Surely continuing to subsidize fossil fuels will solve this.
Not sure what more they could have done. A drought during rainy season, a quick response to clear dry vegetation/trees is clearing vegetation that could rebound if it rains soon.
From climate statistics of 2024, record monthly rainfalls over 24 hours were 52% higher than average, and record low rainfalls 38% higher than average, globally. 2023 was bad too. These stats, in a non global warming world, would drop each year as the bar is higher each year. Costs of disasters are growing exceptionally.
As bad as the current global warming impact is on just the US’s sustainability from disaster/insurance spending, calls for subsidized insurance doesn’t help. It just shifts burden to tax payers/debt, and like FEMA’s historically cheap flood insurance, encourages rebuiliding where it is risky. Neither does “Insurance reform” that prevents victims from making successful claims (as in Florida).
We may already have reached a point where climate disasters cost more than the profit potential of oil industry. Certainly more than their tax payments. As more of the US is destroyed, remaining housing scarcity means higher insurance coverage. Autos artificially protected means higher prices and insurance costs. (oil) “energy dominance” policies is climate terrorism to ensure a worse outcome.
One simple “helpfulness” in rebuilding is metal roofs that last 50 years and can support solar for that long too. They are fire proof. Less forest, with utility/community solar, becomes necessary from just an insurance perspective. Also related to forest fire problem, CA electricity rates are sky high because somehow utility negligence for past fires has to be paid by state wide rate payers instead of shareholders. CA governance that is captured by utilities and insurance, fail to help CA progress and resilience.
Short term, there’s really not much they could have done better. These were extreme conditions and they were bound to cause fire to a large extent in the current context of peri-urban development and forest mismanagement.
Long term, things could have been different but it would require major political and social changes in how we build cities and how we manage our wildlands. Happy to go into more detail if you are curious.
Destroying and rebuilding homes (AFAIU, most destroyed were over 60 years old) is a tough option. Really, removing forest for solar is the best, only practical, solution. This should be global adaptation to high value forest homes/communities, because drought risk is everywhere.
Really does a good job highlighting how the fire is spreading so fast. Each of those flying embers just has to get lodged somewhere flammable and woosh
Enter through the soffit vent of the attic, a vent that can’t be closed on the outside of the house. Land in the cellulose insulation, which is ostensibly shredded magazines.
Goodbye, house.
They make fire resistant vents for this exact reason
Well, that just sounds like gross negligence by the developers designing/building homes where bushfires are a thing.
America in one video
McHellscape. Huh.
🎶 Palm trees are candles in the murder wind 🎶
even the stars are ill at ease
How my intestines feel after I eat McDonald’s
Good to see McD’s expanding their business to serve the afterlife. Should have known hell would be a wind-whipped, fiery capitalist wasteland.
Direct result of land mismanagement. The California State Government blames federal land management but I don’t know if that is just an excuse.
For this particular event I think the extreme weather conditions are a greater contributor than forest mismanagement, which yes, has happened for over 100 years not just in California but throughout the entire US. But both are factors.
As far as the feds vs the state… much of the forested land in CA is federal land, so ultimately I do think they have to take responsibility. On the other hand, since proper forest management hasn’t been standard practice in the US since the genocide against Native Americans, there’s no clear delegation of responsibility here. I’m sure the state could get federal approval to take actions in forest service land, but they generally lack the budget.
In general, CAL FIRE and the USFS both know what needs to be done in order to manage our forests better, and they are already taking these actions on a small scale. People who levy this criticism often imagine that professional government foresters are just idiots who don’t understand their own field, but this is far from the case. The reality is that there’s just no way these agencies can do fire prevention activities on a large enough scale to solve the problem. Again, they would need much higher budgets to focus on these things, and might need to abandon the focus on fire-fighting activities since this is where the vast majority of money goes currently. They would also need the ability to do controlled burns without worrying excessively about the consequences like they do now.
Overall I don’t think there is really a realistic path to better forest management in the US unless there are some major political and cultural changes. I think empowering individuals to do controlled burns without a need for major oversight from the state or feds would be one change. Bringing back large herbivores to control tree density might also help without a need to huge amounts of human labor but this is far more speculative.
Even in Australia we had to have a couple of major bushfires before we got serious about management
Even now knobs still complain when backburning is to be done
Do you feel the problem has been significantly addressed in Australia? Here there is a lot of talk about controlled burns but there is also a lot of public and bureaucratic resistance such that hardly any gets done compared to the scale of our landscapes.
One significant obstacle is rules around clean air. This is a difficult topic because for geographical and climatological reasons, California is very vulnerable to poor air quality, and pollution here kills thousands of people annually. So I’m not exactly enthused about loosening rules around air quality when the problem is already so dire, but on the other hand, much of that fire will happen one way or the other, so maybe it’s better that it happens in a controlled manner.
Here’s an article that goes over some of the hurdles here in California: https://www.newsweek.com/controlled-burns-california-forest-management-los-angeles-fires-2012492
I see someone downvoted, but I want to know why they disagree…
There’s practically nowhere on earth more versed with and well funded to fight fires than California. Shit just happens sometimes. Then idiots convince other idiots that the brilliant minds and centuries of combined experience in California wilderness management are idiots just like they are.
Lol, as if corruption and mismanagement aren’t everywhere.
Strongest winds in decades. Plus land management to decrease fire risk usually means clearing out all the wildlife and growth. So there’s always a balance to not decimate the land more than you need to.
Plus you get the bonus that if you remove vegetation and it rains (hello torrential atmospheric river), then you get catastrophic mud slides. There is no good solution, especially economically.
Pave the planet so it is impervious to rain and fire. /s
Controlled burns and removal of dead material. There are more options than clear cutting.
It’s electric grid mismanagement most of the time. They need to shut power off when the wind is too high.
published there on 2025 Jan 08
aprox.(?) 854 x 482 pixels, 15 seconds, 3.79 MegaBytes, mp4 video with sound. Was film from behind some transparent panel ? ( maybe vehicle or shelter ? ) Shows McDonald Panels and Palm Trees on fire in high noisy wind.
Here is a screenshot :
