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Comment by perl4ever | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand how a private individual would deal with the liability.

Here in Ireland farmers regularly burn fields and occasionally the fire gets out of control and destroys an entire mountainside. A couple of years ago one came within 100m of my parents' house - one more change of wind direction and they would have lost everything.

No one ever seems to get criminally or civilly prosecuted for starting the fires. Often everyone knows who did it but there's no irrefutable evidence and the police aren't interested - perhaps as a policy because it's understood that some controlled burns are useful. California's police could equally well be told to "focus on other priorities" instead of investigating fire starters.

How many parts of Ireland ever receive less than 20cm of rain in a year?

Grass fires are not considered a significant danger in CA... it's the big canyon fires with 20+deg slopes rising 1000m covered with Eucalyptus and other large trees interspersed with scrub brush that create firestorms and can easily burn 40km^2 per day even with mild winds.

California law enforcement could choose to look the other way, but it's a statistical certainty that if there's money to be made through civil suits, there will be plenty of litigation. How do you get around that?

The police are important in civil suits too. Arguably their main function in a civilised society is that you can call them when you get in a car accident and they'll write up an official report for the insurance company. If they don't spend their time writing detailed reports on the causes of fires, that at least pushes the balance of power away from the plaintiff.

I don't know if this is realistic. But we have a pretty litigious society these days in Ireland too - behind the US, but ahead of almost everywhere else - and I can't find any evidence of a successful civil suit for starting a wildfire. I did find this which says there are practically no criminal cases:

https://www.thejournal.ie/wildfires-donegal-legislation-4606...

Regardless of what usually happens, there have been instances where someone who was negligent or started a fire for fun, was blamed for starting something that destroyed vast amounts of property and killed people. I think they can be/have been considered criminally and/or civilly liable.

If it's ok for people to just start fires without any particular authorization or restrictions, then it's not clear to me how you distinguish them legally if the consequences should be particularly bad.

I just don't understand logically, how you can define arson or negligence without clear rules.

It's clearly incorrect that California just doesn't care. After all after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018) PG&E was charged with 84 counts of manslaughter.

Also, remember Sergio Martinez? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedar_Fire

There’s no civil prosecution. Civil means it’s a private injury which the law can remedy. Anyone who has the standing to sue can sue, and that doesn’t make them a prosecutor.

Here is a more extreme example how legislation works against the best interest of people.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7678955/Black-Satur...

When I lived in the suburbs of Naples people would burn their trash in big piles whenever the garbage collectors went on strike and "nobody" was liable, even though sometimes the fire would spread and burn/damage stuff on the neighbor's property. Then again, Europeans don't have the same litigious culture/attitude that Americans have.

How many of those fires burned 10km^2? 100m^2? 1000km^2? That's the size of each of the lightning complexes still burning.

I'd guess that in decades none of them have or it would have been in the news and nobody would have done it again... Lot's of rural places burn garbage in the US. They just don't do it where there's a high risk of burning down the neighborhood.

At least Italians don't, but you get a lot of problems stemming from the "whatever, just burn it, not my problem, I just want my garbage gone"-culture.

You'd get into serious trouble doing the same further north in Germany, Denmark or Sweden.

Indeed, and I admit, even within Italy this is likely uniquely a Naples problem.

Another reason is that there have been intermittent issues with garbage pickup for decades in Napoli, but I don't think there's been a full strike in the last few years... but it is of course probably still controlled by the Camorra.

per-capita, lawsuits occur at more or less the same level in the USA as across most of western europe.

the USA just has a culture that talks about suing people a lot more; in practice, Europe and the US do so at about the same rte.

Is it the attitude or is it the system?

Liability is limited if you follow various statutes in Texas (and other states): https://agrilifeextension.tamu.edu/library/agricultural-law/...

People do this where I live in NorCal. They seem to do these burns on permissive burn days, for one. Conditions might even be wet.

They also tend to let law enforcement know, and law enforcement and fire people seem to understand the purpose. People from the city still call 911, but that's just because they are trained to think that distant fires are dangerous. To be expected.

My understanding is that you need re-regulation to protect folks with limited liability if they follow protocol and burn day guidance advice from local authorities.

Here is a summary for Oregon for example https://www.oswa.org/blog/fire-liability/

Call a public service like the fire department, if it gets out of control.

Probably best to notify the fire department in advance of the burn so that they can already be prepared if it gets out of control. I wouldn't be surprised if some jurisdictions require this.

If it gets out of control, it can quickly turn into a multi-million dollar event.

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