Could very well be, but what's interesting is how this goes back several years when you do some searching on it, although it wasn't in the context of wildfire but more about water distribution and rights. And, some pretty big name outfits have articles on it, including Forbes and others.

By that logic, Ron DeSantis is a derelict for not building a 30' wall around Florida to prevent storm surges from flooding coastal areas and Kevin Stitt is negligent for not requiring every house in Oklahoma to have 1' thick concrete exterior walls and to be tornado proof.

They have disaster plans and get excoriated if folks couldn't get out, emergency services weren't able to respond promptly, or the recovery drags on.

Desantis had a bridge rebuilt in 3 days, for crying out loud!

The simple fact is California's "leadership" lacks the will. Despite having insane financial power they didn't clear fire hazards or invest in viable fires suppression systems. Now your goaltending has pivoted from "unknowable" to "prohibitively expensive" so at least we know your defense is ideological rather than principled.

Among the list of fire control tactics are controlled burns: a concept so new that it that only predates written history and the invention of money.

torrid said:

---

Enviroag02 said:

---

This is the exact plot of an entire season of the tv show Goliath with Billy Bob Thornton…even the almond part.

---

It's Chinatown, Jake.

---

Dammit! I was literally scrolling through the thread to see if this had been referenced. If not I was going to post a gif of that scene.

Enviroag02 said:

---

This is the exact plot of an entire season of the tv show Goliath with Billy Bob Thornton…even the almond part.

---

Just needs a group of people tripping on peyote, and we're there

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

richardag said:

---

Who neglected to ensure enough pumping capacity?

---

It's not a matter of neglect, it's a matter of engineering. The system was designed and created to feed domestic water for residences and businesses and fight single house fires, not have every hydrant wide open trying to douse entire neighborhoods. To meet that kind of design assumption, you'd need more and bigger pumps, more electrical infrastructure, larger pump stations, larger pipe diameters, etc and you'd have multiples of flow capacity you'd probably never use. Building to that potential demand, on the off chance you need it, is prohibitively expensive when you also consider applying that standard everywhere as a preventative measure instead of just saying, "Oh, it would've only cost an extra $xxx million to build it bigger in the first place. What idiots!" in this one specific spot after the fact. You're talking really hundreds of millions and probably billions of dollars for infrastructure that would be unnecessary except for this exact case

The equivalent would be like running a space heater in every outlet in your house and burning it down in an electrical fire, then getting mad at your electrician for not insisting you spend an extra $20k to size up all the circuits to 50 amps and avoid the $400k fire when, the fact is, no one builds a house like that because it's kind of a waste.

---

Which kind of brings us back full circle in that in the end, the water supply was not the primary issue.

The primary issue was the lack of forest managment that created a massive tinderbox in highly populated areas that left precious little defensible space to protect structures AND the forest.

This has always been the primary issue in my opinion. Not allowing the forest to be managed and have the rotting dead wood removed was a direct correlation to the severity of the fire. Arguments for keeping the wooded areas "natural"... For the habitat... now ring quite hollow as the habitat our leftists were 'protecting' is now literally gone. In addition, we created a fire that emitted more carbon in a shorter period of time than all the ICE cars in Cali. And also, those wonderful trees and green leafy things called plants that eat all that nasty CO2 are all gone as well.

Great job, guys! Way to protect the environment!

Sheesh.

Get Off My Lawn said:

---

They have disaster plans and get excoriated if folks couldn't get out, emergency services weren't able to respond promptly, or the recovery drags on.

Desantis had a bridge rebuilt in 3 days, for crying out loud!

The simple fact is California's "leadership" lacks the will. Despite having insane financial power they didn't clear fire hazards or invest in viable fires suppression systems. Now your goaltending has pivoted from "unknowable" to "prohibitively expensive" so at least we know your defense is ideological rather than principled.

Among the list of fire control tactics are controlled burns: a concept so new that it that only predates written history and the invention of money.

---

But did he build a wall BEFORE the hurricane? He could have! He should have! Everyone knows Florida has hurricanes! You don't need disaster and recovery plans if you spare no expense to prevent every possibility of disaster in the first place! Florida leadership just lacks the will to hurricane proof the state. Your logic, not mine.


I never said this was "unknowable." I said you don't know where a wildfire is going to occur and it's prohibitively expensive to size up a municipal water system to meet the demand of every fire hydrant being opened everywhere to cover all your bases. If you took that idea to any city planner or municipal engineer, they'd laugh you out of the room. We all know wildfires will occur, but you don't spend untold billions overbuilding infrastructure juuuuuusssssttttt in case.

Quote:

---

If you took that idea to any city planner or municipal engineer, they'd laugh you out of the room. We all know wildfires will occur, but you don't spend untold billions overbuilding infrastructure juuuuuusssssttttt in case.

---

But this is California. How much money have they wasted on that high speed rail train that no one will ever ride in sufficient numbers to even come within 8 decimal points of recovering those nor even operational costs (assuming it is ever operational).

Note the date here. Jan 6th, this year:

Quote:

---

California high-speed rail has officially entered a new phase that brings the start of passenger service one step closer to reality.
Governor Gavin Newsom joined California High Speed Rail Authority CEO Ian Choudri, local leaders and workers just outside of Bakersfield today to break ground on the railhead, which is the first step to laying track. Governor Newsom, Choudri and local leaders marked the start of the railhead with a symbolic spike. They also celebrated the substantial completion of Construction Package 4 (CP 4) the southernmost stretch of the initial operating line of high-speed rail.
"No state in America is closer to launching high-speed rail than California and today, we just took a massive step forward. We're moving into the track-laying phase, completing structures for key segments, and laying the groundwork for a high-speed rail network.

---

LINK

jrdaustin said:

---

Which kind of brings us back full circle in that in the end, the water supply was not the primary issue.

The primary issue was the lack of forest managment that created a massive tinderbox in highly populated areas that left precious little defensible space to protect structures AND the forest.

This has always been the primary issue in my opinion. Not allowing the forest to be managed and have the rotting dead wood removed was a direct correlation to the severity of the fire. Arguments for keeping the wooded areas "natural"... For the habitat... now ring quite hollow as the habitat our leftists were 'protecting' is now literally gone. In addition, we created a fire that emitted more carbon in a shorter period of time than all the ICE cars in Cali. And also, those wonderful trees and green leafy things called plants that eat all that nasty CO2 are all gone as well.

Great job, guys! Way to protect the environment!

Sheesh.

---

Kind of, but not exactly. It's already been hashed out elsewhere that this wasn't forested area. It's all chaparral and brush dried out by drought. California's poor forestry management isn't really to blame, but their poor land management in general is. Droughts are not uncommon in Southern California and have always happened with regularity, even if also with unpredictability. They should have policies for emergency brush clearing or waiving administrative barriers once they reach a certain level of drought or lack of rainfall over a rolling period.

That said, it's not a catchall. California has had multiple late fires started on private property that got out of control because you can't just strip the earth bare. Perfect example of the Ranch Fire in 2019. A farmer hitting a steel stake caused sparks that started a grass fire. It eventually burned 6000 acres. Another fire in Mendocino was started by a mower in a vacant lot. It ended up burning down several homes and could have been worse.

aggiehawg said:

---

Quote:

---

If you took that idea to any city planner or municipal engineer, they'd laugh you out of the room. We all know wildfires will occur, but you don't spend untold billions overbuilding infrastructure juuuuuusssssttttt in case.

---

But this is California. How much money have they wasted on that high speed rail train that no one will ever ride in sufficient numbers to even come within 8 decimal points of recovering those nor even operational costs (assuming it is ever operational).

Note the date here. Jan 6th, this year:

Quote:

---

California high-speed rail has officially entered a new phase that brings the start of passenger service one step closer to reality.
Governor Gavin Newsom joined California High Speed Rail Authority CEO Ian Choudri, local leaders and workers just outside of Bakersfield today to break ground on the railhead, which is the first step to laying track. Governor Newsom, Choudri and local leaders marked the start of the railhead with a symbolic spike. They also celebrated the substantial completion of Construction Package 4 (CP 4) the southernmost stretch of the initial operating line of high-speed rail.
"No state in America is closer to launching high-speed rail than California and today, we just took a massive step forward. We're moving into the track-laying phase, completing structures for key segments, and laying the groundwork for a high-speed rail network.

---

LINK

---

Does California pay for LA's water system?

No - everyone knows you just allow orders of magnitude more value to go up in smoke with zero resistance because targeted strategic infrastructure and risk mitigation would be too hard!

And again, just to riff off the top of my mind: prescriptive burns, goat herding, (I'm excluding fire breaks because extreme wind would require massive breaks), adding strategic valves to water mains, adding a dedicated perimeter hydrant system, prepositioning of chemical ******ants to multiply the impact of water, code and programs to reduce reduces yard and home flammability…

A lot of water in Texas is ground water. And it's not regulated. That's a shared resource and (some) people abuse it at the expense of their neighbors. It's happening right here in central Texas under R and D leadership. Follow the money.

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

Get Off My Lawn said:

---

They have disaster plans and get excoriated if folks couldn't get out, emergency services weren't able to respond promptly, or the recovery drags on.

Desantis had a bridge rebuilt in 3 days, for crying out loud!

The simple fact is California's "leadership" lacks the will. Despite having insane financial power they didn't clear fire hazards or invest in viable fires suppression systems. Now your goaltending has pivoted from "unknowable" to "prohibitively expensive" so at least we know your defense is ideological rather than principled.

Among the list of fire control tactics are controlled burns: a concept so new that it that only predates written history and the invention of money.

---

But did he build a wall BEFORE the hurricane? He could have! He should have! Everyone knows Florida has hurricanes! You don't need disaster and recovery plans if you spare no expense to prevent every possibility of disaster in the first place! Florida leadership just lacks the will to hurricane proof the state. Your logic, not mine.


I never said this was "unknowable." I said you don't know where a wildfire is going to occur and it's prohibitively expensive to size up a municipal water system to meet the demand of every fire hydrant being opened everywhere to cover all your bases. If you took that idea to any city planner or municipal engineer, they'd laugh you out of the room. We all know wildfires will occur, but you don't spend untold billions overbuilding infrastructure juuuuuusssssttttt in case.

---

Same thing with all of the flooding in Texas from Harvey. Systems could have been designed and built to greatly reduce the flooding and what flooding happened would have receded much quicker but the logic of some on here is that Republican leadership in Austin didn't have the will or competency to make proper planning decisions even though hurricanes hit Texas all the time.
PS. Way more homes were damaged/destroyed in Harvey than in LA so far.

Get Off My Lawn said:

---

No - everyone knows you just allow orders of magnitude more value to go up in smoke with zero resistance because targeted strategic infrastructure and risk mitigation would be too hard!

And again, just to riff off the top of my mind: prescriptive burns, goat herding, (I'm excluding fire breaks because extreme wind would require massive breaks), adding strategic valves to water mains, adding a dedicated perimeter hydrant system, prepositioning of chemical ******ants to multiply the impact of water, code and programs to reduce reduces yard and home flammability…

---

"Just make it really big where the fires are going to be! Duh! It's so simple!" Damn... How has no one ever thought of just using hindsight to plan for the future?

Every accident and disaster is preventable, but you can't prevent every accident and disaster. There are an infinite number of ways things can go wrong, and no one can prevent them all with finite resources. Risk mitigation is about trying to prevent what you can with the tools and resources you have, and only an idiot lives in hindsight pointing fingers at all the things that could have been done while ignoring all the things that have been done and the accidents and disasters that never happened.


And some of what you say is just... Dumb. Cali and LA already have codes and programs to reduce yard and home flammability. "Adding strategic valves to water mains"? WTF is that even supposed to mean? Do you honestly think you can just reroute water with valves that magically get rid of things like gravity and hydraulic loss? "Prepositioning chemical ******ants to multiply the impact of water? WTF are you going to do, put fire ******ant into the same water system that you drink out of? Do you think they stockpile all the ******ant downtown and keep it under lock and key so it's extra hard to get to when they need it?

You really have no idea what you're taking about, so I'm out.

Kansas Kid said:

---

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

Get Off My Lawn said:

---

They have disaster plans and get excoriated if folks couldn't get out, emergency services weren't able to respond promptly, or the recovery drags on.

Desantis had a bridge rebuilt in 3 days, for crying out loud!

The simple fact is California's "leadership" lacks the will. Despite having insane financial power they didn't clear fire hazards or invest in viable fires suppression systems. Now your goaltending has pivoted from "unknowable" to "prohibitively expensive" so at least we know your defense is ideological rather than principled.

Among the list of fire control tactics are controlled burns: a concept so new that it that only predates written history and the invention of money.

---

But did he build a wall BEFORE the hurricane? He could have! He should have! Everyone knows Florida has hurricanes! You don't need disaster and recovery plans if you spare no expense to prevent every possibility of disaster in the first place! Florida leadership just lacks the will to hurricane proof the state. Your logic, not mine.


I never said this was "unknowable." I said you don't know where a wildfire is going to occur and it's prohibitively expensive to size up a municipal water system to meet the demand of every fire hydrant being opened everywhere to cover all your bases. If you took that idea to any city planner or municipal engineer, they'd laugh you out of the room. We all know wildfires will occur, but you don't spend untold billions overbuilding infrastructure juuuuuusssssttttt in case.

---

Same thing with all of the flooding in Texas from Harvey. Systems could have been designed and built to greatly reduce the flooding and what flooding happened would have receded much quicker but the logic of some on here is that Republican leadership in Austin didn't have the will or competency to make proper planning decisions even though hurricanes hit Texas all the time.
PS. Way more homes were damaged/destroyed in Harvey than in LA so far.

---

Yeah, I mean how dare they not plan for that kind of event and have the pumps and pipes to handle trillions of Jason's of water? It's so easy! You just think, "Hey, this area could flood if a hurricane parked itself over the city for a couple days. Let's spend tens of billions of dollars on something totally superfluous unless we absolutely incredible and record rainfall because really we'll be saving money."

But in all seriousness, Harvey was the confluence of several issues over a few decades, and in all that time there were infinitely more pressing and immediate concerns for those tasked with setting policy and allocating limited resources. Could it have been prevented or mitigated better in the preceding years? Certainly. That's the story of every accident. Was there a bunch of other stuff going on that demanded more attention or outweighed the risk? Yep. That is also the story of every accident.

The people complaining don't seem to understand they're doing the equivalent of calling someone an idiot for turning turn a whole life policy when they're just trying to make rent.

Get Off My Lawn said:

---

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

richardag said:

---

Who neglected to ensure enough pumping capacity?

---

It's not a matter of neglect, it's a matter of engineering. The system was designed and created to feed domestic water for residences and businesses and fight single house fires, not have every hydrant wide open trying to douse entire neighborhoods. To meet that kind of design assumption, you'd need more and bigger pumps, more electrical infrastructure, larger pump stations, larger pipe diameters, etc and you'd have multiples of flow capacity you'd probably never use. Building to that potential demand, on the off chance you need it, is prohibitively expensive when you also consider applying that standard everywhere as a preventative measure instead of just saying, "Oh, it would've only cost an extra $xxx million to build it bigger in the first place. What idiots!" in this one specific spot after the fact. You're talking really hundreds of millions and probably billions of dollars for infrastructure that would be unnecessary except for this exact case

The equivalent would be like running a space heater in every outlet in your house and burning it down in an electrical fire, then getting mad at your electrician for not insisting you spend an extra $20k to size up all the circuits to 50 amps and avoid the $400k fire when, the fact is, no one builds a house like that because it's kind of a waste.

---

You're pretending this is a black swan event. But these extreme winds and fire risks are known. It's only a matter of when and where. And it's a known behavior that in a fire people turning on their water to save their homes.

These *******s signed up to be responsible for these regions and they failed. Don't give them a pass.

Florida will be hit by hurricanes. Oklahoma by tornados. Arizona by deadly heat. Alaska by blizzards. And California will have fires.

If you sign up to lead one of these places: you're signing up to mitigate and manage these known events. Each state / city has a different risk profile; but that's the job. Don't have the stones? Don't sign up. And if you did sign up: don't cry when your failures are criticized!

---

those two words don't mean stop any an all events from occurring no matter how extreme.

I worked for the Resnicks for 3 years at one of their citrus pack houses. They proclaim a lot of moral high ground, but it amasses to stupid things like pizza parties and Christmas ornaments. I'll never forget going on the internal jobs hub portal and seeing listings for "Butlers" and "Drivers" for their home in Beverly Hills. The wife was a nutjob and would have security shoo away employees while she would walk the halls. I guess one of the nice things was that you could book one of their private jets if you needed to go to CA from TX instead of flying commercial.

The whole company is exactly like this picture below:

Hank the Grifter said:

---

torrid said:

---

Enviroag02 said:

---

This is the exact plot of an entire season of the tv show Goliath with Billy Bob Thornton…even the almond part.

---

It's Chinatown, Jake.

---

Dammit! I was literally scrolling through the thread to see if this had been referenced. If not I was going to post a gif of that scene.

---

Well, I didn't quite get quote correct.

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

Get Off My Lawn said:

---

No - everyone knows you just allow orders of magnitude more value to go up in smoke with zero resistance because targeted strategic infrastructure and risk mitigation would be too hard!

And again, just to riff off the top of my mind: prescriptive burns, goat herding, (I'm excluding fire breaks because extreme wind would require massive breaks), adding strategic valves to water mains, adding a dedicated perimeter hydrant system, prepositioning of chemical ******ants to multiply the impact of water, code and programs to reduce reduces yard and home flammability…

---

"Just make it really big where the fires are going to be! Duh! It's so simple!" Damn... How has no one ever thought of just using hindsight to plan for the future?

Every accident and disaster is preventable, but you can't prevent every accident and disaster. There are an infinite number of ways things can go wrong, and no one can prevent them all with finite resources. Risk mitigation is about trying to prevent what you can with the tools and resources you have, and only an idiot lives in hindsight pointing fingers at all the things that could have been done while ignoring all the things that have been done and the accidents and disasters that never happened.


And some of what you say is just... Dumb. Cali and LA already have codes and programs to reduce yard and home flammability. "Adding strategic valves to water mains"? WTF is that even supposed to mean? Do you honestly think you can just reroute water with valves that magically get rid of things like gravity and hydraulic loss? "Prepositioning chemical ******ants to multiply the impact of water? WTF are you going to do, put fire ******ant into the same water system that you drink out of? Do you think they stockpile all the ******ant downtown and keep it under lock and key so it's extra hard to get to when they need it?

You really have no idea what you're taking about, so I'm out.

---

Stop with the logic and reason...you're talking to some brick walls at this point.

Over several decades, Boone Pickens purchased a significant portion of water rights (Ogallala) in the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma & maybe Kansas.

agracer said:

---

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

Get Off My Lawn said:

---

No - everyone knows you just allow orders of magnitude more value to go up in smoke with zero resistance because targeted strategic infrastructure and risk mitigation would be too hard!

And again, just to riff off the top of my mind: prescriptive burns, goat herding, (I'm excluding fire breaks because extreme wind would require massive breaks), adding strategic valves to water mains, adding a dedicated perimeter hydrant system, prepositioning of chemical ******ants to multiply the impact of water, code and programs to reduce reduces yard and home flammability…

---

"Just make it really big where the fires are going to be! Duh! It's so simple!" Damn... How has no one ever thought of just using hindsight to plan for the future?

Every accident and disaster is preventable, but you can't prevent every accident and disaster. There are an infinite number of ways things can go wrong, and no one can prevent them all with finite resources. Risk mitigation is about trying to prevent what you can with the tools and resources you have, and only an idiot lives in hindsight pointing fingers at all the things that could have been done while ignoring all the things that have been done and the accidents and disasters that never happened.


And some of what you say is just... Dumb. Cali and LA already have codes and programs to reduce yard and home flammability. "Adding strategic valves to water mains"? WTF is that even supposed to mean? Do you honestly think you can just reroute water with valves that magically get rid of things like gravity and hydraulic loss? "Prepositioning chemical ******ants to multiply the impact of water? WTF are you going to do, put fire ******ant into the same water system that you drink out of? Do you think they stockpile all the ******ant downtown and keep it under lock and key so it's extra hard to get to when they need it?

You really have no idea what you're taking about, so I'm out.

---

Stop with the logic and reason...you're talking to some brick walls at this point.

---

valves: allow the cut off non-critical users to allow for dedicated firefighting access

Prepositioned ******ant: a pump truck mixes chemicals w/ water (whether hydrant or tanked) to multiply the impact. For a couple million CA could have a fleet of ******ant trailers to rapidly deploy to probable fire zones

Perimeter hydrant system: yes expensive, but highly feasible and far less expensive than a city burning down. A single large waterline & hydrant system skirting the town exclusively meant for fire suppression w/ dedicated pump & storage infrastructure. Non-potable. Dedicatedly resource your main line of defense and the urban system can be held in reserve for breaches.

Veg reduction (whether prescribed burns or ag): reducing the tinder reduces fire potential (both likelihood and severity)


Oh - and regarding Harvey? Yeah - Houston has egg on their face for that too. My criticism isn't partisan: it's pragmatic. If you're responsible for a jurisdiction - it's your job to responsibly mitigate against serious knowable risks.

Get Off My Lawn said:

---

agracer said:

---

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

Get Off My Lawn said:

---

No - everyone knows you just allow orders of magnitude more value to go up in smoke with zero resistance because targeted strategic infrastructure and risk mitigation would be too hard!

And again, just to riff off the top of my mind: prescriptive burns, goat herding, (I'm excluding fire breaks because extreme wind would require massive breaks), adding strategic valves to water mains, adding a dedicated perimeter hydrant system, prepositioning of chemical ******ants to multiply the impact of water, code and programs to reduce reduces yard and home flammability…

---

"Just make it really big where the fires are going to be! Duh! It's so simple!" Damn... How has no one ever thought of just using hindsight to plan for the future?

Every accident and disaster is preventable, but you can't prevent every accident and disaster. There are an infinite number of ways things can go wrong, and no one can prevent them all with finite resources. Risk mitigation is about trying to prevent what you can with the tools and resources you have, and only an idiot lives in hindsight pointing fingers at all the things that could have been done while ignoring all the things that have been done and the accidents and disasters that never happened.


And some of what you say is just... Dumb. Cali and LA already have codes and programs to reduce yard and home flammability. "Adding strategic valves to water mains"? WTF is that even supposed to mean? Do you honestly think you can just reroute water with valves that magically get rid of things like gravity and hydraulic loss? "Prepositioning chemical ******ants to multiply the impact of water? WTF are you going to do, put fire ******ant into the same water system that you drink out of? Do you think they stockpile all the ******ant downtown and keep it under lock and key so it's extra hard to get to when they need it?

You really have no idea what you're taking about, so I'm out.

---

Stop with the logic and reason...you're talking to some brick walls at this point.

---

valves: allow the cut off non-critical users to allow for dedicated firefighting access

Prepositioned ******ant: a pump truck mixes chemicals w/ water (whether hydrant or tanked) to multiply the impact. For a couple million CA could have a fleet of ******ant trailers to rapidly deploy to probable fire zones

Perimeter hydrant system: yes expensive, but highly feasible and far less expensive than a city burning down. A single large waterline & hydrant system skirting the town exclusively meant for fire suppression w/ dedicated pump & storage infrastructure. Non-potable. Dedicatedly resource your main line of defense and the urban system can be held in reserve for breaches.

Veg reduction (whether prescribed burns or ag): reducing the tinder reduces fire potential (both likelihood and severity)


Oh - and regarding Harvey? Yeah - Houston has egg on their face for that too. My criticism isn't partisan: it's pragmatic. If you're responsible for a jurisdiction - it's your job to responsibly mitigate against serious knowable risks.

---

Better for the fool to keep their mouth closed than to open it and confirm what everyone already believes.

Due to your snarky responses, I now fully agree with you: there's nothing that could possibly have been done any better! All revel Newsome & Bass: the epitome of competence and preparedness! Stand in awe, peons, and weep with joy that the heroic ranks of firemen had been purged of vax-deniers!

aggiehawg said:

---

Just want to clarify something. The Hubs was very familiar with the equipment the nearest fire station had. And by near, I mean up the street and less than two minutes away. he knew they would have the capability to use our pool water, if needed.

BUT his concern was that the greenbelt was so large, that all of the closest stations (3 others were less than five to six minutes away after rolling) would be positioned elsewhere basically trying to laterally control the fire spread as opposed to getting in front of it. And we were very near the end of the greenbelt and where the ravine ended.

So unless the fire started on our end of it, we would not be the priority.

---

I live in Austin, in a greenbelt of sorts along 2222, with a pool. Would you mind posting the type of pump equipment your husband procured? An out of control fire in Austin is not an 'if' - it's a 'when' and having a way to use pool water would be great piece of gear to have in an emergency.

Get Off My Lawn said:

---

Due to your snarky responses, I now fully agree with you: there's nothing that could possibly have been done any better! All revel Newsome & Bass: the epitome of competence and preparedness! Stand in awe, peons, and weep with joy that the heroic ranks of firemen had been purged of vax-deniers!

---

so you also suck at reading comprehension, got it.

agracer said:

---

Get Off My Lawn said:

---

Due to your snarky responses, I now fully agree with you: there's nothing that could possibly have been done any better! All revel Newsome & Bass: the epitome of competence and preparedness! Stand in awe, peons, and weep with joy that the heroic ranks of firemen had been purged of vax-deniers!

---

so you also suck at reading comprehension, got it.

---

well, given that you're simply lobbing out one-liners (which you still end up having to edit) I'm not so sure the fault is in my end.

dmart90 said:

---

A lot of water in Texas is ground water. And it's not regulated. That's a shared resource and (some) people abuse it at the expense of their neighbors. It's happening right here in central Texas under R and D leadership. Follow the money.

---

To say it's not regulated is inaccurate and misleading. Some/much of "rural" water is indeed unregulated which is little concern realistically. Texas water law provides for the "right of capture", basically meaning you can pump/utilize as much water as you need/want, without limit. Except within an existing State adopted Water District. Therein, the District does regulate water usage, well construction and pump design. Water Districts exist in all urban counties and many rural counties, especially those that adjoin urban areas.

Google submersible pump, or sump pump. They come in many different sizes depending upon your needs (volume desired). Just lay the pump in the bottom of the pool and plumb it to suit the size of hose you decide you need to "fight the fire" you ex.

dmart90 said:

---

A lot of water in Texas is ground water. And it's not regulated. That's a shared resource and (some) people abuse it at the expense of their neighbors. It's happening right here in central Texas under R and D leadership. Follow the money.

---

I know.

I specifically spoke about water authorities in my response though.

torrid said:

---

Enviroag02 said:

---

This is the exact plot of an entire season of the tv show Goliath with Billy Bob Thornton…even the almond part.

---

It's Chinatown, Jake.

---

First thing I thought of as well.

ABATTBQ11 said:

---

richardag said:

---

Who neglected to ensure enough pumping capacity?

---

It's not a matter of neglect, it's a matter of engineering. The system was designed and created to feed domestic water for residences and businesses and fight single house fires, not have every hydrant wide open trying to douse entire neighborhoods. To meet that kind of design assumption, you'd need more and bigger pumps, more electrical infrastructure, larger pump stations, larger pipe diameters, etc and you'd have multiples of flow capacity you'd probably never use. Building to that potential demand, on the off chance you need it, is prohibitively expensive when you also consider applying that standard everywhere as a preventative measure instead of just saying, "Oh, it would've only cost an extra $xxx million to build it bigger in the first place. What idiots!" in this one specific spot after the fact. You're talking really hundreds of millions and probably billions of dollars for infrastructure that would be unnecessary except for this exact case

The equivalent would be like running a space heater in every outlet in your house and burning it down in an electrical fire, then getting mad at your electrician for not insisting you spend an extra $20k to size up all the circuits to 50 amps and avoid the $400k fire when, the fact is, no one builds a house like that because it's kind of a waste.

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So who made those design decisions which seemingly completely ignored the severe and continuing threats of wild fires?

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Get Off My Lawn said:

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They have disaster plans and get excoriated if folks couldn't get out, emergency services weren't able to respond promptly, or the recovery drags on.

Desantis had a bridge rebuilt in 3 days, for crying out loud!

The simple fact is California's "leadership" lacks the will. Despite having insane financial power they didn't clear fire hazards or invest in viable fires suppression systems. Now your goaltending has pivoted from "unknowable" to "prohibitively expensive" so at least we know your defense is ideological rather than principled.

Among the list of fire control tactics are controlled burns: a concept so new that it that only predates written history and the invention of money.

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But did he build a wall BEFORE the hurricane? He could have! He should have! Everyone knows Florida has hurricanes! You don't need disaster and recovery plans if you spare no expense to prevent every possibility of disaster in the first place! Florida leadership just lacks the will to hurricane proof the state. Your logic, not mine.


I never said this was "unknowable." I said you don't know where a wildfire is going to occur and it's prohibitively expensive to size up a municipal water system to meet the demand of every fire hydrant being opened everywhere to cover all your bases. If you took that idea to any city planner or municipal engineer, they'd laugh you out of the room. We all know wildfires will occur, but you don't spend untold billions overbuilding infrastructure juuuuuusssssttttt in case.

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Comparing a hurricane to wild fires in urban areas is ridiculous. The energy of a hurricane is several orders of magnitude greater than subduing wild fires in urban environments.
California's Fire Catastrophe Is Largely a Result of Bad Government Policies
quote from the article

• Wasted Water
  "From water rules that cause shortages to red tape that fuels extreme wildfires, state and federal policies have deepened California's most pressing environmental challenges," Regan wrote in 2023. "As a result, the Golden State now confronts the consequences of these choices, with destructive effects on its natural landscapes, its economy, and its residents."
  "Water in California is often allocated not through markets but through inflexible, acrimonious, and ineffective political processes," he added. He called out subsidized waterespecially, though not exclusively, for agricultural usewhich divorces supply from demand. Also at fault are "use it or lose it" rules which discourage water conservation lest allocations be reduced in years to come.
• When it comes to sourcing and storing water, "Officials have delayed or rejected proposals to build desalination plants that convert saltwater into drinking water," even as "the state hasn't built a significant new reservoir in more than 40 years," leaving water from rains and floods to flow away, uncaptured. "Nearly all of the water that gushed through the SacramentoSan Joaquin Delta was flushed out to sea in an effort to comply with state and federal environmental regulations aimed at protecting the delta smelt."