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Posted (edited)
  On 3/13/2025 at 5:22 PM, utee94 said:

I encourage it.  Austin is terrible and nobody should move here.  

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We all live in homeless encampments under high rises and next to food trucks selling birria for influencers.

Edited by texasdago
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Posted
  On 3/13/2025 at 5:41 PM, texasdago said:

We all live in homeless encampments under high rises and next to food trucks selling birria for influencers.

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There are roving bands of disgruntled state employees who will drug you, steal your kidneys, and dump you in a bathtub full of ice.

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Posted

As wildfire anxiety grows, Austin plans to designate half the city as at risk of fire damage
Austin plans to greatly expand the amount of land, and therefore homes, considered at risk of wildfire damage.

Council members are scheduled to discuss updating rules surrounding Austin’s WUI, or Wildland-Urban Interface, later this month. This is the area where wilderness and development meet, and where there is a higher risk that a fire burning in a wooded area could jump to homes and businesses.

The move would put 71% of the city’s land parcels in a zone vulnerable to burning should a wildfire break out, according to a presentation in January by the Austin Fire Department. That amounts to about half of all city land, up from 38% a decade ago.

The discussion comes as experts have grown increasingly convinced conditions are ripe for Austin to have a devastating wildfire. Summers have grown hotter and droughts more extreme. Austin ranks fifth in the nation on a list of cities with the highest number of homes at risk of being damaged by wildfires.

The four cities that rank above Austin are all in California.

“We’re sitting on the edge of a major catastrophic fire,” said Randy Denzer, a former battalion chief with the Austin Fire Department. “This isn’t too far-fetched.”

Old map vs New map 

Rest of the story: https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2025-03-13/austin-texas-wildfires-risk-map

 

 

Posted
  On 3/13/2025 at 11:30 PM, bolverk said:

As wildfire anxiety grows, Austin plans to designate half the city as at risk of fire damage
Austin plans to greatly expand the amount of land, and therefore homes, considered at risk of wildfire damage.

Council members are scheduled to discuss updating rules surrounding Austin’s WUI, or Wildland-Urban Interface, later this month. This is the area where wilderness and development meet, and where there is a higher risk that a fire burning in a wooded area could jump to homes and businesses.

The move would put 71% of the city’s land parcels in a zone vulnerable to burning should a wildfire break out, according to a presentation in January by the Austin Fire Department. That amounts to about half of all city land, up from 38% a decade ago.

The discussion comes as experts have grown increasingly convinced conditions are ripe for Austin to have a devastating wildfire. Summers have grown hotter and droughts more extreme. Austin ranks fifth in the nation on a list of cities with the highest number of homes at risk of being damaged by wildfires.

The four cities that rank above Austin are all in California.

“We’re sitting on the edge of a major catastrophic fire,” said Randy Denzer, a former battalion chief with the Austin Fire Department. “This isn’t too far-fetched.”

Old map vs New map 

Rest of the story: https://www.kut.org/energy-environment/2025-03-13/austin-texas-wildfires-risk-map

 

 

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Well, that's swell.  Let's make insurance rates skyrocket without doing anything to actually mitigate the risk.  Swell.

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Posted
  On 3/13/2025 at 11:32 PM, Brisketexan said:

Well, that's swell.  Let's make insurance rates skyrocket without doing anything to actually mitigate the risk.  Swell.

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To be fair, you have to designate those zones as high risk to force people to build lower risk housing via building codes. Housing stock that is already there is actually higher risk and should pay more.  Besides reducing fuel in proximity, not much else you can do until people decide to do work on the individual houses. Also have to hope they pull permits so shit gets done correctly.  Maybe fund some grants or rebate programs for people to do that work?

Goddamn I can’t believe I just defended insurance companies. I’m going to go take a shower. 

Posted
  On 3/12/2025 at 9:32 PM, Mittens said:
Years ago, I used to leave my keys in the armrest console of my Jeep Cherokee.  Had it parked in the Stiles Switch parking lot for a visit to the flower shop and left it overnight when I was overserved.  All the change was gone the next day, and the armrest up, but the car was still there.  

Did they at least have the decency to piss, ejaculate, and shit on the floor and not on the seats?
Posted (edited)

Huge pileup on 35 tonight. 17 vehicles involved, five fatalities including one child and one infant. According to Reddit an Amazon truck plowed into stopped traffic.

image.thumb.png.e86d04ae840857283c1e7e0c0f1e2346.png

Edited by LonghornSean
Posted

My stepdaughter and her 10 YO son were less than 5 minutes ahead of that mess, coming home from Round Rock.  I went to bed before they got home, and when I saw the push on my phone in the middle of the night my heart sank.  I ran outside to confirm her car was in the driveway, and it was.

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Posted
  On 3/12/2025 at 10:14 PM, Js1 said:

Braelynn's mom back in Katy isn't going to click and give them eyeballs if it just says "shooting off I-35"

But "near UT," where her precious baby boy goes?

*click* 

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Well, more accurately, it's more like Pundeep's mom these days.  Braelynn can't get into UT and goes to TAMU now.  

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Posted (edited)
  22 hours ago, LonghornSean said:

Huge pileup on 35 tonight. 17 vehicles involved, five fatalities including one child and one infant. According to Reddit an Amazon truck plowed into stopped traffic.

image.thumb.png.e86d04ae840857283c1e7e0c0f1e2346.png

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Reddit thread has more details. Sounds like traffic was stop and go and then the 18 wheeler flies into them. Driver may have been under influence or someshit and maybe tried to escape.

 

 

From the video he approached the driver and cussed him out saying that he was gonna get locked up. The driver doesn’t speak English well so he couldn’t really understand. When he finally started to understand he started getting on his phone and walking kind of fast away from the scene. Then the guy recording found a cop and said “he’s trying to run” and the cop runs after him and then the video ends

 

He is talking to the driver and after telling the driver that he’s gonna get locked up the driver starts to walk back to his 18 wheeler and the dude doesn’t physically restrain him but he does tell a cop and you just see the cop chasing after the driver before the video ends So in shorter words: no

 

 

According to a witness who was live, it was a 3rd party Amazon truck driver who either fell asleep or was distracted and crashed into stopped traffic.

huge-wreck-on-35-v0-4agau57shloe1.jpeg?w

Edited by crash_davis
Posted
  17 hours ago, crash_davis said:

According to a witness who was live, it was a 3rd party Amazon truck driver who either fell asleep or was distracted and crashed into stopped traffic.

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FWIW those "3rd party drivers" are basically AMZN employees. Dispatch Service Partners are a bespoke busines that exist exclusively to service AMZN deliveries and avoid paying benefits out to workers.

 

Jesus and that section of 35 has been a chute for years now. Nowhere for the stopped traffic to go to avoid the 18-wheeler. What a nightmare.

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Posted

Yeah....even the images from the side of the overall scene.  Fuck.  That's nightmare fuel.

The fact that no matter what you do, how prepared and safe you are, etc.....there's always a non-zero chance of something like this that is totally out of your control taking out your entire family....fuck.  The mere concept has made me sick to my stomach once we became a family, and I don't think that gnawing fear will ever go away.

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Posted
  On 3/13/2025 at 11:32 PM, Brisketexan said:

Well, that's swell.  Let's make insurance rates skyrocket without doing anything to actually mitigate the risk.  Swell.

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  On 3/14/2025 at 1:05 AM, drt said:

Besides reducing fuel in proximity, not much else you can do until people decide to do work on the individual houses.

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@Brisketexan, I think you're in District 10, too--Marc Duchen will tell you that managing fire risk is one of his one or two main priorities. 

I'm on 1.67 acres, most of it sloping steeply to the rear of the property and I've got several more years of weekend log cutting to get all the downed ash junipers and such from the 2022 freeze.  Plus, part of the property includes the drainage for cul del sac so there's years of leaf debris that's been deposited into the valley.  I'm a prime candidate for

image.gif.a71f3e5864c4a7dc630bfcb977b5af5a.gif

Posted

I keep trying to make our house more fire resistant.  Can't be perfect and I'm always fighting leaves but having a xeriscaped yard with lots of crushed granite and naturally designed firebreaks helps.  Although our wooden fence is probably a fire waiting to happen.  Still, trying to improve our odds.

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Posted
  17 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

The fact that no matter what you do, how prepared and safe you are, etc.....there's always a non-zero chance of something like this that is totally out of your control taking out your entire family....fuck.  The mere concept has made me sick to my stomach once we became a family, and I don't think that gnawing fear will ever go away.

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When my daughter was in high school, I used to stay up with my eyes glued to Life 360 as she was driving back from basketball tournaments late in the evening, some of them taking her from the Round Rock area via I35. 

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Posted
  17 hours ago, LCHorn said:

 

@Brisketexan, I think you're in District 10, too--Marc Duchen will tell you that managing fire risk is one of his one or two main priorities. 

I'm on 1.67 acres, most of it sloping steeply to the rear of the property and I've got several more years of weekend log cutting to get all the downed ash junipers and such from the 2022 freeze.  Plus, part of the property includes the drainage for cul del sac so there's years of leaf debris that's been deposited into the valley.  I'm a prime candidate for

image.gif.a71f3e5864c4a7dc630bfcb977b5af5a.gif

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Yeah....we've got some similar issues.  I'm looking at spending some real dollars to get some folks in to clear any remaining dead vegetation from a decent perimeter, removing all the leaf litter, and such.  And I'm thinking about a rooftop fire suppression sprinkler system.  There's some cost involved, but geez.  The risk is only going up.

Posted
  17 hours ago, South Austin said:

When my daughter was in high school, I used to stay up with my eyes glued to Life 360 as she was driving back from basketball tournaments late in the evening, some of them taking her from the Round Rock area via I35. 

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Four kids in a van, starting out at 1 AM some 100 miles north of NYC, straight shot to Austin will take some years off your life.  I just use "FindMy" on the iPhone.

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Posted
  17 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Four kids in a van, starting out at 1 AM some 100 miles north of NYC, straight shot to Austin will take some years off your life.  I just use "FindMy" on the iPhone.

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Yep.  Young people on the roads is a recipe for parent terror.  For real, it's one of the upsides of my kids going to college places where they don't have cars and use public transport.  Go out and get drunk on a Saturday night?  Cool.  It's much safer to know they are stumbling/taking the train home than getting into someone's car at 4:00 a.m.  Every mile the DON'T drive is a mile where they are much, much safer.

Shit, I've started to adopt the same approach for us - if we can fly or take some other transport, that's just safer.  

Posted
  17 hours ago, Captainant said:

FWIW those "3rd party drivers" are basically AMZN employees. Dispatch Service Partners are a bespoke busines that exist exclusively to service AMZN deliveries and avoid paying benefits out to workers.

 

Jesus and that section of 35 has been a chute for years now. Nowhere for the stopped traffic to go to avoid the 18-wheeler. What a nightmare.

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  17 hours ago, Deej said:

It's worse now with all the construction on 35 in that area. 

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Before construction started this past summer there were at least wide shoulders on both sides of traffic.  Now it's literally a wall a yard left of the left lane and another concrete wall a yard to the right of the right-most lane.  Add in curvy lanes with lane markers that have been painted over old lane lines that are still visible and it's a frighteningly dangerous stretch.

Posted
  16 hours ago, gsoda3 said:

Before construction started this past summer there were at least wide shoulders on both sides of traffic.  Now it's literally a wall a yard left of the left lane and another concrete wall a yard to the right of the right-most lane.  Add in curvy lanes with lane markers that have been painted over old lane lines that are still visible and it's a frighteningly dangerous stretch.

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I'm a decent driver, but those shoulder-less construction zones terrify me.  I seem to get caught next to a semi going 70 mph a little too often.  I'd get squashed like a bug if they swerved.

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Posted (edited)
  16 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

I'm a decent driver, but those shoulder-less construction zones terrify me.  I seem to get caught next to a semi going 70 mph a little too often.  I'd get squashed like a bug if they swerved.

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Waxahachie 2022 - doing 70+ in a construction zone.

 

 

 

IMG_4367.jpeg

Edited by Armybrat
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Posted
  Quote

According to sources, the person arrested was charged with five counts of intoxication manslaughter with a vehicle and two counts of intoxication assault with vehicle involving serious bodily injury.

According to first responders, the five people who died included three adults, one child and one infant. The other 11 people who were injured included:
  • four adults with critical, life-threatening injuries
  • four adults with minor injuries
  • one child with potentially life-threatening injuries
  • two children with minor injuries
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Why's it only two counts of intoxication assault?  It should be at least four, probably five.

Posted (edited)
  14 hours ago, gsoda3 said:

Terrible. Can't even make out what make/model that thing is.

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Crew cab z71

I drive a crew cab and feel reasonably safe in it, but no match for a semi doing 60-80 vs a stopped vehicle 

 

awful 

 

 

I can only hope the driver of the z71 was distracted and never saw it coming. I can’t imagine the feeling looking in the rear view 

Edited by UTexasFight
Posted
  14 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Were the fatalities all in one vehicle?  Bystanders claimed he hit other vehicles for up to a half a mile, which is frankly hard to conceive.

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Yeah I was just speculating that the kids were in the same car.

Could be any combination of different vehicles but how ever many were in that one are likely gone. 

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Posted

I know, let the courts decide, but what kind of idiot would get behind the wheel of a semi after drinking?  It's just infuriating.  At least in the old days (and probably now) they were only on meth, if anything.

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Posted

Oh, and awesome.  The truck driver's name is Solomun Weldekeal Araya.  He ain't no real 'murican.

So, this story is 100% going to become one of how a dirty immigrant killed 5 people......and 0% about how Amazon and Bezos privatize all gains and by using contractors for everything (with all of said contractors being LLC shells with no assets and the bare minimum insurance required by very generous laws passed by lawmakers owned by industry), but socialize the losses of multiple ended/ruined lives.

That'll be a real nice topper to this awful story.  It will be an excuse to further demonize and punish "the other," but in no way will it be used to even SUGGEST corporate accountability.

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