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Southern CA Fires- Extreme Santa Ana Winds


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22 minutes ago, WBT said:

So they just said it's raining for the first time in 9 months and they're already worried about mudslides?  How hard is it raining?

Fires generally make the ground hydrophobic. That makes mudslides and flooding much more likely.

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1 hour ago, WBT said:

So they just said it's raining for the first time in 9 months and they're already worried about mudslides?  How hard is it raining?

That whole vegetation-prevents-water soaked-soil-from-becoming-mudslides thing becomes problematic when there’s, you know, no more vegetation

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15 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

I looked into the amount of water required to put out a house fire.  It turns out the National Fire Academy has developed a simple rule of thumb:  gallons = square footage divided by 3.  So, a typical 1800 sf house would require 600 gallons to extinguish a fire.  Obviously, there is a lot of variability there.

Stick a 1K gallon tank on everyone's lot, with a pump and some long hose runs.  The government could potentially subsidize the cost for the homeowner, it would be akin to buying a backup generator to guard against long power outages (ahem).  Let the homeowner or even firefighters deal with fighting fires, but at least there would be some infrastructure in place.  Such a tank is ~ 5 ft dia and less than 7 feet tall.  It's not exactly offensive looking, especially behind a fence.

I like the idea, but there's one important thing missing here. The result you get from that formula is not the total number of gallons needed to control the fire. It's gallons per minute.  So an 1800 sf house, if fully involved, would require 1800/3 = 600 GPM to control the fire.  50% involved, you'd need 300 GPM, and so on.  That formula is an estimation, and it usually takes more water for a defensive posture (surround & drown) than an offensive attack. 

Edited by wood
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11 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

Being a well-known idiot here, I will ask my idiot question: if a big threat is embers entering an attic via attic ventilation (and assuming that embers have a brief lifespan when small and are more of a threat when larger and will stay lit long enough to touch something else off), is there a screen - or maybe two consecutive screens - of sufficiently small diameter that would not let in embers large enough to successfully land in your attic and start a fire, while allowing hot air to escape.  

Or there be some sort of sliding or drop-down shutter that will completely cover the ventilated section of your attic when some sensor notices a change in temperature or brightness from nearby fires - or receive some code via your security system from government official saying you are now in an evacuation warning zone.

I guess with modern technology, I’m wondering why attic vents can’t be designed in a way to drastically limit the access of embers of sufficient size and duration entering a home to cause a fire in your attic?

I think you're probably onto something re: the size of the embers, and maybe a fine enough screen would help a whole lot. Another problem, though, is that the products of combustion of the fire outside are often hot enough on their own and contain enough unburnt fuel in them to spread the fire by themselves if they get into the attic. Even the CO in the smoke is highly flammable. When you see the fire 'licking' way up high into the flames, that's usually the smoke itself igniting. So covering the vents completely with a fire-rated material and removing fuels close to the house would probably help even more.

Basically, what @Bevo & @flatdawgs said.

Edited by wood
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it rained off and on for the last 24 hours and is supposed to stop tonight. mudslides are always a concern in overlapping fire areas (like malibu) but this shouldn’t be too bad.

what sucks is when it doesn’t rain for months then rains nonstop for 4 days. it happens pretty often, which is why “annual rainfall” can be misleading. if it dumps all at once, it doesn’t help. and it causes mudslides. 

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3 hours ago, Schulz2.0 said:

Fires generally make the ground hydrophobic. That makes mudslides and flooding much more likely.

Yeah we were watching LA fire coverage on the Weather Channel the other night. They did a cool demo where they applied water to a pile of sand, a pile of dirt, and a pile of dirt with ash mixed in. The sand and the dirt just kept soaking up water while water ran off of the ash/dirt pile immediately. Really good demo.

Edited by wood
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11 hours ago, Chopper said:

You're right, not sure if any of those houses were lost due to (solely) flying embers. (edit - in the sense of what was normal before - embers can fly for miles and if they land in the wrong spot on your house, you're fucked.) OTOH after a couple of homes in my parents neighborhood were lost to fire in 2021 they put mesh over all the vents. They've also been battling with their HOA to be able to trim a couple of oak trees on HOA property that come close to their roof. 

This article doesn't appear to be behind a paywall

This next article is absolutely sickening...private equity groups and billionaires are such a scourge.

 

A nugget even more disgusting in that second article.

And if anyone wants guidance on what a lawsuit against AIP could look like, Lina Khan left us a roadmap just before she stepped down from the FTC last week — when she sued private-equity giant Welsh Carson for rolling up Texas anesthesiology practices to drive up the price of anesthesia services to Texas patients.

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8 hours ago, wood said:

I like the idea, but there's one important thing missing here. The result you get from that formula is not the total number of gallons needed to control the fire. It's gallons per minute.  So an 1800 sf house, if fully involved, would require 1800/3 = 600 GPM to control the fire.  50% involved, you'd need 300 GPM, and so on.  That formula is an estimation, and it usually takes more water for a defensive posture (surround & drown) than an offensive attack. 

Thanks, the website I pulled it from didn't say it was a flow rate, just total (cumulative) volume.

EDIT:  I did find another site that corroborates your claim, but what it also says is that calculation is for a fully engulfed structure.  That would not be the case in an initial flareup, so it's possible onsite water storage could work.  One issue (as others have hinted at) is adequate flow rate, and even then if the power goes out, only an engine-driven pump would work.  It's starting to get expensive.

Edited by jimmyjazz
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A nugget even more disgusting in that second article.
And if anyone wants guidance on what a lawsuit against AIP could look like, Lina Khan left us a roadmap just before she stepped down from the FTC last week — when she sued private-equity giant Welsh Carson for rolling up Texas anesthesiology practices to drive up the price of anesthesia services to Texas patients.

Gosh, is there nothing that private equity doesn’t make loads better?
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