Outside Topic SoCal Fires - Printable Version

Outside Topic SoCal Fires - Printable Version

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RE: SoCal Fires - oldalum - 01-11-2025

(01-11-2025, 06:49 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:
(01-11-2025, 06:24 PM)oldalum Wrote: My neighbor's son is the crew boss of a Washington State Forest Service firefighter team. They specialize in fighting mountain forest fires. They had been stationed in SoCal for a couple weeks in December, then returned to Washington. Drove down again and have been assigned to the Eaton fire. I'm sure other teams from Washington are there now, too.

Thank him and his team for their service. Why were they here in December?

I was wrong, it was in November overlapping Thanksgiving, and ironically they were positioned there as an immediately available resource because of the anticipated fire danger from Santa Ana winds!

RE: SoCal Fires - GK3 - 01-12-2025

(01-11-2025, 09:33 PM)oldalum Wrote:
(01-11-2025, 06:49 PM)cardcrimson Wrote:
(01-11-2025, 06:24 PM)oldalum Wrote: My neighbor's son is the crew boss of a Washington State Forest Service firefighter team. They specialize in fighting mountain forest fires. They had been stationed in SoCal for a couple weeks in December, then returned to Washington. Drove down again and have been assigned to the Eaton fire. I'm sure other teams from Washington are there now, too.

Thank him and his team for their service. Why were they here in December?
I was wrong, it was in November overlapping Thanksgiving, and ironically they were positioned there as an immediately available resource because of the anticipated fire danger from Santa Ana winds!

Very common for the FS to move its crews around to where they are needed. This time of year they can move them from lots of places since the fire danger is pretty close to zero around much of the country at the moment. At the same time fire crews tend to be seasonally employed so there are probably fewer availible. As you point, out their crews, at least back in the day, are trained to fight timber fires first, brush second, not structures. So it would certainly make sense to have them working the mountains and brush covered hillsides. Terrain, fuel load and structures will to a great extent dictate tactics, what can be done and what can't. Spot fires from embers carried aloft by the brobdingnagian winds can fall on roofs near and far. If you have a dried out shingle or other similar roof covering your risk goes way up.
Spot fires are very complex, here is a sample of the kind of considerations involved:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0379711222001084
if you are dealing with timber fires: https://www.nwcg.gov/publications/pms437/crown-fire/spotting-fire-behavior
One last article reflecting that spot fires can occur 40 kms from the main fire: https://www.csiro.au/en/news/all/articles/2017/february/firespotting
Even in grass fires in the Midwest, spoting can occur a mile from the front.
You can see that defending a big fire driven by big winds and making its own big winds is extremely complex and difficult. You don't just pull up your flat bed, drive off the dozer and start building line immediately in front of the fire. There are a good number of universities that offer doctorates n Fire Science, Range Land Management etc. Places like Oregon State, University of Washington and many others. When I came back from SE Asia I was accepted into the doctoral program at Washington, but I was tired of no money and the thought of three more years of little money led me in other directions. The science of the subject is still of interest.
Now it seems winds may be back and that is hardly good news.

RE: SoCal Fires - martyup - 01-12-2025

Back in 2010 I built a large home in Southern Utah in a wooded area prone to wild fires started by dry lightening. I was worried about losing the house to a fire. After much research, I learned that most homes are ignited by burning embers entering the attic through soffit vents. I opted for a sealed attic (no ridge or soffit vents) with sprayed on foam on the attic ceiling, concrete shingles on the roof, and stucco on the exterior walls. The foam in the attic kept the attic temperature stable, which also benefited the efficiency of the gas furnaces located in the attic space.

Hopefully the homes that are rebuilt in the LA basin will utilize new technology to prevent ignition in an external fire.

RE: SoCal Fires - fullmetal - 01-12-2025

My only experience with soffit vents has been vents on the underside of the roof eaves between the edge of the roof overhang and the outer wall (to vent out bathroom fans). It's definitely concerning that embers could travel down (under the roof edge) and then up through the vent to enter the attic.

RE: SoCal Fires - Genuine Realist - 01-12-2025

(01-10-2025, 07:59 PM)jacket3ree Wrote:
(01-10-2025, 01:05 PM)fullmetal Wrote: I think the most succinct analysis I've seen is that public firefighting infrastructure is designed to put out isolated house fires, not combat an extreme natural disaster sweeping into a highly populated suburb.

This is exactly right. I've designed municipal water systems for nearly 40 years and we do not design them with massive wildfires in mind. Those are natural disaster, Force Majure, Act of God scenarios (even if god is an electric company) and no one can afford water systems capable of fighting that. I've done systems across California, on Maui, and Santa Rose after the Coffee Fire that melted underground distribution piping.

Community, mutual, and municipal water systems are organized into pressure zones. Hilly terrain including the most devastated locations in LA will need many pressure zones. Potable water for domestic consumption, irrigation, fire fighting, and emergencies is fed into each pressure zone by gravity or pumping and stored within that zone (tanks) or fed through pressure regulators to a lower zone or by booster pumps into a higher zone. Each zone is supplied its maximum day demand from a wholesale source like SFPUC or Valley Water or groundwater. Demand varies across the day and those spikes in demand (peak hour) must come from water stored within the pressure zone or stored water brought into the pressure zone from another pressure zone.

Fire flow demands are on top of that peak hour demand. We design the pumping, storage, and distribution systems (pipes and hydrants) to deliver fire flows during a peak hour so that we do not have an unacceptable pressure loss (no less than 20 psi residual during a fire anywhere in the system) that can lead to back siphoning contaminants into the system and leading to health problems. The working assumption is one fire at a time within the pressure zone. If the zone is entirely residential, that's a single house. A code fire demand might be 1,500 gallons per minute (gpm) for two hours. That equates to 180,000 gallons that need to be stored on top of storage for peak hour demand and other emergencies. Plus you never want to completely drain a tank because they leads to lower residual pressure in the system. If the pressure zone is mixed use with commercial and industrial development, the fire demand might be 4,000 gpm for four hours or 960,000 gallons of storage for fire. I think the UFC and ISO charts top out at 8,000 gpm for 4 hours and there are allowances for sprinklered buildings, etc.

I have done lots and lots of 200,000 gallon tanks and 2 million gallon tanks. The largest ever for me was 6 million gallons. Why not just play it safe and build mega tanks everywhere? Cost, impact, and problems with water quality. Usually fires are fought with potable water. The same water we all drink and use daily. With a mega tank and no fires, that water stagnates in the tank and we start having problems with circulation, water quality, and again health. The chlorine residual, if chlorine is used for disinfection, just dissipates over the long time that water sits there waiting for a fire. Occasionally we have designed dual systems for that very reason, but again, expensive.

So, take thousands of homes multiplied by 1,500 gallons per minute and you run out of water pretty quickly. It is no one's fault. Certainly not the Delta smelt's. Wildland fire fighting takes over with tankers, lake water, ocean water, whatever they can do. Unfortunately though, removing fuel in urban areas isn't like the wildland, where swaths of trees can be chain sawed. That was driven home in Santa Rosa when even Highway 101 proved to be an inadequate fire break.

I worked with an attorney today and the subject came up. There will be time for recriminations and responsibility. He showed me a phone picture of his friend in Altadena who had snapped a picture of the transmission lines sparking in the high winds. She (his friend) evacuated and is now famous on the internet for the picture. Her home was spared (for now) by the direction of the wind. This is awful and hopefully we can all help our southern neighbors. Searching for early blame doesn't help, in my opinion.

This came up on something I was watching making dinner. (CNN maybe?) 'How can the hydrants run dry? Incompetence!' I had to turn it off.

I'm always grateful to you for actual expertise in these matters.

But to my way of thinking, the failures (or problems) with fire fighting are largely emblematic. The real problem is disastrous forestry policies, reflecting the excessive influence of environmental dilettantes (such as the Sierra Club, the great sacred cow of the environmental movement, and others.) To blame this on any particular administration, as Trump has done, is shortsighted. The perilous condition of the forests reflects 50 years or more of mismanagement.

The failure to do the aggressive controlled burning that California forests require, or to permit responsible logging to accomplish the same sort of thinning, has resulted in wildly overgrown forests that are as a practical matter tinderboxes waiting to explode. When you drive up US 50 or the like and admire the greenery, you are not looking at a healthy forest. You are looking at the arboreal equivalent of the slums of Calcutta. All this was publicized during the last spate of massive fires (circa 2019 or thereabouts). But there has been no change in policy or even an attempt to do so. Newsom is responsible for that.

To environmentalists, logging companies are the moral enemy. But the forests managed by Weyerhauser and the like are healthy, productive, and never burst into flame. They are of course vulnerable to lightning strikes, power line accidents, and arsonists, but the accumulated fuel in the form of dead trees, fallen branches, and all the rest aren't there to fuel the fire.

If I were king of the world, I'd open up vast areas of the Sierra to commercial exploitation, under utility commission regulation. The premise of the
Sierra Club that they should be preserved as 'wilderness' is completely misguided. They aren't wilderness, and haven't been since human beings began protecting them from natural hazards, the most notable being fire. They're about as much true wilderness as Disneyland.

Finally, again emblematic, ten years ago or so the voters of this state approved a substantial bond issue to expand dramatically the water infrastructure of this State. My (mis?)information is that even in dry years there is sufficient run off to take care of the water needs of both farmers and general population, if we did not allow so much of it to run off into the sea. As of this writing, not a single spadeful of earth has been turned over to begin construction of a single dam. I respect jacketree's common sense about the inadequacy of water resources, but expanded infrastructure couldn't possibly have hurt.

RE: SoCal Fires - TrumpCard - 01-12-2025

(01-12-2025, 01:53 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote:
(01-10-2025, 07:59 PM)jacket3ree Wrote:
(01-10-2025, 01:05 PM)fullmetal Wrote: I think the most succinct analysis I've seen is that public firefighting infrastructure is designed to put out isolated house fires, not combat an extreme natural disaster sweeping into a highly populated suburb.

This is exactly right. I've designed municipal water systems for nearly 40 years and we do not design them with massive wildfires in mind. Those are natural disaster, Force Majure, Act of God scenarios (even if god is an electric company) and no one can afford water systems capable of fighting that. I've done systems across California, on Maui, and Santa Rose after the Coffee Fire that melted underground distribution piping.

Community, mutual, and municipal water systems are organized into pressure zones. Hilly terrain including the most devastated locations in LA will need many pressure zones. Potable water for domestic consumption, irrigation, fire fighting, and emergencies is fed into each pressure zone by gravity or pumping and stored within that zone (tanks) or fed through pressure regulators to a lower zone or by booster pumps into a higher zone. Each zone is supplied its maximum day demand from a wholesale source like SFPUC or Valley Water or groundwater. Demand varies across the day and those spikes in demand (peak hour) must come from water stored within the pressure zone or stored water brought into the pressure zone from another pressure zone.

Fire flow demands are on top of that peak hour demand. We design the pumping, storage, and distribution systems (pipes and hydrants) to deliver fire flows during a peak hour so that we do not have an unacceptable pressure loss (no less than 20 psi residual during a fire anywhere in the system) that can lead to back siphoning contaminants into the system and leading to health problems. The working assumption is one fire at a time within the pressure zone. If the zone is entirely residential, that's a single house. A code fire demand might be 1,500 gallons per minute (gpm) for two hours. That equates to 180,000 gallons that need to be stored on top of storage for peak hour demand and other emergencies. Plus you never want to completely drain a tank because they leads to lower residual pressure in the system. If the pressure zone is mixed use with commercial and industrial development, the fire demand might be 4,000 gpm for four hours or 960,000 gallons of storage for fire. I think the UFC and ISO charts top out at 8,000 gpm for 4 hours and there are allowances for sprinklered buildings, etc.

I have done lots and lots of 200,000 gallon tanks and 2 million gallon tanks. The largest ever for me was 6 million gallons. Why not just play it safe and build mega tanks everywhere? Cost, impact, and problems with water quality. Usually fires are fought with potable water. The same water we all drink and use daily. With a mega tank and no fires, that water stagnates in the tank and we start having problems with circulation, water quality, and again health. The chlorine residual, if chlorine is used for disinfection, just dissipates over the long time that water sits there waiting for a fire. Occasionally we have designed dual systems for that very reason, but again, expensive.

So, take thousands of homes multiplied by 1,500 gallons per minute and you run out of water pretty quickly. It is no one's fault. Certainly not the Delta smelt's. Wildland fire fighting takes over with tankers, lake water, ocean water, whatever they can do. Unfortunately though, removing fuel in urban areas isn't like the wildland, where swaths of trees can be chain sawed. That was driven home in Santa Rosa when even Highway 101 proved to be an inadequate fire break.

I worked with an attorney today and the subject came up. There will be time for recriminations and responsibility. He showed me a phone picture of his friend in Altadena who had snapped a picture of the transmission lines sparking in the high winds. She (his friend) evacuated and is now famous on the internet for the picture. Her home was spared (for now) by the direction of the wind. This is awful and hopefully we can all help our southern neighbors. Searching for early blame doesn't help, in my opinion.

This came up on something I was watching making dinner. (CNN maybe?) 'How can the hydrants run dry? Incompetence!' I had to turn it off.

I'm always grateful to you for actual expertise in these matters.

But to my way of thinking, the failures (or problems) with fire fighting are largely emblematic. The real problem is disastrous forestry policies, reflecting the excessive influence of environmental dilettantes (such as the Sierra Club, the great sacred cow of the environmental movement, and others.) To blame this on any particular administration, as Trump has done, is shortsighted. The perilous condition of the forests reflects 50 years or more of mismanagement.

The failure to do the aggressive controlled burning that California forests require, or to permit responsible logging to accomplish the same sort of thinning, has resulted in wildly overgrown forests that are as a practical matter tinderboxes waiting to explode. When you drive up US 50 or the like and admire the greenery, you are not looking at a healthy forest. You are looking at the arboreal equivalent of the slums of Calcutta. All this was publicized during the last spate of massive fires (circa 2019 or thereabouts). But there has been no change in policy or even an attempt to do so. Newsom is responsible for that.

To environmentalists, logging companies are the moral enemy. But the forests managed by Weyerhauser and the like are healthy, productive, and never burst into flame. They are of course vulnerable to lightning strikes, power line accidents, and arsonists, but the accumulated fuel in the form of dead trees, fallen branches, and all the rest aren't there to fuel the fire.

If I were king of the world, I'd open up vast areas of the Sierra to commercial exploitation, under utility commission regulation. The premise of the
Sierra Club that they should be preserved as 'wilderness' is completely misguided. They aren't wilderness, and haven't been since human beings began protecting them from natural hazards, the most notable being fire. They're about as much true wilderness as Disneyland.

Finally, again emblematic, ten years ago or so the voters of this state approved a substantial bond issue to expand dramatically the water infrastructure of this State. My (mis?)information is that even in dry years there is sufficient run off to take care of the water needs of both farmers and general population, if we did not allow so much of it to run off into the sea. As of this writing, not a single spadeful of earth has been turned over to begin construction of a single dam. I respect jacketree's common sense about the inadequacy of water resources, but expanded infrastructure couldn't possibly have hurt.

This is the type of political post that one of the mods expressly said we should stop. Anyway, as far as I know, no one was or is proposing to do logging in the Palisades or Altadena. Logging, if it were to expand, would occur in the eastern part of California, not in the middle of the nation's second biggest city. Similarly, no one is proposing that we construct a dam in Pasadena to capture rainwater runoff from the San Gabriel mountains. LA, however, is investing in efforts to capture more rainwater instead of allowing the water to spill into the ocean. For example:
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-05-11/los-angeles-stormwater-capture
https://www.stormwater.com/stormwater-management/article/55036520/los-angeles-a-proving-ground-for-effective-stormwater-management

RE: SoCal Fires - paloalto - 01-12-2025

(01-12-2025, 02:56 PM)TrumpCard Wrote: Anyway, as far as I know, no one was or is proposing to do logging in the Palisades or Altadena.

Similarly, no one is proposing that we construct a dam in Pasadena to capture rainwater runoff from the San Gabriel mountains.

The person you are responding to is not making those points so I don't follow your straw man argument.

But my issue here is with the moderators. There is some good, non-partisan information in this thread. It is also filled to the brim with people making a political point while trying to make it look like they are not making a political point.   Although it is obvious they are making a political point.

At some juncture I expect a moderator to lecture that this is a community and politics is against the community rules.   IMO the problem is the moderators with no consistent enforcement of the no politics rule.

RE: SoCal Fires - Mick - 01-12-2025

(01-12-2025, 04:15 PM)paloalto Wrote:
(01-12-2025, 02:56 PM)TrumpCard Wrote: Anyway, as far as I know, no one was or is proposing to do logging in the Palisades or Altadena.

Similarly, no one is proposing that we construct a dam in Pasadena to capture rainwater runoff from the San Gabriel mountains.

The person you are responding to is not making those points so I don't follow your straw man argument.

But my issue here is with the moderators. There is some good, non-partisan information in this thread. It is also filled to the brim with people making a political point while trying to make it look like they are not making a political point.   Although it is obvious they are making a political point.

At some juncture I expect a moderator to lecture that this is a community and politics is against the community rules.   IMO the problem is the moderators with no consistent enforcement of the no politics rule.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

RE: SoCal Fires - newguy - 01-12-2025

before this thread gets closed, i would like to express my condolences to everyone here who has been affected by these catastrophic fires.

RE: SoCal Fires - martyup - 01-12-2025

As moderators, we have two courses of action when faced with a post that violates board rules. We can warn or ban the offending member and we can close the thread.

The members who have violated board rules in this thread have been issued warnings. The thread has not been closed IMO because it still has informational value for that members want to see.

(01-12-2025, 12:48 PM)fullmetal Wrote: My only experience with soffit vents has been vents on the underside of the roof eaves between the edge of the roof overhang and the outer wall (to vent out bathroom fans). It's definitely concerning that embers could travel down (under the roof edge) and then up through the vent to enter the attic.

Attics are vented to keep moisture from accumulating. Air is taken in through the soffit vents and expelled through roof vents. In a fire, the heat creates a strong draft that moves the attic air rapidly. This makes the soffit vents vacuum cleaners for burning embers.

RE: SoCal Fires - TonyLima - 01-12-2025

(01-12-2025, 11:52 AM)martyup Wrote: Back in 2010 I built a large home in Southern Utah in a wooded area prone to wild fires started by dry lightening. I was worried about losing the house to a fire. After much research, I learned that most homes are ignited by burning embers entering the attic through soffit vents. I opted for a sealed attic (no ridge or soffit vents) with sprayed on foam on the attic ceiling, concrete shingles on the roof, and stucco on the exterior walls. The foam in the attic kept the attic temperature stable, which also benefited the efficiency of the gas furnaces located in the attic space.

Hopefully the homes that are rebuilt in the LA basin will utilize new technology to prevent ignition in an external fire.

About a century age, Byte had a hardware columnist, Steve Ciarcia. Lived in NH. One day his house was struck by lightning. He turned the sow’s ear into a silk purse by writing an article about how to build a lightning rod. Still around on the internet last tie I checked. Completely irrelevant, but when my remaining synapses fire, i try to use the result.

(01-11-2025, 08:29 AM)terry Wrote: Very interesting info. Thanks, jacket3ree.

Agree. Many thanks.

RE: SoCal Fires - GK3 - 01-12-2025

(01-12-2025, 02:56 PM)TrumpCard Wrote:
(01-12-2025, 01:53 PM)Genuine Realist Wrote:
(01-10-2025, 07:59 PM)jacket3ree Wrote:
(01-10-2025, 01:05 PM)fullmetal Wrote: I think the most succinct analysis I've seen is that public firefighting infrastructure is designed to put out isolated house fires, not combat an extreme natural disaster sweeping into a highly populated suburb.

This is exactly right. I've designed municipal water systems for nearly 40 years and we do not design them with massive wildfires in mind. Those are natural disaster, Force Majure, Act of God scenarios (even if god is an electric company) and no one can afford water systems capable of fighting that. I've done systems across California, on Maui, and Santa Rose after the Coffee Fire that melted underground distribution piping.

Community, mutual, and municipal water systems are organized into pressure zones. Hilly terrain including the most devastated locations in LA will need many pressure zones. Potable water for domestic consumption, irrigation, fire fighting, and emergencies is fed into each pressure zone by gravity or pumping and stored within that zone (tanks) or fed through pressure regulators to a lower zone or by booster pumps into a higher zone. Each zone is supplied its maximum day demand from a wholesale source like SFPUC or Valley Water or groundwater. Demand varies across the day and those spikes in demand (peak hour) must come from water stored within the pressure zone or stored water brought into the pressure zone from another pressure zone.

Fire flow demands are on top of that peak hour demand. We design the pumping, storage, and distribution systems (pipes and hydrants) to deliver fire flows during a peak hour so that we do not have an unacceptable pressure loss (no less than 20 psi residual during a fire anywhere in the system) that can lead to back siphoning contaminants into the system and leading to health problems. The working assumption is one fire at a time within the pressure zone. If the zone is entirely residential, that's a single house. A code fire demand might be 1,500 gallons per minute (gpm) for two hours. That equates to 180,000 gallons that need to be stored on top of storage for peak hour demand and other emergencies. Plus you never want to completely drain a tank because they leads to lower residual pressure in the system. If the pressure zone is mixed use with commercial and industrial development, the fire demand might be 4,000 gpm for four hours or 960,000 gallons of storage for fire. I think the UFC and ISO charts top out at 8,000 gpm for 4 hours and there are allowances for sprinklered buildings, etc.

I have done lots and lots of 200,000 gallon tanks and 2 million gallon tanks. The largest ever for me was 6 million gallons. Why not just play it safe and build mega tanks everywhere? Cost, impact, and problems with water quality. Usually fires are fought with potable water. The same water we all drink and use daily. With a mega tank and no fires, that water stagnates in the tank and we start having problems with circulation, water quality, and again health. The chlorine residual, if chlorine is used for disinfection, just dissipates over the long time that water sits there waiting for a fire. Occasionally we have designed dual systems for that very reason, but again, expensive.

So, take thousands of homes multiplied by 1,500 gallons per minute and you run out of water pretty quickly. It is no one's fault. Certainly not the Delta smelt's. Wildland fire fighting takes over with tankers, lake water, ocean water, whatever they can do. Unfortunately though, removing fuel in urban areas isn't like the wildland, where swaths of trees can be chain sawed. That was driven home in Santa Rosa when even Highway 101 proved to be an inadequate fire break.

I worked with an attorney today and the subject came up. There will be time for recriminations and responsibility. He showed me a phone picture of his friend in Altadena who had snapped a picture of the transmission lines sparking in the high winds. She (his friend) evacuated and is now famous on the internet for the picture. Her home was spared (for now) by the direction of the wind. This is awful and hopefully we can all help our southern neighbors. Searching for early blame doesn't help, in my opinion.

This came up on something I was watching making dinner. (CNN maybe?) 'How can the hydrants run dry? Incompetence!' I had to turn it off.

I'm always grateful to you for actual expertise in these matters.

But to my way of thinking, the failures (or problems) with fire fighting are largely emblematic. The real problem is disastrous forestry policies, reflecting the excessive influence of environmental dilettantes (such as the Sierra Club, the great sacred cow of the environmental movement, and others.) To blame this on any particular administration, as Trump has done, is shortsighted. The perilous condition of the forests reflects 50 years or more of mismanagement.

The failure to do the aggressive controlled burning that California forests require, or to permit responsible logging to accomplish the same sort of thinning, has resulted in wildly overgrown forests that are as a practical matter tinderboxes waiting to explode. When you drive up US 50 or the like and admire the greenery, you are not looking at a healthy forest. You are looking at the arboreal equivalent of the slums of Calcutta. All this was publicized during the last spate of massive fires (circa 2019 or thereabouts). But there has been no change in policy or even an attempt to do so. Newsom is responsible for that.

To environmentalists, logging companies are the moral enemy. But the forests managed by Weyerhauser and the like are healthy, productive, and never burst into flame. They are of course vulnerable to lightning strikes, power line accidents, and arsonists, but the accumulated fuel in the form of dead trees, fallen branches, and all the rest aren't there to fuel the fire.

If I were king of the world, I'd open up vast areas of the Sierra to commercial exploitation, under utility commission regulation. The premise of the
Sierra Club that they should be preserved as 'wilderness' is completely misguided. They aren't wilderness, and haven't been since human beings began protecting them from natural hazards, the most notable being fire. They're about as much true wilderness as Disneyland.

Finally, again emblematic, ten years ago or so the voters of this state approved a substantial bond issue to expand dramatically the water infrastructure of this State. My (mis?)information is that even in dry years there is sufficient run off to take care of the water needs of both farmers and general population, if we did not allow so much of it to run off into the sea. As of this writing, not a single spadeful of earth has been turned over to begin construction of a single dam. I respect jacketree's common sense about the inadequacy of water resources, but expanded infrastructure couldn't possibly have hurt.

This is the type of political post that one of the mods expressly said we should stop. Anyway, as far as I know, no one was or is proposing to do logging in the Palisades or Altadena. Logging, if it were to expand, would occur in the eastern part of California, not in the middle of the nation's second biggest city. Similarly, no one is proposing that we construct a dam in Pasadena to capture rainwater runoff from the San Gabriel mountains. LA, however, is investing in efforts to capture more rainwater instead of allowing the water to spill into the ocean. For example:
https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-05-11/los-angeles-stormwater-capture
https://www.stormwater.com/stormwater-management/article/55036520/los-angeles-a-proving-ground-for-effective-stormwater-management

You are correct. Plus, I believe the Forest Service's view on putting out any and every fire as fast as possible ceased long ago. If you travel through the forested areas of Northern Calif and Southern Oregon in the Spring you are almost certain to run into controlled burns. I think far more focus needs to be put on standardized requirements for utilities to turn off their power when certain conditions exist in a particular local. At the moment I think every utility has its own standard and DWP's are ridiculous. The standards should be tough and they should be enforced. It is not much fun not to have any power to light your home, run you well etc, but many of us in Northern California deal with this all the time now that PG&E has been taken to the woodshed for its failures and believe me, we pay the price when we get our power bills every month. To my way of thinking enforcement of Abatement rules should happen when it is supposed to happen. So you skip a weeks training, when you train all the time it doesn't makie a big difference.
If you are interested in the Forest Servide's current attitude, you should read this: https://www.fs.usda.gov/science-technology/managing-fire
The Forest Service is NOT the ogre in this case
Once all the weeping, crying and nashing of teeth has taken place, there will be endless hearings and investigations as after the Camp Fire in Northern California. Then piper will have to be paid. Unfortunately, it is apt to be the rate payers who will get bigger bills and have extreme difficulty getting insurance.
What we need to be focused on NOW is saving lives and property plus trying to figure out how we can best help those who lost their homes and/or businesses.

RE: SoCal Fires - M T - 01-12-2025

(01-12-2025, 02:56 PM)TrumpCard Wrote: ....Similarly, no one is proposing that we construct a dam in Pasadena to capture rainwater runoff from the San Gabriel mountains.

Between the Hurst Fire (Sylmar) and the Eaton Fire (Altadena), just south of and very visible from I-210, is the Hansen Dam, that was built to protect the L.A. River from flooding. When it was completed in 1940, it was the largest in the world of its type. It does not have a reservoir, but it apparently still functions to avoid flooding of the L.A. River (if you can call a concrete channel a river). You can read about this and some other LA County dams. The article also covers another dam that was in Sylmar.

If you want to follow up on the soffit vents or other aspects of homes in wildfire zones, FEMA published a set of Fact Sheets in 2008.

AFAIK, California's general water supply situation had nothing to do with the fires, but as for the comment above about new dams, it seems the poster knew ("as of this writing") that construction on a new California reservoir is due to start in 2026. As for why it takes so long from an idea to construction, see my link above on the L.A. County dams.

RE: SoCal Fires - ADPinWDC - 01-13-2025

GK3 Summarized well:
"The Forest Service is NOT the ogre in this case
Once all the weeping, crying and gnashing of teeth has taken place, there will be endless hearings and investigations as after the Camp Fire in Northern California. Then piper will have to be paid. Unfortunately, it is apt to be the rate payers who will get bigger bills and have extreme difficulty getting insurance.
What we need to be focused on NOW is saving lives and property plus trying to figure out how we can best help those who lost their homes and/or businesses."

George Will noted, "We have 20 million people living in a Southern California desert -- Yes, water will be a problem!"

Rebuilding will face very large insurability problems -- for all the reasons stated above, principally 1) No muni water system can be built to handle large scale wildfires; 2) Storing water poses problems via stagnation and contamination, as noted above. Seawater cannot be readily used because the salt residue then hinders vegetation regrowth, magnifying mudslides later; 3) Given the water constraints, obtaining permits even for rebuilding could be difficult, and banks may be hesitant to finance rebuilding without insurance -- or very high deductibles, or exclusions for wildfires.

REBUILDING ? WITH WHAT FINANCING?
What happens to Property Tax Revenue ?
The new Senate does not support a "blank check bailout" for SoCal (or anywhere else). There will be restrictions and Federal oversight on use of funds, and "who gets bailed out" WITH CAPS, e.g. no bailout above $500,000 per home. SoCal Celebrity ocean view homes at $2 million+ will not be receiving Federal bailouts... Working class voters won't stand for that.

So, mortgage writers seeing capped federal bailouts and meager insurance with exclusions for wildfire damage will hesitate to fund rebuilding for the NEXT wildfire season in a region obviously prone to them.

Southern California will lose population, and Property Tax revenue will plummet with lower appraised values. All homeowners are going to push for lower appraisals... Ditto on commercial real estate.
Property tax revenues provide LA County with 20% of its overall budget (of $43 billion total in 2024) at the County level, and State Assistance (now strained) another 25%. Federal assistance down to LA County level is 14%.
Charges for Services will now have to be raised.

And, this ignites a new cycle of police and fire budget cutbacks.... #BAD.
Arizona Realtors are saying the phone is ringing crazy.

RE: SoCal Fires - Mick - 01-13-2025

(01-13-2025, 04:00 AM)ADPinWDC Wrote: Southern California will lose population, and Property Tax revenue will plummet with lower appraised values. All homeowners are going to push for lower appraisals... Ditto on commercial real estate.
Property tax revenues provide LA County with 20% of its overall budget (of $43 billion total in 2024) at the County level, and State Assistance (now strained) another 25%. Federal assistance down to LA County level is 14%.
Charges for Services will now have to be raised.

The governing authorities don't always unilaterally assess your property's value (commercial or residential) in the face of a catastrophe or economic setbacks, and when they do, they do it according to lockstep formulas and are not necessarily correct. There are accountants and law firms that specialize in generating reassessments with subsequent reductions in property taxes. I did it myself for a few years. Some of the over-assessments were jawdropping.

RE: SoCal Fires - Genuine Realist - 01-13-2025

(01-12-2025, 09:34 PM)M T Wrote:
(01-12-2025, 02:56 PM)TrumpCard Wrote: ....Similarly, no one is proposing that we construct a dam in Pasadena to capture rainwater runoff from the San Gabriel mountains.
Between the Hurst Fire (Sylmar) and the Eaton Fire (Altadena), just south of and very visible from I-210, is the Hansen Dam, that was built to protect the L.A. River from flooding. When it was completed in 1940, it was the largest in the world of its type. It does not have a reservoir, but it apparently still functions to avoid flooding of the L.A. River (if you can call a concrete channel a river). You can read about this and some other LA County dams. The article also covers another dam that was in Sylmar.

If you want to follow up on the soffit vents or other aspects of homes in wildfire zones, FEMA published a set of Fact Sheets in 2008.

AFAIK, California's general water supply situation had nothing to do with the fires, but as for the comment above about new dams, it seems the poster knew ("as of this writing") that construction on a new California reservoir is due to start in 2026. As for why it takes so long from an idea to construction, see my link above on the L.A. County dams.

The article notes construction of the dam is problematic due to opposition and (predictably) a lawsuit by environmental groups.

Legislation that would fasttrack these projects is essential.

RE: SoCal Fires - TrumpCard - 01-13-2025

I’m so sorry to the people reading this who’ve lost their homes. I recently learned of a friend whose extended family lost 3 in the same neighborhood. The devastation is immense. I’m also sorry that you all have to read political posts trying to use your pain as leverage to advance their pet political projects that have little or nothing to do with the fires happening in the LA area now.

RE: SoCal Fires - Genuine Realist - 01-13-2025

(01-13-2025, 09:59 AM)TrumpCard Wrote: I’m so sorry to the people reading this who’ve lost their homes. I recently learned of a friend whose extended family lost 3 in the same neighborhood. The devastation is immense. I’m also sorry that you all have to read political posts trying to use your pain as leverage to advance their pet political projects that have little or nothing to do with the fires happening in the LA area now.

FWIW, i got most of the information I know about forestry practices back in 2020 from sources such as this, the MIT Technology Review - https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/17/1008473/wildfires-california-prescribed-burns-climate-change-forests/, and this - https://bit.ly/3BVlDh9, - from the National Association of State Foresters.

The bottom line is that California forests are badly overgrown and in need of drastic reduction. We can talk about improving the safety of power lines, but the critical issue is not so much how fires start as how they are fueled. It seems to me necessary to change the approach from one in which the goal is to maintain the forest in a ' natural' state as to accept the reality that that is no longer a practical possibility, and move to a curated model. That implies licensing significant tracts to logging companies such as Weyerhauser. But the reality is that these corporations have done a good job in maintaining forests in good health.

Finally, the difficulties in initiating dam projects and other water infrastructure obviously have no direct effect on fire prevention, but are emblematic of the difficulties society has had in reorienting attitudes towards a more practical approach to these problems.

RE: SoCal Fires - GoodGrief - 01-13-2025

As somebody living in the San Fernando Valley, we are currently safe but very concerned especially with the new winds forecast. In discussions with friends and neighbors, nobody has uttered negative speculation about the Mayor, Governor, LAFD Chief, CA, etc. We're concerned with solutions and survival, unlike some people dwelling in Republican Orange County who consume Breitbart and Fox News and revel in blaming the other side when trouble strikes.

(01-09-2025, 09:59 PM)ADPinWDC Wrote: We are staying in Orange County, and the level of disgust with gross incompetence and negligence by LA Mayor and LAFD Chief, plus Gov Newsom is at record levels.
The Mayor was over in Ghana for an Inauguration (why?), and Mayor Bass cut LAFD $18 million last year.
Planning for water supply was confoundingly stupid, I would say "Criminal Negligence".

Real Estate agents in AZ are seeing inquiries jump 10-fold they say, from Calif residents saying, "This is the last straw -- we are out!".

RE: SoCal Fires - 82lsju - 01-13-2025

(01-13-2025, 10:54 AM)Genuine Realist Wrote:
(01-13-2025, 09:59 AM)TrumpCard Wrote: I’m so sorry to the people reading this who’ve lost their homes. I recently learned of a friend whose extended family lost 3 in the same neighborhood. The devastation is immense. I’m also sorry that you all have to read political posts trying to use your pain as leverage to advance their pet political projects that have little or nothing to do with the fires happening in the LA area now.
FWIW, i got most of the information I know about forestry practices back in 2020 from sources such as this, the MIT Technology Review - https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/17/1008473/wildfires-california-prescribed-burns-climate-change-forests/, and this - https://bit.ly/3BVlDh9, - from the National Association of State Foresters.

The bottom line is that California forests are badly overgrown and in need of drastic reduction. We can talk about improving the safety of power lines, but the critical issue is not so much how fires start as how they are fueled. It seems to me necessary to change the approach from one in which the goal is to maintain the forest in a ' natural' state as to accept the reality that that is no longer a practical possibility, and move to a curated model. That implies licensing significant tracts to logging companies such as Weyerhauser. But the reality is that these corporations have done a good job in maintaining forests in good health.

Finally, the difficulties in initiating dam projects and other water infrastructure obviously have no direct effect on fire prevention, but are emblematic of the difficulties society has had in reorienting attitudes towards a more practical approach to these problems.

don't forget all the dead trees from the pine beetle...