• fox2263@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      Careful. I also said this and my post was removed for misinformation. Looks like musks crew are invading.

  • humble peat digger@lemm.ee
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    5 hours ago

    Building houses without concrete and bricks and then located in the woods - what can go wrong.

    What I don’t understand- most countries have fire fighting airplanes for these things.
    How in a world US being a country with such a mighty economy - doesn’t have them or doesn’t want to use them. Pathetic

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      California didn’t used to burn like this. Yeah, there were fires, but they were far more rare and didn’t affect as many people because the state wasn’t as populous and nowhere near as short of water.

      As to your second statement, it’s bullshit. Wth the “mighty economy” statement has to do with anything. There’s a huge firefighting industry on the west coast and in California, both ground and air. They are using aircraft, even with a temporary stop due to high winds.

  • Crikeste@lemm.ee
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    16 hours ago

    They cut ~2% of the budget. Anyone spewing this funding cut bullshit is a partisan hack.

    Quit being reactionary.

    • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Why do you think it’s okay to cut funding to the fire department while keeping the police(gang) force that is notorious for not actually doing anything to help it’s citizens?

    • xor@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 hours ago

      that’s not what reactionary means

      $17.5 million, or around 2 percent of the previous year’s budget of $837 million. It was the second-largest departmental operating cut to come out of the city’s 2024-25 fiscal year budget, which shaved funding from the majority of city departments — but not the police.

      the article does say the percentage… and maybe it’s insane to cut their budget at all, given california’s recent fire problems, and they should’ve increased it by about 100%….
      so, given the difference between -2% and +100%, and half the city burning down, it’s a pretty big deal.

  • GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works
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    24 hours ago

    From my understanding the water towers had completely ran out of water and pumps couldn’t keep up. There’s was no issue with volume through the existing water system, there’s just no way to contain a fire that big. They should be taking preventative measures such as raking the forest.

  • ATDA@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    I have to do other people’s jobs. Slap some tin foil on em and throw them in to help.

  • atempuser23@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    This is some pure bullshit right here. Never let a tragedy go to waste, gotta get those clicks. No amount of budget would have prepared the city for this. They would have needed literally 10x to contain the fires fast enough.

    High winds prevented the use of air based equipment. The same winds drove burning embers for miles into absolutely bone dry foliage.
    It’s been way to dry here for too long to do any controlled burns, so no way to effectively get rid of the fuel.

    The FD could always use more resources, but the extent of this fire has nothing to do with a lack of resources and much more to do with climate change.

    • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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      4 hours ago

      Sure but climate change just isn’t sexy. “Hey everyone that problem we’ve been telling everyone about for decades has resulted in the predicted outcome, it’s pretty terrible.”

    • badbytes@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      You don’t understand wildland fire mitigation very much, do you. Every penny helps you troll. And by the way, I have my red card, and a minor in forest fire management.

      • atempuser23@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        Glad to hear from an expert on the situation , as someone who is in fire management there is a lot you can explain.

        There are so much about this . What general resources that would have been needed to prevent the scale of the fires? If properly resourced how would the response have been significantly different? Of course each fire fighter counts, but what would the scale need to have been to change this event? What should people be focusing on when we demand better?

        For example I heard the the first hours and days of the fires air assets could not be deployed because of the 60-80 mile hour winds. that was cited as a significant factor in the initial spread. though the source was just on the news so no idea how creditable

        Are there types of air craft designed to fight fires in tropical storm like conditions?

        Are fire like this seen coming by the city FD?

        How are resources allocated when multiple fires rage?

        In your opinion what cities are doing a good job with fire/disaster planning? What cities globally face similar challenges as Los Angles? Are there lessons than can be learned from those places?

    • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The main problem is that the houses are made from wood and cardbord, and are placed in and/or surrounded by dry-as-a-fart forests and brushwork. Which is a stupid idea in an area that is known to regularly hve forest and brushwork fires. More now with global warming, which makes the plants even dryer.

      • atempuser23@lemmy.world
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        23 hours ago

        LA has some some of the most pain in the ass building codes and inspectors. A permit is needed for just about damn everything specifically because of fire risks. Set backs and spacing are strongly enforced as well as the use of fire resistant materials. So even if the house were made of ‘cardboard’ they are wrapped in concrete siding or stucco.

        The winds were 60-80 Miles per hour, blown in from the desert. This is a fire in the center of the city, not some remote urban wild interface.

        • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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          21 hours ago

          Nonetheless, all the houses I have seen burning in the news were surrounded by dry trees and shrubs. And those houses burned as well as any other American cardboard houses. Somehow, I see no difference between them and houses with not as strict building codes. So either they only show homes that have been grandfathered in, or those building codes make no serious difference.

          • atempuser23@lemmy.world
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            10 hours ago

            This is one of those situations where negatives can’t be proved. You are arguing since even code made homes have the possibility of still burning codes don’t make a difference. The loss of property has been great, but some of those homes were battered by wind driven ashes for quite a time before igniting. The loss of life while tragic is low given the extent of the fires.

            As you noted there are no regulations in LA city proper about landscaping . That is likely to change in the future.

          • yeather@lemmy.ca
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            16 hours ago

            My understanding of the situation is the fires are currently burning the historic districts and grandfathered homes. The newer buildings have not been touched yet.

            • atempuser23@lemmy.world
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              10 hours ago

              That is not true for the Palisades region and Malibu. Most of the homes there would have been newer and they had significant losses.

  • Kite@sh.itjust.works
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    2 days ago

    Based on my own experience, this is how most cities handle their PD/FD funding, unfortunately. The fire department is just not important… until it is.

      • fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de
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        4 hours ago

        That’s not really how it works in Australia though.

        Every property owner pays an Emergency Services Levy which pays for the fireys. State governments pay for the police force. So there’s no organisation that chooses whether police or fire gets whatever money - funding is procured separately.

        That said, I take your point that the fireys don’t get a lot of attention until there’s a disaster. That’s just human nature I guess.

        In my area, if there’s a bushfire that looks like destroying someone’s house, the volunteers, fire service, and bombing planes are on to it in minutes.

        I don’t have “data” but from my anecdotal observations they don’t seem to be hamstrung by a lack of funding.

      • Sixty@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        I suspect Scott being a doomsday death cult evangelical made those cuts deliberate instead of just being a standard short sighted git. Especially when he decided to take a vacation during your crises.

    • Maeve@kbin.earth
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      1 day ago

      That’s karma. The longer we seek instant gratification, neglecting doing the hard, dirty necessary work that yields no immediate discernable benefits, the more severe the bite is, when it comes back around and bites us in the backside. As a collective, we stay on the wheel of suffering, figure out we need to do something differently, figure out necessary changes, then implement them… Then a few generations, the wealthy overlords convince us we’re spending too much on very sensible investments that yield no immediate discernable benefits and we repeat the cycle. It’s like Groundhog Day over centuries (which add up to millennia,), rather than days, weeks, years. Because they plan family fortunes for centuries, rather than days, weeks and years, because they can afford private communities, with private police and fire departments, and comprehensive health. The rest of us are means that justify their ends, and the sooner we, as a collective, wake up and smell the roses and love each other enough (which preserves our own arses) to figure out ways to fix this mess, for centuries that turn into millennia, the better off we and the rest of our ecoweb will be. Or not. 🤷‍♀️

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    At least a bunch of rich fucks in Malibu and Pacific Palisades are paying the price for it.

    Doesn’t help the lungs and bronchial passages of people with asthma and other breathing issues though. A lot of people will die who were nowhere near the fires.