Are in-home fire shelters a thing in California and other fire zones? I can't imagine they are not big business out there.
This would still be a massive disaster with 0 deaths. What you see is cities like LA and SF using housing pricing (the supply and demand market) to inadvertantly have population caps, but as a result, people go in flocks to places where they shouldn't and there's no rule on developers building there. Paradise was the center of a perfect storm. PG&E power lines shouldn't have been here, period. You have to put a cap on human development because nature will win every time. This isn't so much about forestry management as it is about curbing development. That's what started this as a brush fire, and that's what caused so much loss of life. The numbers will get more and more harrowing past Thanksgiving.
Agree with most all of this. It's hard to imagine how many of the 1,000 missing will be found alive at this point, in this age. I hope most of them will be found in some shelter or another, but I fear it will be the opposite. Maybe it's semantics at some level, but agree (as per @rimrocker's earlier post showing the development of Paradise) that this appears to be more a problem of unregulated development than of forestry management.
I've never heard of such a thing.* hmm. this fire was melting aluminum. Sure, you can build things from higher melting-point materials but how do you get breathable air to an in-home shelter in such a situation? I'm sure engineering could accomplish it, but at what cost? * = doesn't really mean anything in itself.
Well, I know some of the very wealthy have safe rooms that are totally sealed with internal air supplies - I know that isn't an option for most, but it seems something cost effective could be designed. Cinder block style room with ceramic insulation and a rack of scuba tanks with a full face mask ... I don't know just thinking out loud.
Gov. Brown was saying much the same on Face the Nation this morning, need to have them at various points throughout the communities.
Interesting. I could see that, if a heavily-wooded development like this wants approval, they'd need to provide a certain # of shelters. Sounds like people are thinking of something like tornado shelters, by analogy.
Yeah that makes a lot more sense, but if I could afford to build my own I would probably want that as well.
He was also very, very diplomatic re: dealing with the President and the level of federal help they will need going forward from here. He made a good point that I was unaware of re: the amount of National Forest land in the area around Paradise, nothing Cali can do by themselves to mitigate fire danger on those lands. Was a good interview if it's on their website (I'm pretty sure it was Face the Nation).
They can not build there. They should never have built Paradise in the first place. There are Hollywood movies with this exact same story line and it plays out exactly as expected. Fire room idea for the public is the dumbest waste of money after building there in the first place. It really IS that simple, and why it comes down to limiting the population in the first place instead of selling smoke and mirrors.
Couldn’t they have shelters (even if it’s just a slab) at strategic locations throughout these high risk community? Not just building that don’t burn, some perimeter buffer that don’t burn... I sure would want that option if I live there.
While you're at it, build a couple anti-avalanche rooms 15,000 ft up on the Himalayas. Conveniently ignoring the fact the hardest part is just getting to these places, building in these parts of the country should be a no go zone. All that money to save a few lives while hundreds or thousands still die and there are huge economic disasters? Disasters will get bigger and badder with increases in population and unregulated development into no go zones. That is the core issue that no human innovation will solve.
Here's a link to a map of the structural damage in the Camp Fire. For reference, this photo set is looking SW and the area can be found at the top of the linked map just to the west of Magalia. It's a small part of the fire. http://calfire-forestry.maps.arcgis...24920.1673,-13518764.4778,4841526.1117,102100
As long as you believe that the same should apply to building in hurricane-prone and flood-prone areas.
... you know Houston floods because of the millions of pounds of concrete and development on flood plains, right? In addition to climate change that intensifies the severity of storms. Reading is good:
