Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

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I do not, except from sporadic NPR series on the costs of wildfire fighting versus lack of attention on wildfire prevention. The governor just committed another $2B (I recall), and much of it to go to fighting I believe.

Honestly, I would be glad to see some analysis and find that my uninformed impression is incorrect.

I also find it interesting that I'm being downvoted for raising such a fundamental question. As if the money is clearly being used in the right way.

More money for planes, firefighters, modeling fire behavior: https://www.gov.ca.gov/2020/07/09/ahead-of-peak-fire-season-...

https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4172

Although some discussion of prevention: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/07/867395353/california-was-set-...

I do not know anything about Calfire, but I have worked with a few other fire crews at state and federal levels in California and neighboring states, and while they have and love nice fire equipment--would you want bad eqp in an out of control wildfire?--most of it is 100% usable in prevention tactics. As another commenter mentions, fire crews are almost universally very interested in preventative methodology and more broadly in forest ecology--it's in the job description, and certainly necessary for a career path.

Whether or not a given crew is assigned to fuels or other fire prevention tasks in a given jurisdiction depends entirely on the budget priorities of that jurisdiction. In turn, that jurisdiction has to work with whatever annual budget trickles down from administrative and executive levels.

Regarding California, I know too little to speak with confidence on government spending. People I know who live there are work in land management have always said that forest (fire) management has been neglected for many years.

I suspect the budget is actually a fair bit more nuanced than a dichotomy of fighting versus prevention, but regardless, the tools, training and people used to fight fires are the same tools and people that go out and do the preventative measures.

I wouldn't be worried about the macro budget, look at your actual firefighting policies and decide from those if the money will end up spent well.

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