improving their gas leak detection systems. When gas lines inevitably leaked and caused fires, PG&E was blamed, not CPUC.

Like all utilities in California, PG&E's maximum profits are set by CPUC.[2] CPUC has been reducing these maximums over time. So if you're upset at PG&E's profits (which are around 10% of revenue), you should blame the people setting the profits, not the company that doesn't control what they can charge, what they can spend money on, or how much profit they can make.

PG&E is grossly mismanaged and incompetent, but that's because they're part of a system that combines the worst parts of capitalism with the worst parts of government. If PG&E wanted to charge less, they couldn't because CPUC sets the minimum as well as the maximum rates. If a large consumer of electricity wants to switch to a community utility provider or to an off-grid solution, CPUC mandates that the consumer pay the original utility provider for the privilege of not getting the utility anymore.[3] The incentive structure could not be more backwards.

1. See pages 80-84 of https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M102/K...

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20241212161014/https://www.cpuc....

3. https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/industries-and-topics/electrical-ene...

The continued, logical flaw in your argument is a false opposition between industry and the state. California’s wildly corrupt Democratic Party machine is bought and paid for by PG&E to create this exact state of affairs and the CPUC allows them to profiteer and bribe their politician pals in return, setting the rest of us on fire as a consequence.

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