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wakawaka28yesterday at 7:46 AM3 repliesview on HN

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.


Replies

jyounkeryesterday at 12:39 PM

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.

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lionkoryesterday at 7:52 AM

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.

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hbarkayesterday at 7:55 AM

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.

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