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Comment by gonzo41 | Hacker News Reader

You need to do fuel reduction burns during winter (when it's wet) so you can reduce the load. They do this near my house in Australia every few years, it's somewhat terrifying to have a slow roll bushfire roll around the house, but it can be managed with care.

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This was a wealthy area built within canyons and other natural areas. Controlled burns are possible in some areas but I can't imagine it would have been possible there.

I’m not sure precisely where the fires started, but the neighborhoods in the Palisades are impenetrable hillsides with roads and houses are intervals. They’re about as densely developed as practical given the geography. A controlled burn would be unimaginable there.

A controlled burn is impossible just from the sheer angle, you can hardly traverse those piles of conglomerate making following and pathing the fire impossible from anywhere but the air. I had problems hunting agates out of those hills due to the steepness, as I was on all fours and about 55 degrees off-horizontal most times.

Perhaps worth mentioning that Australia is doing less fuel reduction burns than in the past, especially near major urban centres with unfavourably wide directions.

Fuel reduction burning often requires blanketing millions of people with carcinogenic smoke for several weeks each year.

The greater good is to protect everyone’s lungs and accept that every few years we’ll have to rebuild a few homes.

That makes no sense. A controlled burn shouldn't be as large as an out of control wildfire. For the cost of those burned down homes the government could hand out n95 masks by the basket-full. Not to mention you'll still have the smoke inhalation problem when you have those wildfire cases anyways - and in those scenarios you can't control what is being release in the burn.

Hazard reduction burns need to occur on all land which is at risk of burning, whereas wildfires actually only occur on a small proportion of the land surrounding a population center each year.

The result is much more smoke being emitted overall.

We do. And we have setbacks you must maintain and keep brush cleared. But there's still only so much you can do.

A lot more could be done: https://www.slowboring.com/p/a-better-approach-to-forest-man...

These aren’t “forests” like in other parts of the West so much as cliffs covered in dry, scrubby brush. I’m pessimistic that they could be systematically cleared or burned in a controlled way.

Burning in a dense residential area…no. Draconian clearing of all trees and brush except for selective fire-aware landscaping…yes, but you are paying significant money to make the residential area look uglier (in some eyes, it’s just a High Desert aesthetic for others), a hard sell.

The residential area being on fire looks significantly uglier to me.

Similar climates and geographies both either have the issue or manage it better.

Greece is a good example of also not managing this properly with its own regular massive fires, while national parks around Cape Town and other parts of South Africa do regular controlled burns in very rocky, hill-y terrain.

"There's only so much you can do" doesn't mean "we have done what we can" or even "we have done enough".

Shouldn’t have built expensive houses for a start

> Shouldn’t have built expensive houses for a start

Why not?

They burn down the same as cheap ones.

My other suggestion, which isn't super popular in australia, is we should consider deforesting / reforesting eucalyptus trees. They are a lot of trouble.

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