Two fire experts interviewed about L.A. wildfires

Thank you, the original article had very little actual practical information, or substance at all.

The 2020 Australia Royal Commission on bushfire prevention is a good resource, too.

There are tons of things that could be done. Virtually none are being done nowadays, much less retrofitted to existing structures.

Bushfire prevention via design is essentially in its infancy, much like earthquake safe designs took decades to become widespread in California after the 1933 quake. It wasn't like structures built in the 40s had "learned the lessons" and were earthquake proof. It has taken the better part of a century to get there.

Thanks for the article. So it looks like quarter sized embers are the most likely cause of many fires.

“Climate change isn’t the cause.”

The region experienced back to back years of high rainfall, spurring brush growth.

This year the region experienced severe drought, converting all of that growth into fuel.

Last week the region experienced 100 mph winds, which converted spot fires into fast-spreading conflagrations that could not be fought.

This pattern of instability is an outcome of climate change.

So yeah, it was caused by climate change.

bad forest management is a much more proximate cause than climate change, absolutely - not sure why it has become verboten to say.

climate change makes a difference at the margin but the sheer number of recent events has a lot more to do with how we manage our forests/urban upscaling.

> Climate change isn’t the cause, even though attribution teams desperately try to make it that - it just makes things worse. But forests have dry fuel that will light up at some point and that’s regardless of climate change. There’s inadequate proactive planning for this.

I think it is worth pushing back on this, because while yes, in the absolute sense, no single incident can be traced back to the broader pattern; the inconvenient truth remains.

Our addition of the greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is the long lever that can move the world. Between 1970 and 2020, 381±61 Zetta Joules (10^21 joules) of additional energy was absorbed into the system (i.e. the Earth).

This estimate was prepared using satellite data, which is public source, https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/1675/2023/

How much energy is this? It's roughly 80% of the estimated energy of the Chicxulub impactor. Albeit spread over a significantly longer period of time.

The strongest explosion humanity has ever created is in the order of 10^17 joules, or a hundred Quadrillion Joules.

We've managed to add 1.5 million times that number in this 50 years. We've been essentially adding one tsar bomba's worth of energy every fifteen to twenty minutes for the past five decades.

Based on my reading so far, we don't actually know what all of this additional energy is doing to the system. One theory based on satellite data has been that 'wet-gets-wetter, dry-gets-drier' — and some satellite data and simulations bear this out. See, this intensity analysis of NASA/German GRACE and GRACE-FO satellite data, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsbgZ9om0t8.

Now others disagree, because it's a complicated system and we don't know what this energy is doing... And so the debate rages back and forth.

But here's the inconvenient truth. While we may not know exactly what all of this additional energy is doing to the system, we do know that it isn't going to do nothing.

It is the inescapable truth that we're in the middle of a statistically anomalous period of extreme weather events. Was each and every one of these directly caused due to global warming? No, of course not. But that doesn't mean that the additional energy we've added to the system didn't change the dynamics of the system in such a way that made this outcome more likely.

Or, more simply, we've biased the dice and - as they keep getting rolled - we keep getting these "surprises."

I am young enough that in my lifetime, the Earth will look dramatically different than the one I was born into.

So yes, you're strictly right. But no, I think it's worth examining the statement further and pointing out that yes, this is just the sign of what's to come.

A number of bushfires in the 2009 Black Saturday event in Victoria, Australia were started by downed power lines due to wind.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-28305127

Class action, power company handed biggest payout ever at the time of $480 million.

Killed 119 people and destroyed more than 1,000 homes.

As for water? The bushfires were just too big and engulfed entire townships.

Firefighters can’t work well in very high winds, they probably didn’t try until the winds died down.

> I wonder what caused the fire to burn more heavily before anyone took action?

High winds don't help:

> “I’ll be clear: We could have had much more water. With those wind gusts, we were not stopping that fire,” Pasadena Fire Chief Chad Augustin said.

> When winds are as strong as they were Tuesday and Wednesday — reaching 100 mph on mountaintops and surpassing 60 mph along the coast — firefighters are severely limited in their tactics, experts said. They make it too dangerous and all but impossible to establish any fire perimeter. They blow flames as tall as 200 feet horizontally and send balls of red-hot embers flying at speeds that can carry them a mile or two away, where they start what are known as spot fires.

[…]

> The lack of firefighting by air was a critical deficiency that persisted from Tuesday night through early Wednesday, fire officials said, and one that has allowed other devastating Southern California fires to spread in the past, including the Woolsey Fire, which burned across a footprint just to the west of the Palisades Fire in 2018.

> “Without helicopters, this kind of a brush fire, we cannot stop it on the ground,” said Margaret Stewart, an LAFD spokeswoman.

* https://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/20...

The fire quickly grew into a firestorm due to the 50 mph+ winds. Southern California is known for this phenomenon of dry winds that blow from the desert called the Santa Anas. They only affect certain areas, so the perfect combination of the winds + being in a fire prone area + having record rainfall the year before + being in a drought caused the fire to burn crazy fast with access to lots of brush (fuel).

If you don't stop it within the first 5 min, it quickly gets out of control. There's so much stuff to burn.

There wasn't mention about extreme wind in the link you provided, all it called out is "southerly winds". The very high winds (100mph gusts) in Los Angeles prevented fire mitigation aircraft from flying, and spread the fires far and wide very quickly - and the area where the fires started was inaccessible to firefighters, so the fire had very little push-back for the first night so it grew uncontrollably. The circumstances are very different from what happened in the link you provided.

Fire crews were ready to fight fires in Los Angeles, and quite a lot of fire crews from outside the area were brought in before the fires even started - they knew how dangerous the situation was, and they were trying to do what they could by staffing up. Once the winds died down, fire-fighting aircraft could fly and started containing the fires on the mountains, but much of the residential areas had already been lost, there was just too much fire and too few resources to keep it under control.

Assuming you could get to the fire in the first place.

The winds prevented the use of aircraft, either for direct attack or to insert handcrews.

That means firefighters need to drive/hike in, which can take hours. By that point, it's grown to the point where the wind is blowing embers over your head and causing spotfires miles away.

With the winds again, your containment options are limited. It's already too large for a direct attack. It'll jump your mineral earth containment lines, and you can't light a backburn.

The only real option then becomes property protection, and with a water shortage and finite resources that becomes a challenge.

It is mainly cost – like 6x more. Utilities like LADWP eventually want to underground everything but the time scale of such a project is probably eons.

cost and regulators generally have been unwilling to approve the rate increases necessary for resilience

plus we make our utilities pay prevailing wage

AFAIK most of the fires in recent years have been started by PG&E power lines.

Well known by people who pay attention, yet ignored by people who make policy at the local level.

Look at the before pictures in LA. Homes with flammable exteriors and dense plantings.

Look at Laguna beach to the south. About half the town burned in the 90s. Strict building codes and regular inspections. It’s expensive and annoying to homeowners, but it works.

Yeah. About these fires, someone recently told me they should have cut a dozer line around the fire right away and that would have taken care of it.

I replied: sure, but it would have to have been at least 10 miles wide to protect from the 100mph-wind carried embers...

Taxing people and protecting everyone from fires by imposing regulations is of course socialism. /s

NA has far more natural disaster exposure than europe does, especially when people just like to subset to the richest western european states as ‘europe’.

i seem to recall quite a few buildings collapsing in Turkey and in Greece in the last quarter century after earthquakes

Maybe not average, but in Oakland after the ‘91 fire we now have yearly inspections, including overflying drones and helicopters as well as foot inspections of our properties. They alert us if we have any problematic vegetation, most especially accumulated dead brush or trees that need to be trimmed to keep them out of power lines. We have to address them or we will be fined. I’m not sure beyond that what happens, I haven’t gotten one of the fines, we keep our greenery pretty controlled, as do our neighbors. Maybe it’s because you can still regularly meet people who lived through that fire, but no one is crying “‘Murica!” when the firemen come by here.

The other thing that is subtle and maybe not obvious about American culture — firemen generally are not lumped in with the rest of the government. Police are looked at with extreme suspicion very frequently, but firemen are just generally liked. Yes there are people who don’t want anyone on their property that they didn’t invite, and in some states those people have the law behind them (I grew up in Texas), but firemen coming by to let you know that your property has too many trees near the home are probably the least likely to be shouted off. There is one group, though, that doesn’t want to hear the message - the wealthy. Often they have an image in their head of how they want their house to look and what kind of landscaping they want, never mind what best practice is. They will listen politely and then completely ignore the advice they get because it would keep them from having the picture perfect English cottage look, or maybe they’d have to see their neighbors in their winter ski chalet, or whatever it is that’s in their head. When the Tahoe area has a fire like this, it will be because of these attitudes, 100%.

Not directly stated (and maybe not even intended) but for me the inconvenient truth is that human society is absolutely powerless against nature at the extreme ends of the scale. We can do a lot, we can build sea walls, we can reroute rivers, we can cross over or tunnel under almost any obstacle. But ultimately, the planet is capable of bringing more to bear than we can offset, whether it's wind-driven wildfires, floods, large hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, volcanoes. The best and only thing we can do in those situations is hope we have enough warning to get out of the way or find someplace to hide.

We can’t treat fire as an occasional emergency the fire department will take care of. Managing fire risk is something every town and home owner need to spend time on year round.

The inconvenience was ignoring the experts advice.

They might have said something along the lines of make sure you have water, the ability to use it (hello Maui), and people who know how to use it.

Or maybe they thought that was needless to say and had more advanced advice like clearing dead brush, making fire breaks, etc.

Or ... Well yeah. It would be nice to know what advice was ignored. I'm sure there was plenty in that category.

> A couple thousand words with no real insight or information.

Because it's things we already know about, but refuse to do anything about. For example:

> “The assumption is continually made that it’s the big flames” that cause widespread community destruction, he said, “and yet the wildfire actually only initiates community ignitions largely with lofted burning embers.”

We've known about embers for decades, and why you need to clear the area around your home of ignition sources:

* https://www.nfpa.org/education-and-research/wildfire/prepari...

Here's a potato-quality video posted thirteen years ago on landscaping best practices:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NVe0gu69FY

A news story from twelve years ago about a home that survivied (with a charred landscape around it):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rgUp245nso

Which is talked about in the article:

> This fundamental misunderstanding has likewise led to a misunderstanding of prevention. No longer is it a matter of preventing wildfires but instead preventing points of ignition within communities by employing “home-hardening” strategies — proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding — and enjoining neighbors in collective efforts such as brush clearing.

We may also have to accept that perhaps Mother Nature can still be more powerful than humans at times:

> The National Fire Prevention Assn., a national nonprofit that provides standards for fire suppression operations, calls for a minimum of three engines or 15 firefighters for a single-residence fire, a number that is impossible to attain when fighting a fire on the scale of the Palisades or Eaton fires.

> “We’re not recognizing, analyzing, questioning how we’re failing,” Cohen said. “We just think we need more airplanes and more helicopters flying 24 hours a day.”

> More CL-415 super-scoopers or Firehawk helicopters will not help when water is being dropped into 60 mph wind gusts.

See also "Why Los Angeles was unprepared for this fire":

> Water runs short: […] “There’s no urban water system engineered and constructed to combat wildfire,” said Michael McNutt, a spokesman for the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District, which serves 75,000 people in northwest Los Angeles County. The system was intended to supply water to homes and businesses, he said, and to help fire crews defend a large structure or several homes, not multiple neighborhoods at once. […]

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42674591

I think this gets at the heart of it. People assume that these fires are fought and prevented in the forest/hills by wildland fire fighters but the reality is that individual homeowners can do a lot by clearing brush, etc. (ahead of time,) from their own yards. It's an inconvenient truth because it shifts the responsibility to individuals.

""...Ignitions downwind and across streets are typically from showers of burning embers from burning structures.” This fundamental misunderstanding has likewise led to a misunderstanding of prevention. No longer is it a matter of preventing wildfires but instead preventing points of ignition within communities by employing “home-hardening” strategies — proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding — and enjoining neighbors in collective efforts such as brush clearing."

Much/most of the damage at Hiroshima was the resulting fires, not the explosion, so it's very similar!

As someone who’s spent their entire life in california near these types of fires and someone who recently visited the Hiroshima memorial museum, this take is pretty disingenuous.

First thing I thought was hopefully they wont rebuild using same cardboard and wood in a highly fire prone area.

Given there are continents acting as fire breaks, pretty close to zero.

Cheap talk and extremely boring overgeneralization.

As everyone else clearly has built their houses in a fireproof manner, activated personal fire prevention tactics like watering their surroundings and, as the article stated, tried to decrease community hotspots succeptible to being ignited by ember, what do we even need these experts for, am I right?

I mean, clearly it's common sense, right?

The Santa Ana winds that spread the fire are an all-year thing, concentrated in autumn and winter.

I thought the appeal of California was that it didn't have intense winters or summers, but was pleasantly warm year-round?

LA is at the same latitude as North Texas, and Texas isn't exactly known for snow. Where I live in the Midwest we're guaranteed at least one good snow every winter, and it's been around freezing temperatures for weeks.