We get warned about things all the time and don’t do anything until the last moment or, even worse, until it is too late.
That’s human nature to minimize threats and defer maintenance. It’s not right,but good luck getting any suggestions funded and passed 4 weeks ago. People just wouldn’t do it. Now those same people are claiming “how could we ever have known?!”
I mean, what can you do, short of demolishing and rebuilding communities for free to spread them out and lessen risk. Even that only manages it, and it would still all burn when wildfires hit.
Stopping the source and quelling the yearly rise of temperatures that is making it a concern to begin with is the only actual solution.
Veg. management is a big contributor. Invasive and ornamentals are typically big causes of fire spread. No predators and uncontrolled growth, and the plant is from some area that never burns instead of the grassland plant that’s fire resistant.
Roof shingle regs can also slow spread from embers. Also, increasing density would probably help with this a lot. Concentrate the people at the city center and then there’s less people in the outskirts that are at risk
Communities across the west are getting warned of the issue constantly.
Yet even here peoples reactions are incredibly defensive and guarded. People want to blame the state, or insurance companies.
But the reality is that wildfire risk is an emergent property of how communities of people manage their space. In Hawaii, lot sizes are small, houses are built very close, they are old, often single walled, and people rarely have garages so most store things around the outside of their house. Likewise, code is only loosely followed and basically unenforced.
Its absolutely tragic, and yet also incredibly unsurprising.
Lahaina was the former capital of the Kingdom of Hawai’i. All that history erased, joining so much other history of the Hawai’ian people that has been wiped out.
No shit. Everyone was warned. We all knew these fires were going to get more and more frequent.
Billionaires don’t care. They’re still destroying the planet.
