LA fires

[barbos]

Yes, it burns out there, but it generally doesn't burn this bad based on how this hadn't happened to this extent before.

As I said, people were warning that could happen and yet nothing was done, I see the houses with fuel based roofs on the google maps.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In Russia i's bricks and concrete. Mine is bricks

What about your roof?

Metal. Older apartment buildings in Russia would not not catch fire from the outside. You have to start fire inside.
Newer may have some flammable to some degree insulation on the exterior.

Disagree--brick walls and a metal roof aren't enough to stand up to what's happening in Los Angeles. You need undamaged, properly installed spark-blocking screens on all vents. Typical screens meant to keep out wildlife aren't enough. Our house is actually build to California standards (the builder was from California, it was cheaper to use the existing plans than to redo everything without the seismic engineering that isn't required here.) The roof is concrete tile, the walls are stucco. 99% of the exterior can't burn. But there are a few places where beams aren't covered and the vent screens aren't the spark versions (not would there be any point, those vents are some of the few places there's exposed wood.)

Against the storm of sparks those fires create the only defense is to have absolutely no chinks in your armor.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I heard Mel Gibson and Joe Rogan were discussing this as reasonably as barbos. One of them mentioned that the city 'turned off the hydrants'.

Goodness the dumb hurts. And it spreads like that wildfire did.

To some extent it's true. The problem is a water storage facility was being renovated and thus was empty. The hydrants in the area had nowhere near the water they would have had had it been full.

But the system would have overloaded anyway.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yes, it burns out there, but it generally doesn't burn this bad based on how this hadn't happened to this extent before.

As I said, people were warning that could happen and yet nothing was done, I see the houses with fuel based roofs on the google maps.

Nothing was done? You mean the entire region didn't fire proof their houses. Almost all of the houses in the region DIDN'T burn down, were not impacted by the fires. You are beside yourself that tens of billions hasn't been spent to 'fire proof' a massive region of homes.

 

[barbos]

Yes, it burns out there, but it generally doesn't burn this bad based on how this hadn't happened to this extent before.

As I said, people were warning that could happen and yet nothing was done, I see the houses with fuel based roofs on the google maps.

Nothing was done? You mean the entire region didn't fire proof their houses. Almost all of the houses in the region DIDN'T burn down, were not impacted by the fires. You are beside yourself that tens of billions hasn't been spent to 'fire proof' a massive region of homes.

Did not burn != fireproofed.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Are Russian houses windowless and doorless? Does Russia have 160 kmh fire imbued hot winds? Those winds can crack right through the windows and burn everything inside.

Tempered glass + absolutely no combustible outside surfaces + vents screened against sparks means a house probably survives. But the building codes do not require any of this.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Yes, it burns out there, but it generally doesn't burn this bad based on how this hadn't happened to this extent before.

As I said, people were warning that could happen and yet nothing was done, I see the houses with fuel based roofs on the google maps.

Nothing was done? You mean the entire region didn't fire proof their houses. Almost all of the houses in the region DIDN'T burn down, were not impacted by the fires. You are beside yourself that tens of billions hasn't been spent to 'fire proof' a massive region of homes.

Did not burn != fireproofed.

Thanks for the logic lesson. The houses that didn't burn down in the region didn't have any fire near their houses. The whole point is that requiring fireproofing involves every home in these regions. Not just the ones the were torched. That would cost a lot. In fact, it could be argued it'd be cheaper to rebuild to a new code post-fire. This also doesn't manage the interiors which would still get hot.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In catastrophic fire conditions, there are always sources of ignition.

Nobody argues with that. Forest fires are natural. What is "unnatural" are fires in a large city which burn whole parts to the ground. That means went something wrong during planning and construction.

Your cities would burn under the same conditions.

Against fire wind only structures engineered for fire resistance survive. If there is the slightest penetration it will probably burn. And big enough fires create their own weather, you can have devastating fire wind on a calm day.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

From the 1970s on, setbacks from the property line shrunk and shrunk to the point of being better described as air gaps. At the turn of the century what I seen being built and still considered “detached homes” were little more than an arm’s length from one another. Stucco walls and terracotta roofs isn’t quite getting the job done.
I’d think when considering fire safety, Southern California would have to decrease their single family detached home supply by about a third. I can only imagine what prices would be like had they built this way all along.
They tried to keep building the American Dream in paradise. It’s not working. Imagine if all those who need to rebuild were forced to drastically reduce the square footage of their new homes to comply with sensible fire safety. What an uproar there would be.

Setbacks help but the real defense is avoiding any possible ignition points. A bunch of reinforced concrete also helps in providing thermal mass.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pacific-palisades-reservoir-offline-empty-163924460.html

Not relevant. The water issue was pressure, not volume. For instance, LA has the Pacific Ocean to the west, a very large source of water, but having the supply doesn't mean you have the pressure required to transmit it elsewhere.

That empty reservoir was somewhat relevant in that it meant less water in a problem area. But had it been full it wouldn't have been enough.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

James Woods and Mel Gibson, both climate change deniers, lost their houses.

I keep seeing this opinion posted all over the interwebs.

Is there any scientific accuracy to this claim?

Every time some natural disaster occurs, people start talking about climate change. Where the fires are SoCal falls in between a mediterranean and savannah-like climate. Fires are regular occurrence in SoCal and always have been.

Wildfire is a normal occurrence in California. I live downwind and every fire season we get smokey air, sometimes to the point that they advise you not to exert yourself if possible.

However, the devastating city burns are basically a new thing. It used to be the fires would get some buildings in the wilderness but could be kept away from the cities.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Those city fires in eastern and midwestern cities were nothing like what is occurring on. Southern California right now.

And yet all of those US cities did what Los Angeles guaranteed wont be doing going forward. The political structure used common sense to fix their public works so that future fire disasters became a thing of the past. After the great fire in Chicago the county leaders could have said "we did everything right!". And they could have said that the "spotted owl and unicorn fish are more important than cleaning up brush and flammable tinder!." And they could have said "there is nothing to see here!". But instead they used common sense and decided to upgrade all future building to brick instead of tinder wood. They built buildings that were inherently fireproof even when they were parked side by side each other. It wasn't easy on their part either because they actually had to build brick factories just to provide enough materials. Not to mention all the hard labor it was back then to haul and lay all those bricks.

The difference in what their attitude was back then is all you have to know why the US became as successful as it once was. And why it has now become a complete laughing stock. Back then they worried more about real improvements to society than what gender you were.

What you are missing is that there is no fixing.

The only thing you can do is engineer houses not to burn--and that's something extremely hard to retrofit. I've looked over our house for weak spots and thought about what it would take. The chinks I could identify (and I'm sure I missed some) would unquestionably be well into the 5 figures. Every door, every window would need total replacement and I don't know what would be needed to extend the stucco over the area at the roofline.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Almost all the aquafers were full. But just like in your home while you are taking a shower in the upstairs bathroom, if all the taps in the house get opened at the same time you're not going to get much water.

This fire was so huge there were so many hydrants opened the water wasn't getting to the higher elevations. The fire suppression planes couldn't fly due to the high winds which sent burning embers flying all over the place, setting new fires. Fire trucks couldn't get to where needed because the roads were clogged with abandoned cars. They finally brought in bulldozers to move them out of the way.

This was an unprecedented natural catastrophe. But damn, someone's just got to be blamed because they couldn't accomplish the impossible.

And assholes flying drones.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Building with brick is expensive. My guess is many of those rich people's home had a lot of brickwork in their construction. It didn't save them.

No one seems to have mentioned stucco. Its a very common siding material here in CA, and makes for a good fireproof siding choice. That coupled with metal roofing or masonry roof shingles will make for a very fire resistant house. Also, be wise about what you use for landscaping with plants and trees.

But most "stucco" houses are like ours--the walls are stucco, there's a lot of trim that isn't.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/pacific-palisades-reservoir-offline-empty-163924460.html

Not relevant. The water issue was pressure, not volume. For instance, LA has the Pacific Ocean to the west, a very large source of water, but having the supply doesn't mean you have the pressure required to transmit it elsewhere.

That empty reservoir was somewhat relevant in that it meant less water in a problem area. But had it been full it wouldn't have been enough.

If this wouldn't have been enough, why are you bringing it up? I know you aren't gaslighting and you aren't trying to infer a failure here, but it reads like gaslighting.

Municipal water systems like the one in Los Angeles are designed to handle heavy loads, including those from large fires that might require multiple fire trucks to tap into the system at the same time.

Getting water to the upper reaches of hillside communities like Pacific Palisades can be a challenge. There, water is collected in a reservoir that pumps into three high-elevation storage tanks, each with a capacity of about one million gallons. Water then flows by gravity into homes and fire hydrants.

But the pump-and-storage system was designed for a fire that might consume several homes, not one that would consume hundreds, said Mr. Adams, the former leader of the city’s water department.

link

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And has already mentioned several times: heat from the intensity of these fires will break glass windows and get inside even the brickiest of brick homes----and will cause severe structural damage to the point where the house will have to be torn down

The idea is not to safe any particular house, the idea is to stop chain reaction which you just had.
Glass windows is not a problem. Just have shutters on windows. you can have them removable if you like. In case of fire you take them from the storage and install.

And once again you show your ignorance. Against the fire wind your defenses must be passive because you can't stick around to install shutters or the like unless you have a fire bunker.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nothing would have stopped this.

Bullshit. Buildings without flammable roofs would certainly slowed it enough for firefighters to deal with it.
Buildings without flammable exterior would have stopped it.

The firefighters can do little against such a fire.

And non-flammable exteriors are not going to do much to slow it--the real threat is the rain of embers miles beyond the fire line. If they find a chink they burn the house.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

On that note...

'What the hell is going on?': Top firefighter's warning for Australian cities after LA fires

A former fire chief who has battled fires in California and Australia says the devastation that has swept Los Angeles "could absolutely happen here".

www.sbs.com.au

"Los Angeles doesn't burn after November. It never has .... until now," he told SBS News. "It's winter. It should be raining in California. They're quite likely to get Santa Ana winds at this time of year, but not with a dry landscape. They basically haven't had rain since May."

According to Mullins, who is also the founder of the Emergency Leaders for Climate Action group, "dryness" was a key factor.
"It's very unusual to be this dry this quickly. It's after a few years of rain — so [there were] very high fuel levels, the hills were just covered in growth," he said.

"[There were] limited opportunities to do fuel reduction because of those in the previous rains. And then you add the final ingredient — a very strong Santa Ana event … the fires are unstoppable."

Now I'm sure barbos and most definitely RVonse are unaware of this, but Australian firefighters have some experience in battling some pretty fucking wild fires. If they're saying these fires were something you couldn't realistically prepare for, I'm inclined to believe them.

Yeah. They are used to dealing with the insane wildfires. Many of the people living in the danger zone make extensive preparations--and still it sometimes fails.

I saw some video a while back from a family that stayed behind and fought the fire. Atrocious conditions but survivable--they were running around hotspotting. IIRC in the end they lost the battle and had to retreat to their bunker. It wasn't an all-consuming fire front like Barbos is picturing, it was the rain of embers. And that's why they were in a position to at least try--pounce on every point of ignition before it becomes uncontrollable.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Now I'm sure barbos and most definitely RVonse are unaware of this, but Australian firefighters have some experience in battling some pretty fucking wild fires. If they're saying these fires were something you couldn't realistically prepare for

apparently some firefighters in California were warning about this kind of fire BEFORE it.

The actual fire was beyond anything we have seen but the alarm has been being sounded for years.

 

[scombrid]

My concrete block/stucco house with a metal roof is nearly Florida wildfire proof. Our fires are on flat terrain with less wind. What happened in Palisades would have gutted it. We still have wood trusses, rafters, joists... We don’t have steep terrain here and don’t get the kind of wind or sub 20 percent relative humidity with our fires. The great firestorm of 1998 hereabouts was a slow motion disaster. Nothing like what southern California is experiencing.

Wind and all the burning brush upwind of and within the neighborhood will drive the fire into every nook and cranny. Nothing short of a fire bunker will withstand it.

Plenty of stucco houses with metal or tile roofs failed in CA.