[johnisgood]

Yeah, I'm surprised that the damages of the LA fire occurred, because it was known beforehand that California had a fire problem (and also have an earthquake problem I think).

I'm here in Eastern Europe and our buildings can withstand a lot of things.

> we need to take action to mitigate their impact in the future. As a foreigner, it seems to me that Americans prioritize building cheap homes over constructing better and more resilient ones.

As an European, it baffles me as well.

If this doesn't happen to "cheap" homes here, why does it happen in California, to rich people's houses?

[yieldcrv]

All the properties that survived in those LA neighborhoods all had some pretty basic and intentional fire resistance

I’m curious about how many others did that burned down too

But so far the ones highlighted had super obvious mitigations that its astounding to see were not more common

[wakawaka28]

The fire problem can be managed by burning or removing some of the dead wood, and building adequate water storage. Apparently California has been neglecting those two problems for decades.

[jyounker]

The problem is the houses.

In lots of pictures from LA, there are green trees right beside burned out houses. The video in this NYT article is a great example: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/01/15/us/los-angeles-wildf...

One of the biggest problems are vents in the eves. Typically these vents have a single screen with a coarse mesh. Embers from fires easily pass through these vents, land on a surface, and start a fire.

Replacing the one coarse mesh with two or more layers of fine mesh significantly reduces the odds of an ember getting into the house.

This is a trivial improvement that dramatically increases survivability.

[wakawaka28]

The real problem is the FIRE. The houses could be made fire-resistant, but making houses to be fire-resistant is going to be more expensive than managing the forests to reduce wildfires and storing more water. I don't believe that a tiny screen is going to make this huge difference you think it is. These fires are HOT and don't just catch houses on fire with little embers. They are hot enough to set wood and plastic on fire from a pretty good distance away. Green trees don't easily burn because of their high water content. Trees have evolved to survive fires as well.

[jyounker]

managing the forests to reduce wildfires >

Notice that you said "Green trees don't easily burn." Coastal California has two seasons: green and brown. Brown is in the summer. Green is in the winer. Normally it rains in LA during December and January. It didn't rain this year, so brown continued.

Most of the fires aren't in what you'd think of as forests. It's chaparral. Low scrub, bushes, and grasses. It is mostly what you'd refer to as underbrush. The only way to "thin it out" would be to remove all the vegetation. This environment has evolved to periodically burn.

> Trees have evolved to survive fires as well.

Trees have two broad strategies for surviving fires. One is to resist fire. The quintessential example is a redwood. The other is to burn and regrow faster than anything else. The quintessential example is a blue gum. Eucalypts evolved to literally explode when they burn. The environment in The Palisades is much closer to the second than the first.

This environment is, by its nature, an environment that burns. Yes, we've needed to allow more frequent burning. Environmentalists have been arguing this for decades. The difficulties with these conversations in the US is the Republican party's actual definition of "thinning the underbrush" doesn't mean controlled burns. It means clearcutting forests.

> These fires are HOT and don't just catch houses on fire with little embers.

Yes, in fact they do spread by embers. This is why the fires jump several streets at a time. The wind blows embers, and those embers ignite further buildings before the fire front even reaches them. This is one reason why it is so hard to set up fire breaks during a high winds.

> The houses could be made fire-resistant, but making houses to be fire-resistant is going to be more expensive

Here's an example things that you can do to increase the fire survivability of your home: https://flash.org/mitigation/protect-your-eaves-soffits-vent...

> and storing more water

LA had plenty of water. It didn't have enough water pressure.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/08/los-angeles-...

[lionkor]

It could also be helped by not building houses out of cardboard.

The amount of walls in Europe that you could punch a wall into is low enough that you shouldnt try.

[robocat]

And give many of Europe's house's a small rattle and they would fall down.

I'm in Christchurch, 6.2 Earthquake in 2011 and wooden framed houses dealt with it pretty good - they flex - lots of the houses survived and are still used.

Just about anything old and bricky was a deathtrap (fortunately many were unoccupied because condemned after nearby 2010 Earthquake).

[johnisgood]

We had some earthquakes before, I was on the 10th level, you could feel the house "flex" in a way. Nothing happened and it's been standing there since Soviet Union or longer (obviously with maintenance).

We don't get many earthquakes here though, we do get storm but it doesn't cause power outage at all.

[fakedang]

And considering most of Europe is basically low risk territory, it makes sense?

Afaik, only Turkey and a small part of the Balkans is considered earthquake territory. And there's no fracking in Europe to induce minor manmade earthquakes either.

[amarcheschi]

Some parts of Italy are at earthquake risk https://maps.eu-risk.eucentre.it/map/european-seismic-risk-i...

Despite being hit by earthquakes more often than other parts of Europe, usually only buildings and houses not built up to standard or old ones crumble, other buildings just shake and that's it. Of course, I do not know the exact risk of earthquakes in California and their intensity, but it's definitely possible to build earthquake resistant brick buildings

[jyounker]

My first night in Switzerland there has a 5+ earthquake.

[lionkor]

> And give many of Europe's house's a small rattle and they would fall down.

In areas where we don't have earthquakes, yeah, what's the problem?

[overflow897]

I think the problem is suggest that an earthquake zone's fire problems would be solved by building houses like they do in a non-earthquake zone

[hbarka]

Frankly, this is just an ignorant take. Put Twitter/Elon Musk down for a bit. The Palisades Fire was not a forest fire. Please dispel your myths and learn what 60-80 mph winds, sometimes 100 mph gusts, can do.

[yieldcrv]

While having above ground power lines

While having unmanaged accumulated flammable brush

While having an empty reservoir under repair

While having the public water source unable to maintain water pressure for multiple hydrant usage

While having too few fire fighters dispatched in the area anyway

While having houses made out of wood

is it an ignorant take when the houses not made out of wood with their own watersource were able to withstand 100mph wind gusts and firestorm? it really really makes everyone else look ignorant

[EraYaN]

All of those are a result of American's favorite hobby though, not maintaining infrastructure, because ooh no taxes. LA has not raised enough revenue for decades it seems. The amount of pot holes in even the most expensive neighborhoods was already to damn high.

At some point the US really needs to do bit of cultural reform so they can start paying for all that low density development and the costs associated with it. So stuff can actually be maintained.

[wakawaka28]

LA and California as a whole have some of the highest taxes in the nation, along with the most mild climate. The amount of waste, fraud, and abuse in California is stunning. The problem is mismanagement above all, not a lack of funds (at least in this case).

[Mr-Frog]

> LA and California as a whole have some of the highest taxes in the nation

The City of LA has a lower per capita tax revenue than most large Texan and southern cities, largely due to property tax caps.

[hbarka]

Peak internet right here. I’m out

[wakawaka28]

Frankly, everyone has been warning about the risk for years. The fire started as a forest fire (whether it was arson or not), and was anticipated by insurance companies who dropped policies on thousands of people in the months leading up to this. The winds are a big problem of course, but if there were not so many acres of kindling around the city along with insufficient water reservoirs, then a fire like this could not spread as easily as it did. I will give you that the fire could have still happened and been bad either way, but insurance people who literally study this stuff for a living and have skin in the game knew it was likely to get out of control well in advance.

[nobodywillobsrv]

The government banned insurance companies from raising prices. They used tax payer money to subsidize this for a while which increase home prices. Eventually insurance companies stopped offering insurance.

When state actors even dabble in socialism disasters happen people die.

[areoform]

> Gov. Gavin Newsom just released part of his solution to California’s home insurance crisis, and it boils down to a push to allow carriers to move faster to raise rates.

> In most cases, the Department of Insurance would be required to act on an insurance carrier’s rate request within 60 days, unless extensions are necessary.

> The proposed bill expedites the timelines laid out in Proposition 103, which requires insurance companies to have changes approved by the Department of Insurance and dictates how quickly the department must act on change requests.

> Critics fear that shortening approval timelines will allow insurance companies to jack-up premiums without room for public appeals and sufficient review by the Department of Insurance.

https://sfstandard.com/2024/05/30/california-insurance-crisi...

[fishstock25]

> The government banned insurance companies from raising prices. They used tax payer money to subsidize this for a while which increase home prices. Eventually insurance companies stopped offering insurance.

Obviously. Such a move by the government is just plain stupid.

> When state actors even dabble in socialism disasters happen people die.

No need to overgeneralize. Not every stupid move is immediately "socialism" and everything smart is "capitalism". It's obvious to every socialist that this move was stupid. In contrast, it's pretty clear that a purely market-based health system costs lives. Nobody is claiming though that "whenever societies dabble in capitalism it results in deaths". Pick your optimization target and then the right tool to reach that target. Sometimes that tool is to let prices regulate risk, sometimes it is laws to regulate risk, and sometimes it's something else entirely.

[Ray20]

> it's pretty clear that a purely market-based health system costs lives.

That was literally the take about insurance. And here we are, again.

[BoxFour]

> It's obvious to every socialist that this move was stupid

Is it? Or is this post hoc rationalization? I really dislike playing the “both sides” card, even for a moment, but it’s hard to deny that there are questionable takes on both ends.

I agree with you that not every regulation equates to socialism, and it’s ridiculous to claim it is. However, the narrative of “insurance companies bad” is incredibly prevalent among left-leaning perspectives, and any regulation around insurance premiums tends to be automatically celebrated as a clear victory.

Ironically (because it's a free market argument), it’s a not-uncommon argument that if insurance companies can’t provide their services for no more than some arbitrarily-decided amount annually, they’re being inefficient or greedy and should go bankrupt and let a new competitor take the market.

[fishstock25]

> the narrative of “insurance companies bad” is incredibly prevalent among left-leaning perspectives,

Perhaps it is, I don't have enough insight to know. It's obvious (to me) that this is clearly over-simplifying things.

> Ironically (because it's a free market argument), it’s a not-uncommon argument that if insurance companies can’t provide their services for no more than some arbitrarily-decided amount annually, they’re being inefficient or greedy and should go bankrupt and let a new competitor take the market.

Is it actually a free market argument? Maybe it's not possible to provide that service at that price point. I'd think that the free market argument is that the price is already as low as possible, otherwise such a competitor would already exist and have outcompeted everybody. Such an argument has other issues though, like inertia, scaling effects, price-fixing and such, all of which are working against a free market though. Which is why a truly free market needs regulation, otherwise it ceases to be free.

> I really dislike playing the “both sides” card, even for a moment

Honest question: Why? I've found that reality is complicated. It's rare to find saints on "one side" and "pure evil" on the other. The truth is often times that there are many issues, many interests, many world views, and typically even more than two sides. Uncovering the truth usually requires avoiding partisanship and have an open mind about understanding the interests of every involved party. That necessarily leads to "both sides" arguments. Not common in hyper-polarized discourses, unfortunately.

[BoxFour]

> Perhaps it is, I don't have enough insight to know.

You can spot it in this post, too.

> Is it actually a free market argument?

The argument is:

Large corporation A offers service B at price $C. $C is an extravagant amount, and is due to the greed and inefficiencies of A. A can only charge $C because of regulatory capture, or using capital to elbow out upstarts, or whatever other argument you want to assume (ie it's not a truly free market).

If A should leave the market (forcibly or not), company D can now flourish by offering B at $E, where $E is much less than $C. Because D doesn't have the inefficiencies and greed of A, everyone profits.

Seems like a pretty standard "free markets/Econ 101" argument to me.

> Honest question: Why?

Frequently it’s nothing more than a flimsy pretext for cowardice, a lack of knowledge, or simple indifference.

I don't disagree with you, many topics are complex. Generally though, people dislike those who refuse to take a stance even if it's a weakly-held one (thus Machiavelli's famous advice).

[fishstock25]

> Seems like a pretty standard "free markets/Econ 101" argument to me.

Hm I think I see what you mean. It's a free market argument that includes that some regulation is in place which keeps A in business and keeps D out of business.

But wouldn't the free market corollary then be to remove that regulation so the market can be more free? That's hardly the suggestion coming from the left-leaning perspective, which instead proposes to add more regulation. So the end-to-end argument (including s corollary for what to do) doesn't actually sound free market to me.

[frankvdwaal]

Ah yes. Socialism is when intervention and subsidies.

[tormeh]

Pretty much, yeah: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism