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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

(charleshughsmith.substack.com)
512 points spking | 19 comments | | HN request time: 1.72s | source | bottom
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tobyhinloopen ◴[] No.42734903[source]
American, living in area prone to natural disasters: "Is the WHOLE WORLD becoming uninsurable?"

The answer is obviously "no" since there are other parts of the world that don't live on a hurricane highway nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires.

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1. gibsonf1 ◴[] No.42738455[source]
A key issue in the LA fires was bad management at all levels of government that could have prevented an order of magnitude of the damage (If procedures from the past were followed).
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2. vantassell ◴[] No.42738771[source]
You’re a fire management expert? What did LA do wrong?
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3. gibsonf1 ◴[] No.42738991[source]
1. Santa Ynez Reservoir right above Palisades was empty for the past year, depriving fire hydrants of water. (State incompetence)

2. La City defunded fire department removing 100 fire trucks from service due to maintenance. (City Incompetence)

3 Severe fire warnings reported days in advance of the fire. Rather than take precautions and position fire trucks and equipment etc as was done in the past, the Mayor flew off to Ghana. (City Incompetence, Fire Department incompetence (but partly because of cut budget)

4. Forest maintenance has been stopped. (State incompetence)

Competent management is needed or even worse can be expected in future.

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4. electrondood ◴[] No.42739159{3}[source]
re: point #1, the fire command team captain himself refuted this disinformation in an interview with Musk.

I don't know about the other three offhand, but it's absurd to claim that state and local governments in California are somehow not taking fire risk seriously. Do you seriously think that the state that has annual wildfire season just happens to be "incompetent" when it comes to preparing for wildfires?

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5. doug_durham ◴[] No.42739612{3}[source]
This is nonsense disinformation. Citations? This wasn't a forest fire so forest management isn't an issue. California makes massive investments in wild lands maintenance. It hasn't "stopped". Also most forest land in California is Federally owned. Perhaps our incoming president will invest some money in maintaining the peoples forests. This disaster deserves better responses.
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6. gibsonf1 ◴[] No.42740050{4}[source]
I'm not sure what you mean about forests not involved: "The fire was first reported at about 10:30 a.m. PST on January 7, 2025, covering around 10 acres (4.0 ha) of the mountains north of Pacific Palisades" [1] California spending money has nothing to do with the outcomes in reality.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_Fire

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7. gibsonf1 ◴[] No.42740109{4}[source]
How does the statement of "not taking fire risk seriously" explain the fact that the Santa Ynez Reservoir was and still is empty, and is a primary uphill source of water for those fire hydrants, or that the mayor defunded the fire department and left for Ghana after getting extreme fire danger warnings?[1]

Because Santa Ynez was empty (for the past year), water was supplied from downhill water sources and the pressure needed dropped off to the point there was no longer any water out of the hydrants.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pacific+Palisades,+Los+Ang...

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8. jMyles ◴[] No.42740460[source]
If you actually want to know the answer to this question, this is a wonderful and well-researched book on the topic.

https://tendingthewild.com/tending-the-wild/

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9. manishsharan ◴[] No.42740526{5}[source]
you seem to be asserting that you know more than the Fire Chief.
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10. gibsonf1 ◴[] No.42740749{6}[source]
I'm asserting that anybody saying anything has nothing to do with the actual facts. I just offered you a 2025 aerial view of the reservoir designed to provide water at pressure to hydrants that is empty, for example. The Fire Chief warned about the effects of the defunding. [1]

[1] https://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2024/24-1600_rpt_bfc_12...

11. saltcured ◴[] No.42740800{5}[source]
I imagine they're rejecting the word "forest" to describe the landscape there. Locals would reserve the word "forest" for the coniferous zone of much higher elevation mountains. For example, the fire that destroyed Paradise, California some years ago was what we would all consider a forest fire.

The wild areas near Malibu and Pacific Palisades are more a mixture of chaparral and hilly grassland. There may be some oak trees scattered about, but it feels like more trees exist in the private home landscaping than in the actual wild areas.

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12. kristjansson ◴[] No.42744936{3}[source]
1. Santa Ynez may have helped, however (a) you're still limited by the flow rate of the main to withdraw from the reservoir, but more critically (b) the situation was already well out of hand before any hyrdants ran dry and (c) Eaton had so such issues with hydrants, but a substantially similar outcome.

2. 'defunded' -> about a 2% reduction. Also it's not 100 fire engines, 100 appartus, which covers ambulance, command cars, etc, and it's not clear what exactly is waiting for maintainence.

3. The Mayor doesn't drive fire engines. LAFD and LACoFD prepositioned according to their models, per the chief.

4. most of the LA fire wasn't forest, but chaparral, which is lower, scruby-er, brushy-er terrain. It tends to burn on a 30-50 year cycle, but burning too much more often destroys the ecoology entirely. Indeninous practice and some research[1] suggest small patch-burning; others (NPS) avoid prescribed burns in chaparral in favor of natural fire and structure defense. So it's not clear that there's an unambiguously better management practice than "its gonna burn sometime" combined with aggressive brush clearance and defense around structures.

re: 2/3 Los Angeles (City mostly, but also County) clearly need a bigger fire department, with more people, stations, and equipment. But the specific complaints are ticky-tacky at best, and (AFAIK) no one asserts that a differnt pre-deployment, or a few more engines in service would have changed anything but the margins. I will say LAFD letting their first shift go off-duty as scheduled while LACoFD kept their shift on is an unfortunate unforced error.

re: 4 USFS (and maybe Cal Fire too? not sure). did halt prescribed burns in October 24 in the face of opposition on liability and air quality grounds. Hopefully the LA fires drive people to reconsider their resistance to prescribed burns, and creates the necessary risk-bearing structures for Cal Fire and USFS to actually perform them.

[1] https://www.fs.usda.gov/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr05...

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13. kristjansson ◴[] No.42744945{6}[source]
Exactly, and management of chaparral is even less straightforward forward forest.
14. gibsonf1 ◴[] No.42745049{4}[source]
Not sure why you would want to make excuses for management incompetence.

Do you agree that if Santa Ynez reservoir had been full as it should have been, that there would have been no issues with fire hydrant water flowing for the Palisades?

Also, do you agree that in the case of private providing of water during the fire, that an entire mall was saved because of that? [1]

Do you agree that a mayor who promised during the election that she would not travel out of country, that then does travel out of country after extreme fire warnings, is not ideal?

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14280517/Palisades-...

Water is quite important for fire fighting. Why spin this, the facts are just too clear this time.

Even if you support the entire governmental structure involved ideologically, do you really want to trust them with your life at this point?

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15. kristjansson ◴[] No.42745348{5}[source]
> mayor

I don't care about Bass. She has no role to play in an emergency besides telling the LAFD chief 'go fight the fire with all available resources' LAFD wasn't even the largest fire department responding, and we haven't heard a peep about LACoFD or the county supervisors.

> If the reservoir had been full

>> you're still limited by the flow rate of the main to withdraw from the reservoir

>> the situation was already well out of hand before any hyrdants ran dry.

To expand for your benefit, they were 6-8 hours into the firefight before the hydrants became an issue and ~15-17 hours in before the tanks were fully exhausted.

>> Eaton had so such issues with hydrants, but a substantially similar outcome.

So no, I don't think water supplies supply made a difference at all. If you have the people, and the apparatus to dedicate to wholly one structure, you probably can save it. The actual firefighters were simultaneously fighting hundreds of house fires while a linear hurricane blew it all further and and further down the hill. They had to make the deploy the (region's worth of) resources had they could in the face of an awful situation that would have overwhelmed a state's worth of firefighters.

> Water is quite important ... Why spin this

Please engage with the reality of the situation instead of the simplified fantasy you've imagined in its place.

> why you would

Because I started seeing these talking points on night of the 7th. Certain factions were and are absolutely thrashing to attach blame anyone and anything they previously disliked. There are policy lessons to take from this disaster. LACoFD and LAFD need to be bigger, we need much more brush clearance, we need fewer NIMBYs to complain about the smoke from prescribed burns, ... the list goes on. But these real, essential changes are not shaped like 'one simple trick to stop the LA fires' or a getting gotchas all the woke dem pols.

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16. kristjansson ◴[] No.42745447{5}[source]
> [1]

Look, it's known that reservoir was empty, but it's a covered reservoir. You're looking at the the _cover_. That image tells you nothing about the state of the reservoir at the time.

> primary uphill source of water for those fire hydrants

was 3x 1M gallon water tanks. Hydrants were gravity fed until the tanks ran out (8-15 hours into the firefight), at which point water tankers supplied responding companies.

17. kristjansson ◴[] No.42745472{3}[source]
It's a bit older, but see also [1] for a great survey of research on the topic.

[1]: https://www.amazon.com/Before-Wilderness-Environmental-Calif...

18. gibsonf1 ◴[] No.42749684{6}[source]
Hmm, you think the mayor defunding the fire department had no role to play in this?

Don't you find it curious that the mall to fully survive the fire without damage had private fire fighters with water? [1] Doesn't this imply that had the FD had water they could have prevented damage?

[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14280517/Palisades-...

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19. kristjansson ◴[] No.42752638{7}[source]
> the mall

>> If you have the people, and the apparatus to dedicate to wholly one structure, you probably can save it. The actual firefighters were simultaneously fighting hundreds of house fires

> had the FD had water

>> they were 6-8 hours into the firefight before the hydrants became an issue and ~15-17 hours in before the tanks were fully exhausted.

To elaborate further for you, that means a huge portion of the damage took place before hydrants were an issue. Furthermore once there was an issue, the professional firefighters had the same exact same sort of mobile water tankers supplying them as the private company you mentioned. No professional firefighter has indicated that more water availability would have materially changed the situation.

> defunded

>> about a 2% reduction [YoY].

>> Los Angeles (City mostly, but also County) clearly need a bigger fire department, with more people, stations, and equipment.

Elaborating, in general I think Crowley and Park are completely correct, that LAFD staffing should have kept better pace with population growth. That's a much broader and more diffuse problem though - that of the FD being able to keep up with their day-to-day mission.

However, even if LAFD had kept pace, and therefore was 50% bigger than it is currently, that doesn't substantially increase the response. LAFD is already not the largest FD in the area, and the mutual aid system pulled in LACoFD and many surrounding FDs. A 50% larger LAFD increases the size of the response by <<50%. In the morning after the Eaton fire, one of the commanders outlined the problem thus: a typical structure fire needs multiple engines for multiple hours. Fighting every concurrently structure fire would have demanded thousands of engines - in his estimation more engines than exist in the state, nevermind in Los Angeles and neighboring counties.

So on the specific point: of course -2%YoY funding shifts the margin slightly, and Crowley is right to complain that every dollar will shift the margins of the department's capability, and of the day-to-day mission will feel the shift in margins. But no counterfactual policy choice short of "we spend the next 3 years' revenue on fire engines, and put them outside every home in the city" shifts the margin enough to make a difference to disaster of the scale experienced. So no, one responding FD cutting its budget by 2% played ~no role in the outcome.

--

If you're not just trolling, or here to push whatever view you currently hold, please take a few minutes to understand what actually happened in these fires, and the realities of the situation on the ground. Stop looking for gotchas and start looking for solutions.