The fires in California

[herpastcanchangethefuture]

Is anyone else watching in disbelief? It just so awful to see so many people lose their home and I keep thinking about all the animals who would have been terrified and trapped too. I was watching the news on it last night and people were saying their insurance companies had recently revoked their insurance so they won’t be covered.

It’s just awful.

its not just climate change that is the issue it’s the land itself and LA has for a number of years been a city of decline

LA is naturally extremely dry arid land it’s not the green lush city with palm trees naturally that is seen on tv/photos etc and the cities (it’s one big sprawling city with many little cities) is built between winding mountains that are often very dry

it is not land that should home so many millions of people water shortages are common poor infrastructure, electric outages are not uncommon and poor building regulations this is why the so many insurance companies will not insure homes

LA has for a number of years been a city in decline this may have started naturally but if managed better (and that would have been over many many years) there would have been this level of destruction

we shall see in the next weeks the suffering of those who are not so well off, there shall be more homelessness but shall be over shadowed no doubt the Oscar’s shall go ahead with the elite patting themselves on the back for being so charitable.

I feel sympathy for all that have suffered but aware of who will suffer the most but we we not really hear their stories

I read posts like this and it always sounds like those cities of the past:

We need to make more sacrifices to rain gods (instead of maintaining our canals and managing population growth)

Like, climate change isn’t what made you stop building reservoirs, or ensure your fire hydrants are functional. It didn’t environmental groups from demanding that you stop controlled burns or clearing brush. Like, forest fires are just a fact of life where you haven’t actually cut them all down (looking at you, Europe).

No amount of ‘climate change’ will stop the natural cycles of forest fires and forest renewal. North American forests have evolved to depend on periodic fires for healthy growth and maintenance. It’s still an evolving science of how to manage this need along with need for human habitation.

i only realised yesterday that so many people do not have insurance
it is all so awful, unbelievable.

The thing is, and obviously not the main thing and not making it about me, is by some standards I could be defined as well off. I live in a nice area of London which borders on a really amazing area of London (btw just bought a long time ago so we’re not rich), but if my house burnt to the ground and my insurance had been revoked I would be fucked, no way to rebuild and I would be homeless. Some of my neighbours might have a second home and I’m sure more people in neighbouring area would but the vast amount of people wouldn’t and this is what’s happening in LA. Imagine if this was in London or Manchester (or anywhere really) and there were out of control wildfires springing up. I can’t believe people are still spouting nonsense about it just being rich people in LA when it’s just not the case.

Also keep seeing things about all the animal sanctuary’s that have been affected and they’ve just had to let the animals out to fend for themselves. 💔

Some people have owned their homes for decades - they may have been easily insurable in the 80s, but not so much in the era of intense climate change. Now it's burned once, it will likely burn again.

Imagine that the house you live in suddenly becomes uninsurable. How easy do you think it would be to sell it? What do you think would happen to it's value?

Why is that? They have arrested the arsonist. He was walking around LA with a flamethrower!

it is a natural disaster

I'm amazed that they still use drywall in US - brick houses are better for surviving fires and extremes in temperature. I hope this encourages change in housing expectations.

They're also in an earthquake zone. Building from brick would be a terrible idea.

Just reading that 800 of the firefighters are “incarcerated firefighters”, ie currently in a state prison but allowed out to help firefighters and only paid between $5 and $10 a day for doing so!

It's absolutely outrageous to do that, unless their sentence gets reduced too?

They have to volunteer or agree to it, but I concur - it's an absolutely disgusting practice.

good for their parole probably

Probably you attributing it to climate change zealots when the only person accused of arson is a homeless man.

Made me laugh.😆

@Paddingtonscaresme did your friends stay with people they know or did they go into shelter accommodation?

@middler

Well said.

I hope you and all those around you will be ok.

They can't do anything about the topography. It's also really difficult to deploy traffic management police when people are hopping into cars minutes after evacuation orders, and the area is huge. It only takes one broken down car to foul up a huge road network.

I didn’t know this existed until a few minutes ago on a typical thread but a super loop would do it

I didn't attribute this particular fire to being caused by a zealot. I said 'usually' because they usually are. We don't know his motives at this point, but being homeless doesn't mean he can't also be a climate change zealot. Why do you think that it does?

I will tell you what is really hilarious though... how quickly everyone has jumped on the bandwagon of 'The planet is burning, climate emergency!' when it was in fact an arsonist... as expected.

Where has it been reported that the initial fire was arson? All the reports I've seen suggest the opposite... unknown cause, but situation worsened by natural causes and mismanagement (dryness, uncleared brush, poor water supplies etc plus the high winds fanning the flames)

No they're not.😄

From a climate change perspective it doesn't matter how the fire started

Fires start all the time and there isn't much at low levels of warming that suggest this will be more common

But how the fire spreads is partially a climate driven event

@HRTQueen China Town film