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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

The building code for high risk fire areas should require roof top sprinkler systems. Those exist but haven't been widely installed. Keeping the roof and exterior walls wet is usually sufficient to keep a building from catching on fire unless the fire is very close and hot.

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The house I rent part of has sprinklers on the roof. The owner installed them after the 91 Oakland Hills fire (we're just down the hill a little from the edge of that fire), as a newcomer to California this was somewhat frightening, but seems like a good precaution. Depending on where your water pipes are and how big your house it it doesn't seem like a huge project.

Isn't part of the problem that the water pressure (if everyone turns these one) is bad which hinders firefighters when they need to tap the water supply to fight fires. They specifically ask people to turn off sprinklers/water hoses/other water use cases before evacuating.

I recently read something (cant find the link, sorry) about having a generator and pump on-site, and then pumping water from your swimming pool to your sprinklers. I suppose not everyone has a pool, but collecting rainwater etc in an underground sump could be sufficient.

You could even imagine a closed-system that collects rain/sprinkler water from the roof guttering and drains around the property and channelling them into the pool/sump. You'd lose a lot of water to evaporation/steam in a fire I guess, but it could buy you some time.

The other alternative I guess is just dont build your house out of combustible materials. I guess some stuff might just melt in hot-enough conditions, but by that stage where ceramics and metals are just melting in ambient temperatures I think its pretty much a game-over situation regardless... but before that extreme you can probably get a lot of mileabe by building your houses out of brick (there seems to be a lot of brick foundations left in the footage I am seeing on TV)

I'd say very few people, relatively speaking, have pools in CA.

California has the most residential pools of all the states - over 1.5 million inground and aboveground units.

PDF warning: http://www.apsp.org/Portals/0/2016%20Website%20Changes/2015%...

Well, yes. But California _also_ has the highest population of the states.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...

Might be more fruitful to look at a per-capita metric?

Imagine a state that has only two houses, both with a pool. 3 people live in one house, 1 person lives in the other. That’s 0.5 pools per capita, but for our purposes is a sufficient number of pools - 1 pool per structure.

Silly metric though. We have the most people/homes so of course we have the most pools. Arizona kicks our ass in the number of pools per person though.

So, we're in the low double-digits in terms of percentage? Seems like relatively few.

As in, it's not uncommon to live here and not know anyone with a pool.

Depends on the neighborhood. They're fairly common in upper-middle class or nicer neighborhoods.

Upper-middle-class or nicer neighborhoods are a fairly small share of all neighborhoods.

> but before that extreme you can probably get a lot of mileabe by building your houses out of brick (there seems to be a lot of brick foundations left in the footage I am seeing on TV)

Brick construction itself is seismically unsound, which makes it a bad choice for California. You can use brick cladding to make a building more fire resistant, though, but this isn't a panacea.

Not these current California fires. Anyone who thinks sprinklers will help hasn’t seen this hell-fire inferno up close. The Camp Fire was spreading at up to 80 acres per minute. It grew to 17,000 acres in 5 hours.

High risk fire areas should be made lower risk by proper forest management — forest management that has been ridiculously incompetent in California for a long time.

I've suddenly started hearing the assertion that forest management is incompetent. But I've not really heard any details as to what is actually wrong and what should be done. Can you please elaborate?

The other weird part about this assertion is that forests in which the Camp Fire started are federal land (Plumas National Forest), under the responsibility of the Forest Service. So while it's entirely possible that forest management in California has been incompetent, that responsibility lies on the federal government.

The general idea is that there can and should be more done.

Lots of open space that builds up vegetation and then dries out, turning into perfect fuel for a fire. Cutting these shrubs, creating firebreaks, and doing controlled burns would at least create much more manageable zones if a wildfire does start.

Please be specific. What exactly can and should be done? Clearing brush is labor intensive and expensive. Who will pay for it? Controlled burns are difficult to manage in many parts of the state; there are often no fire breaks so a slight shift in the wind can quickly turn controlled into uncontrolled.

That is specific: create firebreaks and remove brush. That alone would drastically limit fire spread and damage. Controlled burns are hard but certainly not impossible, and can be done in colder seasons as weather and wind are predictable.

Taxpayers are already paying for it, and the state has plenty of labor. The prison system alone runs many firecrews that can engage in this work. Compared to fighting fires and rebuilding damage, the maintenance cost is trivial.

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