[jazzyjackson]

Who's presuming it's preventable? What little investment do you suggest California make?

Probably slow controlled burns would be helpful in reducing potential fuel, but who's going to perform controlled burns over the entirety of all the hills surrounding LA ?

[wtcactus]

This might seem far-fetched, but I wonder if all the money used for reactive actions to the fires and the billions lost during those, couldn't instead heavily subsidize a goat grazing industry at large scale.

Keeping the forest clean of combustible materials is the only real preventive solution, but that's almost impossible to do by humans (besides lots of issues with depletion of soils if done incorrectly). The old way of doing that (and raise meat for human consumption) in Southern Europe, was to have goats, lots of goats, eating up all that combustible mass and transforming it into meat and "natural fertilizer".

[edmundsauto]

This is the best hacker comment on the thread. Trying to find innovative solutions to a big problem. Thank you!

[lazyeye]

Side question, is goat poop flammable?

[defrost]

I cannot answer the "who" but here in a region with similar vegetation and fire risk we don't cool burn the entirety, we stagger mosaic burns that break up the fire risk area into patches.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKsLRNbczJY

[lazide]

When I last talked to USFS folks, one big issue is complaints and even legal action from folks about smoke when they do burn. It’s a lose/lose situation for them.

[defrost]

That and insurance no doubt.

What's needed is the reeducation of the NIMBY crowd .. I live in a state where many local community members are motivated to egage with local volunteer bush fire services and cool burning is less of an issue.

As the urbanisation and luxury housing increases the resistance to "inconveniance" seems to also climb.

[lazide]

I doubt very much it’s a matter of lack of knowledge/education.

Rather various degrees of ‘fuck you, I got mine’ and ‘it won’t happen to me because I’m special’. Which, often, is true enough they can keep doing it until they die, at which point they ‘win’.

Sometimes though, either something happens and they ‘don’t have theirs’ anymore, or it becomes too clear it will happen to them - and some action occurs. Usually too late for it to be an easy or smooth change, of course.