So who would you say is to blame for these fires taking so many homes?
Obviously I know who blames who, its hardly a secret where all the shouting is coming from.
Someone has signed off these builds and all the relevant ordinance, I'm not exactly being controversial here.
Everyone is fact checking everyone else trying to win internet arguments, but the place clearly did burn to the ground.
It has to be someones fault when it was so clearly going to happen.. and if it's no ones fault then its just going to happen again
and will be treated as some kind of sacrificial anode attached to the fallout of the Goldrush.
Having lived in Southern California over 30 years, I can say this was an unprecedented event at least within that time frame. These were not 'normal' Santa Anas.
Yes, there were scientists who understood climate change might get this severe, but a lot of what burned in Altadena were on
flat terrain, in a suburban neighborhood, over two miles from the hills. I think that is pretty unusual. I do not know, but I'm not sure at all that anyone felt, in 1962, when our house was built, that "it was so clearly going to happen." By 1973 or so, sure, my ecology teacher-- yes, that was a class-- explained to the class, "The term global warming is not really accurate. What we'll see is wild swings in climate, probably extreme cold as well, sometime early in the 21st century. We don't know exactly when. Probably, politicians will point to the cold snaps and deny that the planet is 'warming,' and that will be confusing. The general trend will be towards heat and drought, but there will be decades when flood and cold will also become more common."
So yes, in a sense, it was knowable, by the mid '70s, but didn't start trickling into the building code for quite some time. And some of the houses in Altadena were built in the 1920s.
If you read articles about the last big fire in Griffith Park, in 2007, you can hear the reporters gushing about the 'winds gusting to 35 miles per hour!' As if, you know, that was a high wind! And in 1992, I remember driving to work in a crosswind of 35-45 MPH, and that was reported on the news as if it was a big deal.
There are a lot of things that are 'so clearly going to happen' that our species seems to be doing nothing about-- or things we're doing way too slowly.
One thing I noticed from direct observation: The fire fighting technology, the speed of deployment, the speed at which more resources were brought to bear, has improved exponentially since then. Our home was saved in 2007, I believe, by a handful of crazy chopper pilots who flew in conditions when they should have been grounded because they just know Griffith Park that well. They did insane things; it looked like they flew directly into walls of flame to make some of those drops. I remember reading an interview with one pilot that was like, "Well, no, we can't really see anything, and the instruments can only tell us so much."
When the Sunset fire started, I thought, based on previous experience, "We are so screwed. Resources must be stretched so thin; we already have two major fires. There will be nothing left to fight this one."
Instead, what I saw-- just as one example-- with my own eyes above Runyon Canyon was like some kind of aerial ballet. The choppers were there faster, they dropped more frequently, than at any other fire that I've seen. Another thing I have not heard reported that I also saw: At least while I was watching the news, they missed less frequently, particularly on the northern side of the Palisades fire. I'd watch a drop, and think, "No way he's going to hit that hot spot..." but they would. In 2007, they'd have to try a couple of times.
If we'd had a wind event like the one two weeks ago with only the resources we had in 2007, I think that fire would just have burned down to Franklin or Hollywood Blvd.
I'm not saying we did enough to prepare or that we shouldn't do more. I think we should stop building in the hills, and avoid rebuilding in places that have burned. And stop renovations that increase the footprint of houses. I love some of the links posted here to fire-retardant materials, too.
Those of us who stay should know we may lose our homes. We should not expect an insurance bailout. I feel bad for people who have just moved to the hills recently. I didn't buy our home for an investment, I bought it as a place to live, and that worked out pretty well, largely by luck-- we are in the lee of a large hill, and that's protected us so far. I didn't actually consider that when we got the home. I did imagine that we were far enough away from heavy brush that we were probably safe, and that assumption was dead wrong.
It would suck if we had to retire without that investment, but I've always been aware that might happen.
