The fact that you made this video just a few weeks before the recent wildfires in Southern California is borderline eerie. But everything you presented in this video was 100% confirmed with the recent disaster in Southern California. Absolutely amazing video. You have a new subscriber!
The original title was "Is This Type of Fire IMPOSSIBLE to Stop?" The new title (as of this writing) is "Why the LA Fires are Almost Impossible to Stop" They didn't predict anything, they change the title for clicks.
I'm a volunteer firefighter and live in the Columbia River gorge, where fuels are dried by constant East winds in the summer from the dry Eastern side of Oregon and Washington. My house is perched on a hillside, so I cleared the brush from that hillside and put rocks (and solar panels on the south side) to create a fire break and defensive space around the structure as it would normally want to quickly climb the hill to the house. I also replaced the old vinyl siding with cement board siding. Basically, I always think of making the house more defensible to fire during a planned upgrade or maintenance. It's part of life now. Thanks for the content, as always
only b/c u have chosen to live where 35M other have also and the area can only support about 3M max with most of those N of SF Bay S CA should not have more then 200K ppl living below Monterrey. As for the central valley less then 100K there. U see U dont have the water for any more and still do the farming that must be done these to feed our badly over poped world. All of the water now used to support the 32M of over pop should be going to ag.
I think a lot of Australians have a bushfire trauma story. Nowadays if you live in the bush you’ll have a plan for evacuation/stay and fight. The video mentioned embers, we call that the ember attack which is a full on storm of embers before the main front comes. The embers will start fires in any leaf litter around your house including GUTTERS-so clean up anything that burns before the fire season and clean your gutters off leaves before summer. When the main front comes you may lose water pressure and you may lose power. Having a pump with a power source and a water tank may help you when the front comes. If the fire front is too big evacuate early-a lot of people die in their cars trying to escape but spot fires may have already started on your path out. So leave early. If you do have a tank, let the fire fighters know, they may need to use it. Wear clothes that are natural fibres-plastic or nylon will melt onto you-think jeans and long sleeves of cotton. An ember attack could set you on fire too.
Just yesterday 100 ppl died during flooding in Spain. We will live in a totally stressed society - preparing all day long for somethin: Drought, Fire, Heat, Heavy rain & Flooding, Mudslides - and after a while food shortages. "ppl go nuts because of climate change effects over time" imo
LOL, "build according to science". and then they refer to houses! USA have the second highest large nation carbon emissions per capita! The three large nations with highest carbon emissions per capita are, worst first, Australia, USA, Canada. ALL three named nations have OPTIMAL conditions for the cheapest energy production, offshore mega windmill parks and thus also for green hydrogen production. We should have an atmospheric carbon content of 220 PPM and now have passed insane 420 PPM. Climate tripping point after climate tipping point are triggering these very years, like the increasingly thawing Candaian/Siberian tundras that emits CO2 and the even worse greenhouse gas, methane. Politicians in the 3 nations all have in common that they do not live up to their commitments in the Paris climate accord and have not presented credible plans to do so to date. Instead they use large amounts of taxpayer money on subsidising fossil fuels in 2024! The worlds largest ongoing transition project were signed in Jan 2023 and will transition 220 million Europeans away from fossil/nuclear fuel in just a decade by raising offshore mega windmills in the North Sea. NOTHING but ignorant and incompetent politicians that happily take money from the fossil fuel industry stand in the way for these three nations to make a simple copy/paste of this project and make their nations emissions considerable less fast while laughing all the way to the bank. IF anyone want to "build according to science" offshore windmill parks should be the logical obvious answer!
@Mike-zx1kx Actually, the biggest carbon producers are China, the USA and India in that order. I live in Australia and my state receives 80% of its electricity from residential rooftop solar and the government is offering 0% loans with no upfront costs for people who want solar systems installed. During summer the residential rooftop solar systems actually create over 6 times more electricity than the electricity consumption but the federal government has placed laws that keep one coal power station operating. We humans already have the technology and resources to be completely fossil fuel free in under 2 years but we lack the intelligence and willingness to just do it.
@@itt2055 CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere - trivial enough in 2024 :)) That's why we pay attention to the “historical emissions” - emissions of a country per capita over the last 200 years (Industrial Revolution) More: Since the beginning of 'globalization' we have attributed the resulting emissions to *the client* - not the producer. At the end of the 1990s, China was just beginning to become an industrial country - producing mainly for the West. With that in mind - the biggest emitters live in the 'West' Being honest is a problem for them - for obvious reasons. You?
@@itt2055 PER CAPITA Australia now are the large nation with highest emissions. China not even close to Australian emissions per capita. 1 Australian emits same as 3-4 in China, per capita. It might be so that solar panels in private households are common, as it should be. However decades of Australian politicians ignoring science, backed by Murdoch media´s lies and a close connections, also monetarily, between mining companies and fossil fuel abusing exploitation, from coal to fracking, caused Australia to overtake USA, that have held the position as worst large nation emitters per capita for decades. I am sadly aware of how Murdoch media and others for long, have used country to country comparisons to promote ignorance and reality for the populations but each nation decides own politics and what to exploit or not, what science to relate to, what treaties to sign etc..It are the per nation, per capita emission level that truly matters and what each have to work to bring down, inside own nation. All named nations have signed the Paris climate accord but none of the three have politicians that have presented credible plans to get to the signed goal. It´s beyond a disgrace. Australia not long ago got a new governments that supposedly should be more centre and yet they recently approved more than 70 new fracking sites. Fracking that causes huge emissions, local earthquakes and possibility to seriously destroy groundwater´s ability to be used, are only surpassed in stupidity to the tarsand exploitation Canada do. USA´s two main parties now battling for a term, BOTH support private companies earning money on fracking and subsidising fossil fuels for taxpayer money while ignoring their nations optimal conditions for the cheaper and sustainable option offshore windmill parks offer. Problem truly is that we NOW are OUT OF TIME! There no longer are time to wait 2-3 election cycles and hope some in the three nations "wise up". Large parts of the world have to stand on the sideline watching your nations ignorance and denialism destroy the planets regulating systems. WE RIGHT NOW live in the largest species extinction period since the asteroid hit Yucatan 66 million years ago. Darwin said: "survival of the fittest". When he said fittest he did not mean strongest but rather the most adaptable to change. Politicians, media, population in the named nations are prime examples of inability to adapt. Crimes against humanity should be the minimum charges against the deceivers! As a citizen of Australia you do not even seem to understand the objective reality of your own nations massive collective emissions. I do not think you are dumb but I do think you are victim of a coordinated bamboozle. Unfortunately one that have gone so far, that it threaten life on the entire planet.
I live in a seasonal bushfire zone in Australia. We have a constant serious fire risk for up to six months of the year. The main tool is to be prepared well in advance. Fire proof your property as best you can, have a good escape plan (including personal papers, pets, and medications), and pay attention to the alerts and conditions. In particular learn how fast fire can spread, especially in windy conditions. You might think you have plenty of time, but you almost certainly won't. Get out early.
Best tool is to have controlled burnings before fire season, this is widely known as the best way to keep wildfires in check. You can board up your homes or do whatever you want but stopping the fires from getting out of control in the first place is far more valuable.
@@vigour6786 Agree with this. I would love to be able to do it annually. But getting the permits to do it is difficult here, and the fines for doing it without one are steep and it can invalidate your property and house insurance. Controlled burns at the right time could also be classed as preparations.
Yeah, I was just thinking that any Australian could tell you that dry grass and wind are what fires love. It's great that they're getting the word out, but it's not exactly a recent revelation.
I'm in Northern California. We had that run of Tubbs ('17), Camp ('18), Kincade ('19), and Glass ('20) and they were all wind-driven nightmares. I've seen our community improve warning systems, evacuation plans, and pre-staging equipment ahead of fire season in the last few years. Appreciated this video for some of the scientific aspects of this progress. Great animations, too. Thanks for the video!
its 2:30am Jan 7th in los angeles and we are about to have the largest windstorm since 2011 hit us in a few hours.... an expected wind gust expected to hit some areas upto 120 in the foothills... and this video popped on my late night feed.... i hope this isnt an omen....
I am really sorry about what’s happening in your community right now. This video in your feed does appear to have been an omen. I first watched it when it came out in September and as I’ve been watching the news on January 9, 2025 I came back to watch the video again. I hope you’re safe.
During my childhood in San Bernardino, CA in the 1960's, I still have vivid memories of seeing a forest fire in the mountains that covered the entire skyline. It was a fearful sight particularly in the evening when it lit up the night sky. My dad hired out to help fight the fires by hauling supplies up the fire roads to support the firefighters. We were always worried for his safety.
In the 1991 Laguna Beach Fire in Laguna Beach, CA, a community at the city's highest point was absolutely devastated, nearly every home lost. And yet one house survived in the middle of the most-badly damaged street in the city, almost completely unscathed. Why? Its owner was a retired firefighter who had had his house custom-built there to his own design and material specifications. He had been cited numerous times for building "out of code," including the iceplant in his landscaping (city council thought it s "ugly" and detracted from the ppearance of the neighborhood). After the fire, they looked again, and discovered that this man, who had spent a career fighting fire for them, built him home to be as fireproof as possible, from flame-retardant materials to a design of sealant and insulation that allowed no entry for hot air and embers, to the "ugly" succulent iceplant landscaping that acted as a living moat. (Nothing says "ugly" like a burned-out neighborhood.) Fire codes changed to incorporate some of his ideas, because of the trial by fire that house survived.
I believe it was in 1993. I was a junior in high school in Irvine and ready to evacuate with my family - sleeping fully clothed, car keys in pocket, two cars packed, ready to grab our cat and put her in the carrier. I had friends who did evacuate. School was out for several days after that as families came back home and unpacked.
If historically Los Angeles suburbs are so evidently fire-prone, then why would people want to invest their hard-earned savings in buying into fire-prone neighborhoods? -- If you built using stone then at least it would be fire-proof, because in the tourist compounds on the Malibu Coast Road, you can see that all the Buddha statues they were selling survived intact and the rest burned.
@johnnyjohnson2268 Build using stone in LA? Facings over fireproof insulation and metal framing, sure. Unreinforced masonry, a possible death sentence (we also have earthquakes). It’s remarkable how clueless people are everywhere about planning for natural disasters. LA County in November passed a bond measure for improving fire services by about 5%. But only about 1/3 of the ballots had a vote marked either way. 2/3 of the voters apparently were clueless. And I’ll bet a number of southern home water pipes froze and busted again despite previous experience with plunging temperatures. And how many tornadoes damaged shingle roofs are being poorly rebuilt, destined to peel off again? Heck, there are about 12 states that have NO statewide building codes (there is sometimes local enforcement).
We've known lot of this for decades. Back in the early '90s I was working with the USFS in coastal central California as an archeologist and most of what this episode discusses was covered in our fire safety preparation information for when were working out in the field.
No one wants to acknowledge it because it isn’t a popular sentiment but we can’t keep building sprawling homes in these areas. All over LA, the neighborhoods that were burned were right up to the canyons that accelerated the fire growth with those downwinds. There’s a term in climate change research called managed retreat and we have to be ok with not rebuilding suburban sprawl in areas most at risk of fires.
I'm just a few miles from the Marshall fire. One of the problems they had was that alerts were opt-in in that county. You have to sign up. My county was also opt-in, but has since moved to an all-inclusive system. For the love of god, research your county and sign up if possible. We've had similar conditions (dry fuel, wind) a number of times since then. It's just dumb luck that nothing has sparked since then. My bugout plan is designed specifically around a fast moving fire in my urban area. The few other bugout disasters possible are way less likely and can mostly make due with my fire preps.
Evacuation routes planned ahead of time and marked with high visibility markers. Different colors to help with traffic flow. If leaving after 10am, please take B route to help reduce congestion. Etc.
@@TormekiaAnd traffic control. Sometimes an obstacle to a timely evacuation is heavy traffic (outside the fire zone) blocking escape routes, caused by people drawn by curiosity to the area merely to watch.
8:46 the fact that CU Boulder was one of the major institutions in this study and then to have the Marshall fire must’ve felt weird for the researchers. One hand more data and data you’re familiar with given your local knowledge, the other hand is it mayve been your home that burned. As a CU student I applaud all who were involved in this study and hope it can help us in the future
The Marshall Fire was definitely a strange one. I remember watching a news special on it, and behind the reporter, it took eight seconds for a field to become a sheet of flames. The newsdesk anchors interrupted her with, “That’s really scary. You need to move, now!” She didn’t even look behind her, just scrambled back in the van. I still think the Hayman Fire was the scariest one I’ve seen… probably not the best time for a summer-long equestrian camp! I reeked of smoke more than horse when I got home
@pbsterra I'm a Wildland Firefighter. The science of climate and fire is my business. Thank you so much for tying it all in at the end by making it clear that individual homeowners and communities have the responsibility to prepare. There's another 2 important reasons that fires are bigger and more destructive that was not really pointed out in the video. The first is more overgrowth of fuels in our wild areas and forests, largely created by a century of immediate fire suppression and also lack of active fuels management such as control burning and thinning. And the second is a continued encroachment of urban areas further and further into forest and grasslands without enforced fire resistant building codes. These need to be addressed! I'd love to provide more insight if you're planning on doing another piece on wildfire.
From the northern Kootaney region in B.C. One of the worst fire seasons long time locals around my area can remember. A 2500 acre fire got within 1km of my property in July. Could see huge flames and trees candling on the mountain. It was fuelled by 3 weeks of 35 degree weather. Which is very rare for the area. Fortunately for steep mountain slopes and mature wet forest in the valleys. The Fires didn’t burn any homes. But took off thousand and thousands of acres of higher elevation Fir and Spruce forests. Scary thing to watch.
California has removed almost 100% of the old growth trees in the state, and has replaced all of these hectares with invasive grasses & easy to grow manzanitas/madrones. The species they removed happen to hold water late into summer, and are quite fire resistant. The majority of these fires start in timberlands, which are comprised of thickets that contain species with little to no fire adaptations, planted in absurd densities to maximize timber quantity. This is just what the process of desertification looks like, and it wont stop until the state subsidized timber industry ceases business as usual. Looking at you Sierra Pacific Industries, the worst offenders on all of these fronts, and coincidentally the people who operate the timberlands circumnavigating all of the worst fires in California history.
California needs to do what nations near the Sahara are doing in Africa to bring back some wet spots and life to what used to be grasslands and is currently an expanding desert. Check out Planet Wild's video on it if you haven't seen it already. It's a fantastic rewilding program.
The election is coming up, and one of the candidates wants to shut down this kind of research. If that happens we'll have less understanding of natural disasters, and insurance will become increasingly unaffordable if we can't understand how to prevent homes from being destroyed.
@@draconightwalker4964 Republican dogma is government should do as little as possible so private industry can make a profit taking care of things instead. If private industry doesnt actually do that... oh well
Thank you for mentioning insurance. There really isn’t separate insurance markets. Think of everything insured as being under one umbrella. What affects one thing under the umbrella affects everything under the umbrella. Example is 5:35 the FAST Act. In 2017 the Trump administration gutted the surface transportation act. Now trains could be as long as they liked and brakes and braking systems didn’t have to be inspected as regularly. Trucks and trains no longer had to worry about loads or transporting highly reactive chemicals together. That led directly to the East Palestine rail disaster and a string of trucking accidents that resulted in damaging chemical fires. Everyone’s property insurance went up nationwide and everyone’s auto insurance went up nationwide since cars share the same roads as the trucks that can haul anything. When property gets destroyed by a hurricane in Texas all property that is insured is going to cost more. Insurance companies leave areas because of this, it would unfairly raise insurance costs for everyone.
I agree, one side would shut down the research and also PBS reporting on it. It's either private industry would fix it (and only if they can make a profit) or it won't get fixed.
Two more factors to consider in the LA fires: the native vegetation in the greater Los Angeles area WANTS to burn (it evolved to spread seeds ONLY during fires) and the single-family home sprawl of LA with 95% wood construction has guaranteed these types of tragedies will continue to happen. The idea that rebuilding these fire-prone areas with more fuel for the fires makes us resilient and not stupid is what gets me.
@@fredeerickbays True, but the sad truth is that some sensationalizing is needed. For decades, scientists just calmly presented the data. Nobody listened. I agree that it isn't right, but it IS human nature. I hate to say it, but if you don't get the apes excited, they won't do anything. Unfortunately, its often the scheisters and the heisters who understand this all too well. Scientists have learned that you have to engage people emotionally if you want to get them to think about what you're saying. It's not enough to just hand people a spreadsheet.
The problem is Fire management in So Cal there is almost no work done to prevent rapid fires. In my part Colorado they do massive control burns every year. Having lived in So Cal for over 60 years there is just no brush and grass clearance. So we had a fire here a couple of years ago and I was amazing how little burn here versus the fires I witnessed in So Cal.
I survived the 11/8/2018 Paradise, California Camp Fire. It was caused by the criminal negligence of Pacific Gas & Electric Company, which they admitted in a court of law. There are currently no checks on human greed, ignorance, corruption and stupidity. Unless and until they are implemented these human-caused nightmares will continue unabated . . . full stop.
Would add living in the deep woods in large numbers is a newish phenomenon. Add drought and you have a recipe for a disaster one tiny spark can ignite.
Welcome to Anglo Saxon neoliberalism. You will keep suffering because of the culture you were raised. In America you are raised to believe that government and taxes are evil and big businesses are busy bribing politicians and doing regulatory capture. Go travel the world and learn a different way of thinking.
You say that like a random car pulling off or crashing off the 5 or any other highway doesn't set a brush fire with a hot exhaust pipe. In certain conditions, fire spreads more rapidly, those conditions have occurred more at higher levels over decades. PG&Es negligence is unacceptable and criminal, though how many do we have every year deliberately set by psychos or accidentally by morons? This particular video isn't about politics, it's observations and analysis.
@@warpdriveby Yes, and what is different. The transmission lines near Paradise, built and maintained to inadequate standards weren’t new. Ignitions caused by failures aren’t new. Story is talking about what’s different in last couple decades.
@@billsmith5109 And my direct experience clearly shows that nothing being done now will make anything more than marginal differences. And keep in mind that these firefighters have exactly zero incentive to do anything that might cost them their highly-compensated, taxpayer-funded jobs.
This is great material. But the significance of wind for property damages merits more attention. 1) Since highly wind-driven fires generate a lot of embers, that means hardening structures against embers, as was pointed out. 2) CalFire used the words "urban fire storm" to describe the phase of the Camp fire within the town of Paradise. Basically, a LOT of the loss of homes was not from the wildfire per se, it was burning structure to structure. So if homes are close together, they need to be less flammable. This was why so many homes were lost in Coffey Park (Santa Rosa): it was a dense, (more) affordable neighborhood that got an exception from certain standards relating to fire resistance. Low e windows make a big difference in this regard too. 3) True, grass fires spread incredibly quickly, but they're not as hot as those burning woody fuels. Keeping the fuel loads low and making sure a fast spreading grass fire can't ladder up into tree canopies is important pre-fire preparation.
@rjhgn88 not to mention it would also help with the relatively frequent flash flood issues, I wish spain had reintroduced the eurasian beaver 5 years ago, or at least that their recent tragedy will open their eyes.
I was on vacation in Palm spring when the Nixon fire hit (it’s cheaper in the summer and everything’s ACed anyways). Even though the fire was over the mountain, the smoke was so bad we decided to leave. It went from completely clear to blocking out the sky in less than an hour!
I've watched almost all of the Weathered PBS episodes now & this youtube. I've just gotta say that Maiya is an incredible host & communicator. I really hope her career is long & prosperous. As is much deserved, such a great speaker & well informed too
Living through a fire like the Thomas fire teaches hard lessons in preparation. Clearing debris and creating defensible space before fire season can make all the difference, giving your home a fighting chance when every second counts.
Any other indigenous thinking what I’m thinking? Not once were prescribed fires even mentioned! We’ve been doing it since time immemorial for a reason folks! Helps burn away the extra flammable brush and grasses before they become fuel for large wildfires like these! Plus it’s how you get delicious plants like blueberries!!
I'm European American and I was thinking why aren't they recommending burning when the risk of fire spread is lowest? I guess too much of a paradigm shift. Fire bad. I hope this changes. Fire-maintained plants are beautiful and they are going to keep dying out with fire suppression and resulting catastrophic fires. Stuff has to burn sometime so we have to choose a good time.
Here in California non native annual grass covers most of the state. These grasses dry out the soil making native plants, that have evolved to burn, dryer with less moisture in their trunks and stems. Prescribed burns are very difficult here. Also in an area like LA the hill sides will start to collapse creating destructive mudslides
@@grsafran sounds like non native species are the problem and not prescribed fires in that case. Native plants would also very much help prevent landslides because they also tend to have deeper root systems to hold soils in place. Similar to how native grasses in the prairies up in the northern part of the continent are. Prescribed is definitely not the only part of a solution, but one of many, prioritizing native plants is another part of that equation
I Live in Newfoundland the 16th largest island (this does not include the larger mainland portion of the province-Labrador) in the world. Based on the 20-year average, there are 118 wildfires burning 22,993 hectares in Newfoundland and Labrador each year. This is a relatively small amount burnt area of the total forests on the island. The island of Newfoundland has 5.2 million hectares of forest, which is about 15 million acres. The reason forest fires are so low is the large amount of rainfall, fog and some snowfall that generally occurs during the April to June spring period when there is also a large accumulation of dry and dead underbrush from the previous year. Should that precipitation decrease then the conditions for forest fires are far greater since there is usually high winds associated with that dryness. My point is that it is not hard to see how higher winds and higher temperatures with a decreased rainfall could easily fuel a massive fire anywhere around the world. It would be interesting if the study mentioned in this video were applied to this region and compare the results since the high wind factor is also prevalent here but the precipitation is much higher and spread over a larger period during fire season.
For now, Eastern Canadian Maritimes still have the AMOC working in your favor. That brings up warm moist air with the warm waters from the equator up past Canada and toward Greenland and Iceland. But...there's talk of the AMOC becoming sluggish or slowing and then what? With no warm moist air and the warm current moving along the Atlantic northward, the region around England/Scotland is suppose to cool rapidly and also get drier. I am not sure what Newfoundland would experience. But how could it be similar to your present air circulation?
Holy sh*t! This video was so prescient. The description of the 2021 Colorado and the 2023 Lahaina fires mirrors what happened to Pacific Palisades in L.A.
The original title was "Is This Type of Fire IMPOSSIBLE to Stop?" The new title (as of this writing) is "Why the LA Fires are Almost Impossible to Stop" They didn't predict anything, they change the title for clicks.
So many of these fires were started by wind knocking down power lines. The more cost-effective solution than fire-hardening each and every building is to underground those risky power lines.
This measure applies to ignition in X fraction of fires. Human carelessness, accidents, and natural lightning will continue. There's one instance of total idiocy sticks in my mind: a garbage truck spontaneously ignited, as will happen. Instead of using good judgement, the driver pulled his truck off the paved road and dumped the fire into dry brush at the roadside. Yippee, no direct impact on traffic, and totally according to company policy. But again, very poor judgment.
Ok, this is actually kind of comical to me. I have known most of my life that grass fires are both the fastest and highest risk of life. Most of the natives of the American Plains feared fire more than any other threat for this very reason. This is a great example of science catching up to what ancient peoples already knew but modern peoples have allowed themselves to forget.
A lot of part of the world (even not first world counties) construct houses with brick and concrete, shouldn’t be time that at least some parts pf USA use this method?
For 8 years now I've been trying to get a drone program to fight fires when they are small. On my main channel, I have a playlist about fire-extinguishing drones.
I have worked for the BC Wildfire Service since 2017, and I cannot overstate the importance of firesmarting one's home and property. It is a stark contrast between the survival rate of homes. You also help protect the personal on the ground who may be desperately trying to save homes that lack firesmarting in the face of massive flame fronts.
This clip was helpful. Been studying wildfires relative to risk to insurance. I been harvesting data, found it interesting that the number of wildfires are NOT increasing, the acreage burned is volatile annually, but not showing a trend up or down. The number of wild fires that actually destroy a structure is only 0.25%, and those are the ones I am concerned about. Those fires have been increasing and the structures burned have obviously increase. The number of homes that are in the wildland urban interface (at risk) have increased substantially in the last few decades, and dry conditions, high winds, and ignition has always been the ingredients to large conflagrations such as the Chicago Fire of October 1871, during the same week, those same winds cause Peshtigo, WI fire near green bay that killed over 1100 people.
We came close to needing to evacuate during the 2020 Oregon fires. I'd akready done a lot of emergency preparedness work and packed my car even though we were in the green zone. As if that weren't enough, it was windy and an idiot up the street decided it would be a good time to burn his garbage. Fortunately, he only set his house on fire because the whole area could have gone up. I've continued to build my family's disaster preparations: bug out bags, water storage, landscaping to retain and direct water where needed, fire resistant siding and roofing, communications, etc. A new resource which may be helpful, if people don't already know about it, is the app Watch Duty. It's updated far more regularly than a lot of other resources and is a great addition to emergency apps.
I'm Polish and I don't even know if I live in a fire country. We have way more firefighters than most countries in the world. Idk why, but this is how we've always been.
I'm proud of Polish fire fighters! They are constantly ready to go and help fight fires anywhere in Europe with dozens of various fire trucks and other equipment that makes them self-sufficient.
In our cities, there is a higher percentage of firefighters per capita. Our less inhabited areas have relative few wildfire dedicated people. You would think we would have many more. 5he Lahaina fires there were way too many failures even had the winds been very low.
@@Homerow1 Except forests may as well not exist when they're burning constantly. The trees in the area are well adapted to forest fires, not the humans living there
@@Homerow1 Good point, especially if you open a quarry above a village, and then rain and floods let the '"rolling stones" use the gravity. The recent case of floods in Bosnia and Herzegpvina.
Last massive fire experience I had was with the creek fire. We had to be evacuated, and even acter being able to come back, we lived for months with ashes raining down on us, and intense snoke that would cause bloody noise almost daily. Thats when I decided I had enough and wanted to move away. I always wanted to move, as the dry weather has always been a struggle for me. Sad to see almost wverywere, even in tropical places, wildfires are happening more and more often. It won't be long until everywere will have to deal with it.
Thank you so much for continuing to educate us all on global climax issues. I still feel the need to clarify one thing. There is no such thing as number “a” being “x” times smaller than number “b”. It is not the same as saying number “b” is “x” times bigger than number “a”, it is in fact a completely illogical mathematical expression such as 1/0. Thank you and sorry. Absolutely no disrespect intended.
Battalion Chief / Fire Marshal for South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue. This a major concern for us in the Tahoe Basin. The Angora Fire and the Caldor Fires both were traumatic experiences for our entire community. Defensible space is a major topic for us as we navigate the fire threat and also the California insurance crisis with so many locals having to move to the California Fair Plan. As a city, we've recently adopted the 'Zone 0' in an ordinance to help our community adjust to this changing culture. California will adopt Zone 0 within the next couple of years which will really be an interesting shift for all in how we view landscaping. Thank you! Great episode with important information!
I just read a 2021 NPR article about how California was trying to adopt methods used in the Southeast especially Florida. And their technique uses a lot of Native practices. But it said California is years behind.
Australian here, in the state of Victoria. A big factor in a bad bushfire (wildfire) we had here back in 2009 was the speed, driven by wind. It was something not seen before. We only really have one mountain range in Australia, the Great Dividing Range which follows the East coast. Mostly wooded and undeveloped and that's where a lot of the bad fires are. The native eucalyptus trees are another problem here, a mature tree is full of volatile flammable oil. Something from the stats here is that the vast majority of deaths from wildfire occur in dwellings 50 to 100m from forest. I have to say that our firefighting resources included water bombing aircraft leased from the USA - our summer is your winter . As the fire seasons extend to more of the year there may be a time where we can't get your planes as they will be in use. Bit scary.
it's controversial to some, but where I live we get yearly wildfires in the tens and hundreds of thousands of acres, and they're starting to prevent the enormous fires by... starting a bunch of smaller fires. because we tried too hard to prevent fires in the area, we've actually caused a massive buildup of flammable plant matter that goes up like kindling every summer, if we burn all that in fall and spring in a controlled fashion, it won't be one gigantic fire when it happens.
Prescribed burns shouldn’t be controversial at all. Many forests thrive after small fires, and some plants and trees actually need fire to propagate. It’s the extremely hot, raging ones that burn everything away that cause so much trouble. I’m glad we have started to course correct and forest management has focused on prevention with prescribed fires.
@prettygneissproductions I'm glad that people are starting to realize this. Still, most people don't know this. Heck, the majority of ecosystems in the us need fire
Having studied how wildfires could affect post fire rainfall-runoff relationships in various landscapes of the US, my studies were focused on fires up until 2003; these were slow fires in a manner of speaking. But today, as your program rightly shows, wildfire behavior can be fast-moving. That seems new. Having said that, i am today very aware of what activities i do (eg. driving or flying for pleasure) and what manufactured products i consume and how they are adding to the destruction of the world and its life forms. I dont think im being hyperbolic when i say a heat dome could form one day sooner than later with temperatures above 130 degrees F. It will kill. That type of landscape level death will make subsequent year wildfires a terror. I dont want to add to that death and misery.
Very interesting, I do think we can build structures more resistance to fire and wind with materials engineering and aerodynamic's. When I look at the ridge and the drop perhaps there is a way to send the wind up instead of down. I get the weird idea of a skateboard ramp with wind turbines to capture energy lol. I'm also interested in a idea I've had to make a solar powered irrigation system with built in dehumidifier technology to bring the humidity back into the ground water table which could keep vegetation from drying out a drop at a time until rain falls.
i think putting power lines into the ground would also be helpful to prevent fires. A fire needs ignition (5:58) and powerlines are a common cause for fires (9:21). getting rid of powerlines on wooden poles can probably prevent some fires.
From my own personal experience of when I worked from the fire camp in N. Ca for the French Gulch Wildfire and the Bear Wild Fire (these 2 separate large fires ended up merging into one). Even back than I quickly saw the technology and level of expertise on hand working on tackling such an operation. I know that since than the experts and sharp minds we having working in this field could only have gotten better and more skilled in what they need to do in fighting these monstrous raging beasts.
Really great information. Thanks for sharing, and wild publication date right before these fires ravaged our local community here in Los Angeles. Documenting these 2025 LA wildfires/Palisades Fire was so eye opening to how fragile SoCal is and hiw easy it is for these natural disasters to incinerate entire neighborhoods. I’ve never seen the Santa Ana winds that strong before and wonder if they can get even faster in future disasters.
The pressure applied by the wind acts as a bellows which makes the fire burn hotter, making extinguishing the fire more difficult. Homes in fire-prone areas should be built from materials which don't burn or don't burn hotter when wind pressure is applied. Brick chimneys survived the fires because brick is rock or baked earth which doesn't burn and doesn't burn hotter when wind pressure is applied.
it would be nice instead of keep saying "this is a new discovery" and then switching topic, it could be formatted in a way that actually gets to the point
I was on the ferry coming back to Chelan when the Pioneer Fire started this year. We were fifteen minutes from the start, and it was already going up the hill. Fires go FAST up hills like this. My Grandfather, who was with us, had fought many fires on those hills when he was younger, working for the forest service. He said that they should be sending in air support immediately or it would grow fast, given the past and future weather (dry and windy). They sent a mop up crew instead, which was quickly overwhelmed and useless. 38k acres and four months later, it’s finally out, after threatening the town of Stehekin and hurting the local economy. Wind is absolutely the driving force, but as we have more drought, and more heat waves, this will only get worse. I’ve lived in California and Washington a long time. We didn’t used to get “smoke season” even though fire season has always been very much a thing. Please vote for representatives and policies that support your local forest management. We need to fund these agencies so they can send out a dang helicopter when it’s really needed, even though the fire seems small.
Grew up in rural North San Diego County in a house on a ridge surrounded by an Avocado grove that made it through three major fires. My parents sure didn't build for wildfires, but somehow managed to do the right things anyway with a white quartz rock roof and siding made of redwood. They also had a large lawn area in front of the house, bordered by ice plant on the ridge cliff. All of those things saved that place from being destroyed although we lost lots of trees and suffered damage to our tractors.
Thank you guys! I dream of my own home one day and I will definitely take into consideration fire proof material. Like. I realise there's so much more to the topic of material and planning!
AWESOME & very INFORMATIVE !!!!!! I live in the Miami area and it rained 3 times THIS WEEK, so FIRE is NOT something we tend to worry about down here …… watched SEVERAL of your videos 😎🌞😎 & usually ❤ the content 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👍🏾👍🏾 YOU 💯🎯💯
The 1994 Highway 41 fire in coastal central California burned 30,000 acres in 6 hours. It eventually burned 42,000 acres and 42 homes. Most of the acreage burned was in Los Padres National Forest.
I would blame another factor in these fire storms. My sister, in San Diego, had been dealing with major flooding throughout Southern California. Unusually wet winters that allowed brush and grasses to thrive. Once growing reached the point of mature brush, the environment went in the opposite direction, Dry and Hot. Ince that brush catches fire with the Santa Anna winds to become a raging monster.
The Eagle Creek fires were insane. And the craziest part was when it finally did rain it went from 0 to 100. Like it was dry and smoeky for months. And the rain hit so hard i thought someone was shooting at me and i dropped to the ground. And looked up and it was just the hard rain
I built my home in a wooded area of Rancho Plaos Verdes in 2008. I had to install fire sprinkles and the Fire Dept was on the list of plan's checkers to say what I could plant, how many and how far from the structure.
I know a 78 year old bloke with an orange face that doesn't have a clue about any of this. If only he had been to school and had the ability to learn...
@@toogsintheteeth Dude, people that understand science don't blame natural disasters on people. The orange moron doesn't even understand that sea-level rise means less beachfront property, that tariffs are paid by the US consumer, and that political asylum has nothing to do with mental conditions. The US is the stupidest country in the world, and your inanity simply provides more evidence of that standing.
Just the other day, I drove through the area the Caldor fire destroyed for the first time - along highway 50 going up to south lake tahoe from the valley. I was devastated and heartbroken seeing how much of the lush pine forest I've seen my whole life was reduced to burned piles of trees and clear cut scars. It was insane how rapidly that fire got out of control, and how close it came to getting into the tahoe basin itself. Christmas valley, on the eastern side of Echo summit was barely spared itself by some miracle
I have been trying to "FireSmart" my BC house for ten years by removing trees within 30 meters, maintaining a green lawn, putting on a metal roof, and removing a wood deck. I still need to remove another deck, and put metal siding on the house and a shed instead of wood. This work is very expensive and time consuming. Fortunately I live in a generally damp climate, but some summers are very dry and my house is beside a large area of forest.
In the 2008 ‘The Shakeout Scenario’ report by USGS, the economic loss in S.Cal was estimated at $213 billion - with $65 billion of that due to the fires ignited during and spreading after ‘The Big One’. Ever since the 2017 Tubbs fire that took out the N.Cal neighborhoods in Santa Rosa, I’ve been preparing my S.Cal home to improve the odds of surviving a fire (plus earthquake, flood, wind, hail, lightning, and water/gas/electric interruptions). I have a 2 story wood home in the San Gabriel Valley near Pasadena which experiences Santa Ana winds seasonally. If those occur during a fire upwind I anticipate a shower of embers. So most of the grass is gone to be replaced by gravel with succulents and cacti going in for landscaping. I paid to have all the evergreens along the property line removed, including my neighbor’s. It already has a gravel coated steel roof. Ultimately I’m planning on exterior sprinklers on the house supplied by an on-site water tank and electric pump, with large batteries and a permanent propane generator for power backup. I also plan to douse the property with fire gel using a propane powered modified pressure washer. There isn’t a decent regional evacuation plan yet and this is the capital of gridlock on a normal day. So staying and fighting might be the default option. I’d just have to survive the neighbors on either side burning down. So I’m looking for a really fire resistant cladding (other than concrete or stucco - bad in an earthquake). Steel and mineral wool? Hopefully some company will get a product on the State Fire Marshall approved list.
We need ideas and solutions to protect ourselves from climate change as well as to combat climate change. We need to protect our forests and wildlife from fires as well as homes and people.
I lived in the high Sierra within the dense tall forests around Lake Tahoe, I lived on the north shore a mile above the lake, the advantage being that the wind came across the lake so fire was not as much of a threat as living in the middle of a large forest. I only had to worry about my careless neighbors below me, next to me within the immediate vicinity. They were too careless, too much of a threat. Eventually seeing many more fast fires, I sold my dream home and now struggling to find another home at 67.
I found the Canadian concept of "crossover" interesting. Thats not something we really think about here in Australia because the temperature in summer is usually above the relative humidity. 40c with relative humidity of 15% is pretty standard. From a young age we have fire prevention and preparedness drilled into us, especially since Black Saturday. A hot, windy day triggers a "catastrophic fire danger" day where schools and public gatherings are closed and everyone is encouraged to get to somewhere safe if you live in a fire prone area BEFORE a fire starts
0:04 Having a golf course water shrinking system around the streets and houses wetting down tress and grasses and homes would slow firer spread down and this can be turned on just by the flick of a switch also underground water tanks on properties would help to hold water for firer protection I hope this idea was helpful. Never seen this type of firer control anywhere
Evacuated twice this year from Borel and Red Hill fires. We know our home will eventually burn but we've added rooftop sprinklers and an oscillating deck top sprinkler to keep embers from igniting those vulnerable surfaces. If our home burns we will not rebuild here.
I survived a DESERT FIRE this last summer, twenty miles south of Phoenix. The Sonoran Desert here is the rainiest of all deserts in the world. We can get intense weed growth when it rains, that dries out and can behave like gasoline. A fire started a half-mile from me. I didn't know the county had issued a run for your life directive, and I did a measly rapid fill of a 200-gallon water tank on a little trailer, with a gas-powered water pump, two-inch hose and a genuine fire nozzle I'd bought in case this day came. I pulled the trailer to the edge of my property and watched as the Fast fire came. Fortunately for me, neighbors with their tractors, with scoops or dozers on the front, tore out the dry vegetation just ahead of the fire and won the battle just as the fire trucks finally arrived. The fire stopped immediately across the road from my property. -- I think the moral to the story is Sometimes we have to Stand & Fight. It was high risk. This fire had jumped much wider things than the dozed strip, like a paved road, because the fire created burning whirlwinds that carried flames ahead. The homes that didn't burn were ones where the owners always scraped away all vegetation from their acreages.
I was evacuated from the Rodeo-chediski fire in Arizona 2002 that burned 500,000 acres and within 10 feet of my mother in law’s house. I was on evacuation standby for the 2009 saddle fire in Flagstaff Az. I housed evacues from the Black Forest fire CO where me family still lives. I moved to Superior CO right after they rebuilt from the Marshall fire. I moved to Southern Oregon last summer (2024) in time for the Applegate fire and then suffered to smoke of the other fires there most of the summer. I’m clearing my land and cutting all the tree branches 8’ up. No wood fences or roofs! No rows of Roman trees or anything within 5’ of my house
We've known for a long time that we need to change how we build houses to be firestorm defensible. Out here and Arizona, many of us are taking that seriously these days.
The fact that you made this video just a few weeks before the recent wildfires in Southern California is borderline eerie. But everything you presented in this video was 100% confirmed with the recent disaster in Southern California. Absolutely amazing video. You have a new subscriber!
😂 this time not Simpsons predicted future! PBS predicted future! 😂😂😂
The original title was "Is This Type of Fire IMPOSSIBLE to Stop?"
The new title (as of this writing) is "Why the LA Fires are Almost Impossible to Stop"
They didn't predict anything, they change the title for clicks.
@@theshonen8899who cares
@@theshonen8899 For clicks as you claim or because it was relevant? Thanks for the downbeat comment. That's all we needed.
@@blongshanks77 You're a fool if you believe these people these fires were set to gain financial upper hand
I'm a volunteer firefighter and live in the Columbia River gorge, where fuels are dried by constant East winds in the summer from the dry Eastern side of Oregon and Washington. My house is perched on a hillside, so I cleared the brush from that hillside and put rocks (and solar panels on the south side) to create a fire break and defensive space around the structure as it would normally want to quickly climb the hill to the house. I also replaced the old vinyl siding with cement board siding. Basically, I always think of making the house more defensible to fire during a planned upgrade or maintenance. It's part of life now. Thanks for the content, as always
only b/c u have chosen to live where 35M other have also and the area can only support about 3M max with most of those N of SF Bay S CA should not have more then 200K ppl living below Monterrey. As for the central valley less then 100K there. U see U dont have the water for any more and still do the farming that must be done these to feed our badly over poped world. All of the water now used to support the 32M of over pop should be going to ag.
@@fredeerickbaysThe Columbia River Gorge is between Oregon and Washington State.
I live in the Deep Creek (Smoky Mountains area). Metal roofing, eaves, fascia, and siding is the way to go!
For all the fires we see, the one constant is fuel, if there is no fuel there is no fire.
@@fredeerickbaysyou're confused, maybe you should ask more questions instead of expressing ignorance
I think a lot of Australians have a bushfire trauma story. Nowadays if you live in the bush you’ll have a plan for evacuation/stay and fight. The video mentioned embers, we call that the ember attack which is a full on storm of embers before the main front comes. The embers will start fires in any leaf litter around your house including GUTTERS-so clean up anything that burns before the fire season and clean your gutters off leaves before summer. When the main front comes you may lose water pressure and you may lose power. Having a pump with a power source and a water tank may help you when the front comes. If the fire front is too big evacuate early-a lot of people die in their cars trying to escape but spot fires may have already started on your path out. So leave early. If you do have a tank, let the fire fighters know, they may need to use it. Wear clothes that are natural fibres-plastic or nylon will melt onto you-think jeans and long sleeves of cotton. An ember attack could set you on fire too.
Just yesterday 100 ppl died during flooding in Spain.
We will live in a totally stressed society - preparing all day long for somethin:
Drought, Fire, Heat, Heavy rain & Flooding, Mudslides - and after a while food shortages.
"ppl go nuts because of climate change effects over time" imo
LOL, "build according to science". and then they refer to houses! USA have the second highest large nation carbon emissions per capita! The three large nations with highest carbon emissions per capita are, worst first, Australia, USA, Canada. ALL three named nations have OPTIMAL conditions for the cheapest energy production, offshore mega windmill parks and thus also for green hydrogen production. We should have an atmospheric carbon content of 220 PPM and now have passed insane 420 PPM. Climate tripping point after climate tipping point are triggering these very years, like the increasingly thawing Candaian/Siberian tundras that emits CO2 and the even worse greenhouse gas, methane. Politicians in the 3 nations all have in common that they do not live up to their commitments in the Paris climate accord and have not presented credible plans to do so to date. Instead they use large amounts of taxpayer money on subsidising fossil fuels in 2024!
The worlds largest ongoing transition project were signed in Jan 2023 and will transition 220 million Europeans away from fossil/nuclear fuel in just a decade by raising offshore mega windmills in the North Sea. NOTHING but ignorant and incompetent politicians that happily take money from the fossil fuel industry stand in the way for these three nations to make a simple copy/paste of this project and make their nations emissions considerable less fast while laughing all the way to the bank.
IF anyone want to "build according to science" offshore windmill parks should be the logical obvious answer!
@Mike-zx1kx Actually, the biggest carbon producers are China, the USA and India in that order.
I live in Australia and my state receives 80% of its electricity from residential rooftop solar and the government is offering 0% loans with no upfront costs for people who want solar systems installed.
During summer the residential rooftop solar systems actually create over 6 times more electricity than the electricity consumption but the federal government has placed laws that keep one coal power station operating.
We humans already have the technology and resources to be completely fossil fuel free in under 2 years but we lack the intelligence and willingness to just do it.
@@itt2055 CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere - trivial enough in 2024 :))
That's why we pay attention to the “historical emissions” - emissions of a country per capita over the last 200 years (Industrial Revolution)
More:
Since the beginning of 'globalization' we have attributed the resulting emissions to *the client* - not the producer. At the end of the 1990s, China was just beginning to become an industrial country - producing mainly for the West.
With that in mind - the biggest emitters live in the 'West'
Being honest is a problem for them - for obvious reasons. You?
@@itt2055 PER CAPITA Australia now are the large nation with highest emissions. China not even close to Australian emissions per capita. 1 Australian emits same as 3-4 in China, per capita.
It might be so that solar panels in private households are common, as it should be. However decades of Australian politicians ignoring science, backed by Murdoch media´s lies and a close connections, also monetarily, between mining companies and fossil fuel abusing exploitation, from coal to fracking, caused Australia to overtake USA, that have held the position as worst large nation emitters per capita for decades.
I am sadly aware of how Murdoch media and others for long, have used country to country comparisons to promote ignorance and reality for the populations but each nation decides own politics and what to exploit or not, what science to relate to, what treaties to sign etc..It are the per nation, per capita emission level that truly matters and what each have to work to bring down, inside own nation. All named nations have signed the Paris climate accord but none of the three have politicians that have presented credible plans to get to the signed goal. It´s beyond a disgrace. Australia not long ago got a new governments that supposedly should be more centre and yet they recently approved more than 70 new fracking sites. Fracking that causes huge emissions, local earthquakes and possibility to seriously destroy groundwater´s ability to be used, are only surpassed in stupidity to the tarsand exploitation Canada do. USA´s two main parties now battling for a term, BOTH support private companies earning money on fracking and subsidising fossil fuels for taxpayer money while ignoring their nations optimal conditions for the cheaper and sustainable option offshore windmill parks offer. Problem truly is that we NOW are OUT OF TIME! There no longer are time to wait 2-3 election cycles and hope some in the three nations "wise up". Large parts of the world have to stand on the sideline watching your nations ignorance and denialism destroy the planets regulating systems. WE RIGHT NOW live in the largest species extinction period since the asteroid hit Yucatan 66 million years ago. Darwin said: "survival of the fittest". When he said fittest he did not mean strongest but rather the most adaptable to change. Politicians, media, population in the named nations are prime examples of inability to adapt. Crimes against humanity should be the minimum charges against the deceivers! As a citizen of Australia you do not even seem to understand the objective reality of your own nations massive collective emissions. I do not think you are dumb but I do think you are victim of a coordinated bamboozle. Unfortunately one that have gone so far, that it threaten life on the entire planet.
I live in a seasonal bushfire zone in Australia. We have a constant serious fire risk for up to six months of the year. The main tool is to be prepared well in advance. Fire proof your property as best you can, have a good escape plan (including personal papers, pets, and medications), and pay attention to the alerts and conditions.
In particular learn how fast fire can spread, especially in windy conditions. You might think you have plenty of time, but you almost certainly won't. Get out early.
Best tool is to have controlled burnings before fire season, this is widely known as the best way to keep wildfires in check. You can board up your homes or do whatever you want but stopping the fires from getting out of control in the first place is far more valuable.
@@vigour6786
Agree with this. I would love to be able to do it annually. But getting the permits to do it is difficult here, and the fines for doing it without one are steep and it can invalidate your property and house insurance.
Controlled burns at the right time could also be classed as preparations.
Yeah, I was just thinking that any Australian could tell you that dry grass and wind are what fires love. It's great that they're getting the word out, but it's not exactly a recent revelation.
I'm in Northern California. We had that run of Tubbs ('17), Camp ('18), Kincade ('19), and Glass ('20) and they were all wind-driven nightmares. I've seen our community improve warning systems, evacuation plans, and pre-staging equipment ahead of fire season in the last few years. Appreciated this video for some of the scientific aspects of this progress. Great animations, too. Thanks for the video!
How are the fires hot enough to burn metal, but not destroy the trees....?
@@chrisgilbert956🤔
You must have good politicians who plan for emergencies.
its 2:30am Jan 7th in los angeles and we are about to have the largest windstorm since 2011 hit us in a few hours.... an expected wind gust expected to hit some areas upto 120 in the foothills... and this video popped on my late night feed.... i hope this isnt an omen....
I am really sorry about what’s happening in your community right now. This video in your feed does appear to have been an omen. I first watched it when it came out in September and as I’ve been watching the news on January 9, 2025 I came back to watch the video again.
I hope you’re safe.
I hope for the safety of you and ALL your neighbors. I couldn’t believe the winds until I saw a SEMI that had been flipped by the winds.
reading this in the future realizing that it was indeed an omen 😭
Hope yall made it thru ok.
😓💔
During my childhood in San Bernardino, CA in the 1960's, I still have vivid memories of seeing a forest fire in the mountains that covered the entire skyline. It was a fearful sight particularly in the evening when it lit up the night sky. My dad hired out to help fight the fires by hauling supplies up the fire roads to support the firefighters. We were always worried for his safety.
I lived in Redlands at that time, I remember.
In the 1991 Laguna Beach Fire in Laguna Beach, CA, a community at the city's highest point was absolutely devastated, nearly every home lost. And yet one house survived in the middle of the most-badly damaged street in the city, almost completely unscathed. Why? Its owner was a retired firefighter who had had his house custom-built there to his own design and material specifications. He had been cited numerous times for building "out of code," including the iceplant in his landscaping (city council thought it s "ugly" and detracted from the ppearance of the neighborhood). After the fire, they looked again, and discovered that this man, who had spent a career fighting fire for them, built him home to be as fireproof as possible, from flame-retardant materials to a design of sealant and insulation that allowed no entry for hot air and embers, to the "ugly" succulent iceplant landscaping that acted as a living moat. (Nothing says "ugly" like a burned-out neighborhood.) Fire codes changed to incorporate some of his ideas, because of the trial by fire that house survived.
I do envy concrete and stucco homes for that reason.
I remember a lot of iceplant being planted after that fire. Also brought in goats periodically to keep the fuel levels down.
I believe it was in 1993. I was a junior in high school in Irvine and ready to evacuate with my family - sleeping fully clothed, car keys in pocket, two cars packed, ready to grab our cat and put her in the carrier. I had friends who did evacuate. School was out for several days after that as families came back home and unpacked.
If historically Los Angeles suburbs are so evidently fire-prone, then why would people want to invest their hard-earned savings in buying into fire-prone neighborhoods? -- If you built using stone then at least it would be fire-proof, because in the tourist compounds on the Malibu Coast Road, you can see that all the Buddha statues they were selling survived intact and the rest burned.
@johnnyjohnson2268 Build using stone in LA? Facings over fireproof insulation and metal framing, sure. Unreinforced masonry, a possible death sentence (we also have earthquakes).
It’s remarkable how clueless people are everywhere about planning for natural disasters. LA County in November passed a bond measure for improving fire services by about 5%. But only about 1/3 of the ballots had a vote marked either way. 2/3 of the voters apparently were clueless. And I’ll bet a number of southern home water pipes froze and busted again despite previous experience with plunging temperatures. And how many tornadoes damaged shingle roofs are being poorly rebuilt, destined to peel off again? Heck, there are about 12 states that have NO statewide building codes (there is sometimes local enforcement).
We've known lot of this for decades. Back in the early '90s I was working with the USFS in coastal central California as an archeologist and most of what this episode discusses was covered in our fire safety preparation information for when were working out in the field.
Sometimes, science is just a tool for confirming the legitimacy of what we knew all along
No one wants to acknowledge it because it isn’t a popular sentiment but we can’t keep building sprawling homes in these areas. All over LA, the neighborhoods that were burned were right up to the canyons that accelerated the fire growth with those downwinds. There’s a term in climate change research called managed retreat and we have to be ok with not rebuilding suburban sprawl in areas most at risk of fires.
This is facts
You’re right
I'm just a few miles from the Marshall fire. One of the problems they had was that alerts were opt-in in that county. You have to sign up. My county was also opt-in, but has since moved to an all-inclusive system. For the love of god, research your county and sign up if possible.
We've had similar conditions (dry fuel, wind) a number of times since then. It's just dumb luck that nothing has sparked since then. My bugout plan is designed specifically around a fast moving fire in my urban area. The few other bugout disasters possible are way less likely and can mostly make due with my fire preps.
Evacuation routes planned ahead of time and marked with high visibility markers. Different colors to help with traffic flow.
If leaving after 10am, please take B route to help reduce congestion. Etc.
@@TormekiaAnd traffic control. Sometimes an obstacle to a timely evacuation is heavy traffic (outside the fire zone) blocking escape routes, caused by people drawn by curiosity to the area merely to watch.
Of course TH-cam recommends this after my house almost burns down in a fire hurricane
8:46 the fact that CU Boulder was one of the major institutions in this study and then to have the Marshall fire must’ve felt weird for the researchers. One hand more data and data you’re familiar with given your local knowledge, the other hand is it mayve been your home that burned. As a CU student I applaud all who were involved in this study and hope it can help us in the future
The Marshall Fire was definitely a strange one. I remember watching a news special on it, and behind the reporter, it took eight seconds for a field to become a sheet of flames. The newsdesk anchors interrupted her with, “That’s really scary. You need to move, now!” She didn’t even look behind her, just scrambled back in the van.
I still think the Hayman Fire was the scariest one I’ve seen… probably not the best time for a summer-long equestrian camp! I reeked of smoke more than horse when I got home
@pbsterra I'm a Wildland Firefighter. The science of climate and fire is my business. Thank you so much for tying it all in at the end by making it clear that individual homeowners and communities have the responsibility to prepare.
There's another 2 important reasons that fires are bigger and more destructive that was not really pointed out in the video. The first is more overgrowth of fuels in our wild areas and forests, largely created by a century of immediate fire suppression and also lack of active fuels management such as control burning and thinning. And the second is a continued encroachment of urban areas further and further into forest and grasslands without enforced fire resistant building codes. These need to be addressed! I'd love to provide more insight if you're planning on doing another piece on wildfire.
From the northern Kootaney region in B.C.
One of the worst fire seasons long time locals around my area can remember.
A 2500 acre fire got within 1km of my property in July. Could see huge flames and trees candling on the mountain.
It was fuelled by 3 weeks of 35 degree weather. Which is very rare for the area.
Fortunately for steep mountain slopes and mature wet forest in the valleys.
The Fires didn’t burn any homes. But took off thousand and thousands of acres of higher elevation Fir and Spruce forests.
Scary thing to watch.
California has removed almost 100% of the old growth trees in the state, and has replaced all of these hectares with invasive grasses & easy to grow manzanitas/madrones. The species they removed happen to hold water late into summer, and are quite fire resistant. The majority of these fires start in timberlands, which are comprised of thickets that contain species with little to no fire adaptations, planted in absurd densities to maximize timber quantity. This is just what the process of desertification looks like, and it wont stop until the state subsidized timber industry ceases business as usual. Looking at you Sierra Pacific Industries, the worst offenders on all of these fronts, and coincidentally the people who operate the timberlands circumnavigating all of the worst fires in California history.
California needs to do what nations near the Sahara are doing in Africa to bring back some wet spots and life to what used to be grasslands and is currently an expanding desert. Check out Planet Wild's video on it if you haven't seen it already. It's a fantastic rewilding program.
The election is coming up, and one of the candidates wants to shut down this kind of research. If that happens we'll have less understanding of natural disasters, and insurance will become increasingly unaffordable if we can't understand how to prevent homes from being destroyed.
why would they want to shut it down?
@@draconightwalker4964because they don't like getting fact checked
@@draconightwalker4964 Republican dogma is government should do as little as possible so private industry can make a profit taking care of things instead. If private industry doesnt actually do that... oh well
Thank you for mentioning insurance. There really isn’t separate insurance markets. Think of everything insured as being under one umbrella. What affects one thing under the umbrella affects everything under the umbrella. Example is 5:35 the FAST Act. In 2017 the Trump administration gutted the surface transportation act. Now trains could be as long as they liked and brakes and braking systems didn’t have to be inspected as regularly. Trucks and trains no longer had to worry about loads or transporting highly reactive chemicals together. That led directly to the East Palestine rail disaster and a string of trucking accidents that resulted in damaging chemical fires. Everyone’s property insurance went up nationwide and everyone’s auto insurance went up nationwide since cars share the same roads as the trucks that can haul anything. When property gets destroyed by a hurricane in Texas all property that is insured is going to cost more. Insurance companies leave areas because of this, it would unfairly raise insurance costs for everyone.
I agree, one side would shut down the research and also PBS reporting on it. It's either private industry would fix it (and only if they can make a profit) or it won't get fixed.
Two more factors to consider in the LA fires: the native vegetation in the greater Los Angeles area WANTS to burn (it evolved to spread seeds ONLY during fires) and the single-family home sprawl of LA with 95% wood construction has guaranteed these types of tragedies will continue to happen. The idea that rebuilding these fire-prone areas with more fuel for the fires makes us resilient and not stupid is what gets me.
She is such a great presenter. Glad they stopped the constant music.
disagree she emphasizes words to sensationalize rather then to add value to the reading.
@@fredeerickbays True, but the sad truth is that some sensationalizing is needed. For decades, scientists just calmly presented the data. Nobody listened. I agree that it isn't right, but it IS human nature. I hate to say it, but if you don't get the apes excited, they won't do anything. Unfortunately, its often the scheisters and the heisters who understand this all too well.
Scientists have learned that you have to engage people emotionally if you want to get them to think about what you're saying. It's not enough to just hand people a spreadsheet.
Her presentation is also annoying. Can we just get to the answer without dancing around it for the first half of the video?
Simp
The problem is Fire management in So Cal there is almost no work done to prevent rapid fires. In my part Colorado they do massive control burns every year. Having lived in So Cal for over 60 years there is just no brush and grass clearance. So we had a fire here a couple of years ago and I was amazing how little burn here versus the fires I witnessed in So Cal.
I survived the 11/8/2018 Paradise, California Camp Fire. It was caused by the criminal negligence of Pacific Gas & Electric Company, which they admitted in a court of law. There are currently no checks on human greed, ignorance, corruption and stupidity. Unless and until they are implemented these human-caused nightmares will continue unabated . . . full stop.
Would add living in the deep woods in large numbers is a newish phenomenon. Add drought and you have a recipe for a disaster one tiny spark can ignite.
Welcome to Anglo Saxon neoliberalism. You will keep suffering because of the culture you were raised. In America you are raised to believe that government and taxes are evil and big businesses are busy bribing politicians and doing regulatory capture. Go travel the world and learn a different way of thinking.
You say that like a random car pulling off or crashing off the 5 or any other highway doesn't set a brush fire with a hot exhaust pipe. In certain conditions, fire spreads more rapidly, those conditions have occurred more at higher levels over decades. PG&Es negligence is unacceptable and criminal, though how many do we have every year deliberately set by psychos or accidentally by morons? This particular video isn't about politics, it's observations and analysis.
@@warpdriveby Yes, and what is different. The transmission lines near Paradise, built and maintained to inadequate standards weren’t new. Ignitions caused by failures aren’t new. Story is talking about what’s different in last couple decades.
@@billsmith5109 And my direct experience clearly shows that nothing being done now will make anything more than marginal differences. And keep in mind that these firefighters have exactly zero incentive to do anything that might cost them their highly-compensated, taxpayer-funded jobs.
This is great material. But the significance of wind for property damages merits more attention. 1) Since highly wind-driven fires generate a lot of embers, that means hardening structures against embers, as was pointed out. 2) CalFire used the words "urban fire storm" to describe the phase of the Camp fire within the town of Paradise. Basically, a LOT of the loss of homes was not from the wildfire per se, it was burning structure to structure. So if homes are close together, they need to be less flammable. This was why so many homes were lost in Coffey Park (Santa Rosa): it was a dense, (more) affordable neighborhood that got an exception from certain standards relating to fire resistance. Low e windows make a big difference in this regard too. 3) True, grass fires spread incredibly quickly, but they're not as hot as those burning woody fuels. Keeping the fuel loads low and making sure a fast spreading grass fire can't ladder up into tree canopies is important pre-fire preparation.
We need to bring back beavers to prevent the land drying out so much
Came here to say the same thing!
@rjhgn88 not to mention it would also help with the relatively frequent flash flood issues, I wish spain had reintroduced the eurasian beaver 5 years ago, or at least that their recent tragedy will open their eyes.
@@ConstantChaos1 this guy watches planet wild and or leaf curious lol
@rjhgn88 and mossy earth lol
But I've always been an ecology nerd lol
@@ConstantChaos1 I'd like to see the return of beavers too, but Spain got a year's worth of rain in 8 hours, beaver dams are going to help with that.
I was on vacation in Palm spring when the Nixon fire hit (it’s cheaper in the summer and everything’s ACed anyways). Even though the fire was over the mountain, the smoke was so bad we decided to leave. It went from completely clear to blocking out the sky in less than an hour!
got goosebumps watching this after the LA fires in jan 2025, knowing this video was posted a month before it. proving this video true
atypical of 201
I've watched almost all of the Weathered PBS episodes now & this youtube. I've just gotta say that Maiya is an incredible host & communicator. I really hope her career is long & prosperous. As is much deserved, such a great speaker & well informed too
Seeing the Rim Fire for myself changed my life! Camp fire 2020
Living through a fire like the Thomas fire teaches hard lessons in preparation. Clearing debris and creating defensible space before fire season can make all the difference, giving your home a fighting chance when every second counts.
Also gotta make sure your neighbors do the same. You can do everything right but if your neighbor lives in a fire trap you're boned.
The LAFD did a documentary on wildfires back in 1962.
Imagine. Living in a dry place with no proper forest management and potential high winds.
Any other indigenous thinking what I’m thinking? Not once were prescribed fires even mentioned! We’ve been doing it since time immemorial for a reason folks! Helps burn away the extra flammable brush and grasses before they become fuel for large wildfires like these! Plus it’s how you get delicious plants like blueberries!!
I'm European American and I was thinking why aren't they recommending burning when the risk of fire spread is lowest? I guess too much of a paradigm shift. Fire bad. I hope this changes. Fire-maintained plants are beautiful and they are going to keep dying out with fire suppression and resulting catastrophic fires. Stuff has to burn sometime so we have to choose a good time.
We do controlled burns in Florida, you wouldn't believe all the whiners because of the temporary smoke. Idiots.
Here in California non native annual grass covers most of the state. These grasses dry out the soil making native plants, that have evolved to burn, dryer with less moisture in their trunks and stems. Prescribed burns are very difficult here. Also in an area like LA the hill sides will start to collapse creating destructive mudslides
@@grsafran sounds like non native species are the problem and not prescribed fires in that case. Native plants would also very much help prevent landslides because they also tend to have deeper root systems to hold soils in place. Similar to how native grasses in the prairies up in the northern part of the continent are. Prescribed is definitely not the only part of a solution, but one of many, prioritizing native plants is another part of that equation
this can be combined with herding sheep or goats
I Live in Newfoundland the 16th largest island (this does not include the larger mainland portion of the province-Labrador) in the world. Based on the 20-year average, there are 118 wildfires burning 22,993 hectares in Newfoundland and Labrador each year. This is a relatively small amount burnt area of the total forests on the island. The island of Newfoundland has 5.2 million hectares of forest, which is about 15 million acres. The reason forest fires are so low is the large amount of rainfall, fog and some snowfall that generally occurs during the April to June spring period when there is also a large accumulation of dry and dead underbrush from the previous year. Should that precipitation decrease then the conditions for forest fires are far greater since there is usually high winds associated with that dryness.
My point is that it is not hard to see how higher winds and higher temperatures with a decreased rainfall could easily fuel a massive fire anywhere around the world. It would be interesting if the study mentioned in this video were applied to this region and compare the results since the high wind factor is also prevalent here but the precipitation is much higher and spread over a larger period during fire season.
For now, Eastern Canadian Maritimes still have the AMOC working in your favor. That brings up warm moist air with the warm waters from the equator up past Canada and toward Greenland and Iceland. But...there's talk of the AMOC becoming sluggish or slowing and then what? With no warm moist air and the warm current moving along the Atlantic northward, the region around England/Scotland is suppose to cool rapidly and also get drier.
I am not sure what Newfoundland would experience. But how could it be similar to your present air circulation?
I love your show so much
Holy sh*t! This video was so prescient. The description of the 2021 Colorado and the 2023 Lahaina fires mirrors what happened to Pacific Palisades in L.A.
The original title was "Is This Type of Fire IMPOSSIBLE to Stop?"
The new title (as of this writing) is "Why the LA Fires are Almost Impossible to Stop"
They didn't predict anything, they change the title for clicks.
So many of these fires were started by wind knocking down power lines. The more cost-effective solution than fire-hardening each and every building is to underground those risky power lines.
The power lines are ooooooold. PG&E can't afford to maintain their infrastructure and turn a profit. So they don't.
That is happening. It takes a long time.
This measure applies to ignition in X fraction of fires. Human carelessness, accidents, and natural lightning will continue. There's one instance of total idiocy sticks in my mind: a garbage truck spontaneously ignited, as will happen. Instead of using good judgement, the driver pulled his truck off the paved road and dumped the fire into dry brush at the roadside. Yippee, no direct impact on traffic, and totally according to company policy. But again, very poor judgment.
@@Tormekiabs, they pay the CEO's too damn much money.
@@Tormekia So TURN OFF THE POWER once you know there is a risk. People can go without power much easier than going without homes.
You put this out 2 months before a horrible fire in LA. 😢
Ok, this is actually kind of comical to me. I have known most of my life that grass fires are both the fastest and highest risk of life. Most of the natives of the American Plains feared fire more than any other threat for this very reason. This is a great example of science catching up to what ancient peoples already knew but modern peoples have allowed themselves to forget.
11:15 we have to build houses prepared for weather, absolutely. but another key is to make them affordable as well.
A lot of part of the world (even not first world counties) construct houses with brick and concrete, shouldn’t be time that at least some parts pf USA use this method?
This video is strangely prescient.
For 8 years now I've been trying to get a drone program to fight fires when they are small. On my main channel, I have a playlist about fire-extinguishing drones.
I have worked for the BC Wildfire Service since 2017, and I cannot overstate the importance of firesmarting one's home and property. It is a stark contrast between the survival rate of homes. You also help protect the personal on the ground who may be desperately trying to save homes that lack firesmarting in the face of massive flame fronts.
This clip was helpful. Been studying wildfires relative to risk to insurance. I been harvesting data, found it interesting that the number of wildfires are NOT increasing, the acreage burned is volatile annually, but not showing a trend up or down. The number of wild fires that actually destroy a structure is only 0.25%, and those are the ones I am concerned about. Those fires have been increasing and the structures burned have obviously increase. The number of homes that are in the wildland urban interface (at risk) have increased substantially in the last few decades, and dry conditions, high winds, and ignition has always been the ingredients to large conflagrations such as the Chicago Fire of October 1871, during the same week, those same winds cause Peshtigo, WI fire near green bay that killed over 1100 people.
We came close to needing to evacuate during the 2020 Oregon fires. I'd akready done a lot of emergency preparedness work and packed my car even though we were in the green zone. As if that weren't enough, it was windy and an idiot up the street decided it would be a good time to burn his garbage. Fortunately, he only set his house on fire because the whole area could have gone up. I've continued to build my family's disaster preparations: bug out bags, water storage, landscaping to retain and direct water where needed, fire resistant siding and roofing, communications, etc. A new resource which may be helpful, if people don't already know about it, is the app Watch Duty. It's updated far more regularly than a lot of other resources and is a great addition to emergency apps.
I'm Polish and I don't even know if I live in a fire country. We have way more firefighters than most countries in the world. Idk why, but this is how we've always been.
I'm proud of Polish fire fighters! They are constantly ready to go and help fight fires anywhere in Europe with dozens of various fire trucks and other equipment that makes them self-sufficient.
Ehh…Poland is about the size of Colorado, but has 38m people. We only have 5 million.
In our cities, there is a higher percentage of firefighters per capita. Our less inhabited areas have relative few wildfire dedicated people. You would think we would have many more. 5he Lahaina fires there were way too many failures even had the winds been very low.
I'm so glad that we (europeans) mostly build our homes from brick and stone.
Yeah, but over here in America we have the right to let our houses burn down if we want!
I don't want to live here but I can't afford to leave
Quarrying is a lot more damaging to the environment than forestry though, unfortunately.
@@Homerow1
Except forests may as well not exist when they're burning constantly. The trees in the area are well adapted to forest fires, not the humans living there
@@Homerow1 Good point, especially if you open a quarry above a village, and then rain and floods let the '"rolling stones" use the gravity. The recent case of floods in Bosnia and Herzegpvina.
Your house would cook you inside still
Learned something today. Thank you.
Last massive fire experience I had was with the creek fire. We had to be evacuated, and even acter being able to come back, we lived for months with ashes raining down on us, and intense snoke that would cause bloody noise almost daily. Thats when I decided I had enough and wanted to move away. I always wanted to move, as the dry weather has always been a struggle for me. Sad to see almost wverywere, even in tropical places, wildfires are happening more and more often. It won't be long until everywere will have to deal with it.
Thank you so much for continuing to educate us all on global climax issues. I still feel the need to clarify one thing. There is no such thing as number “a” being “x” times smaller than number “b”. It is not the same as saying number “b” is “x” times bigger than number “a”, it is in fact a completely illogical mathematical expression such as 1/0.
Thank you and sorry. Absolutely no disrespect intended.
I feel so dumb... I had to really sit and think about this one, but you're absolutely right.
Battalion Chief / Fire Marshal for South Lake Tahoe Fire Rescue. This a major concern for us in the Tahoe Basin. The Angora Fire and the Caldor Fires both were traumatic experiences for our entire community. Defensible space is a major topic for us as we navigate the fire threat and also the California insurance crisis with so many locals having to move to the California Fair Plan. As a city, we've recently adopted the 'Zone 0' in an ordinance to help our community adjust to this changing culture. California will adopt Zone 0 within the next couple of years which will really be an interesting shift for all in how we view landscaping. Thank you! Great episode with important information!
I just read a 2021 NPR article about how California was trying to adopt methods used in the Southeast especially Florida. And their technique uses a lot of Native practices. But it said California is years behind.
Brilliant video, and very well researched as always!
Thank you, everyone at PBS!
Australian here, in the state of Victoria. A big factor in a bad bushfire (wildfire) we had here back in 2009 was the speed, driven by wind. It was something not seen before. We only really have one mountain range in Australia, the Great Dividing Range which follows the East coast. Mostly wooded and undeveloped and that's where a lot of the bad fires are. The native eucalyptus trees are another problem here, a mature tree is full of volatile flammable oil. Something from the stats here is that the vast majority of deaths from wildfire occur in dwellings 50 to 100m from forest. I have to say that our firefighting resources included water bombing aircraft leased from the USA - our summer is your winter . As the fire seasons extend to more of the year there may be a time where we can't get your planes as they will be in use. Bit scary.
Many thanks for this. This research you're reporting on is critical.
Another great video. These are so important. Thanks!
The US Fire Administrator seems like a wonderful professional! So passionate about her job! Thank you!!!
it's controversial to some, but where I live we get yearly wildfires in the tens and hundreds of thousands of acres, and they're starting to prevent the enormous fires by... starting a bunch of smaller fires. because we tried too hard to prevent fires in the area, we've actually caused a massive buildup of flammable plant matter that goes up like kindling every summer, if we burn all that in fall and spring in a controlled fashion, it won't be one gigantic fire when it happens.
Prescribed burns shouldn’t be controversial at all. Many forests thrive after small fires, and some plants and trees actually need fire to propagate. It’s the extremely hot, raging ones that burn everything away that cause so much trouble. I’m glad we have started to course correct and forest management has focused on prevention with prescribed fires.
@prettygneissproductions I'm glad that people are starting to realize this. Still, most people don't know this. Heck, the majority of ecosystems in the us need fire
Having studied how wildfires could affect post fire rainfall-runoff relationships in various landscapes of the US, my studies were focused on fires up until 2003; these were slow fires in a manner of speaking. But today, as your program rightly shows, wildfire behavior can be fast-moving. That seems new. Having said that, i am today very aware of what activities i do (eg. driving or flying for pleasure) and what manufactured products i consume and how they are adding to the destruction of the world and its life forms. I dont think im being hyperbolic when i say a heat dome could form one day sooner than later with temperatures above 130 degrees F. It will kill. That type of landscape level death will make subsequent year wildfires a terror. I dont want to add to that death and misery.
Very interesting, I do think we can build structures more resistance to fire and wind with materials engineering and aerodynamic's. When I look at the ridge and the drop perhaps there is a way to send the wind up instead of down. I get the weird idea of a skateboard ramp with wind turbines to capture energy lol. I'm also interested in a idea I've had to make a solar powered irrigation system with built in dehumidifier technology to bring the humidity back into the ground water table which could keep vegetation from drying out a drop at a time until rain falls.
Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and agree
Here in the northwest .
Can be summed up in .
Bad forest management
Well, this was sure prophetic....
Speed??? Yea no shit. Thx for putting that at the beginning and not wasting a full 12min of time time.
i think putting power lines into the ground would also be helpful to prevent fires. A fire needs ignition (5:58) and powerlines are a common cause for fires (9:21). getting rid of powerlines on wooden poles can probably prevent some fires.
From my own personal experience of when I worked from the fire camp in N. Ca for the French Gulch Wildfire and the Bear Wild Fire (these 2 separate large fires ended up merging into one). Even back than I quickly saw the technology and level of expertise on hand working on tackling such an operation. I know that since than the experts and sharp minds we having working in this field could only have gotten better and more skilled in what they need to do in fighting these monstrous raging beasts.
Really great information. Thanks for sharing, and wild publication date right before these fires ravaged our local community here in Los Angeles. Documenting these 2025 LA wildfires/Palisades Fire was so eye opening to how fragile SoCal is and hiw easy it is for these natural disasters to incinerate entire neighborhoods. I’ve never seen the Santa Ana winds that strong before and wonder if they can get even faster in future disasters.
We all so sorry for this Inconvenient Truth - WE ALL BEEN WARNED - change comes hard
🌺🍀⚜️🇨🇦⚜️🍀🌺
The pressure applied by the wind acts as a bellows which makes the fire burn hotter, making extinguishing the fire more difficult. Homes in fire-prone areas should be built from materials which don't burn or don't burn hotter when wind pressure is applied. Brick chimneys survived the fires because brick is rock or baked earth which doesn't burn and doesn't burn hotter when wind pressure is applied.
it would be nice instead of keep saying "this is a new discovery" and then switching topic, it could be formatted in a way that actually gets to the point
Living near Buffalo, NY, watching with great interest and wondering when similar fires will come to my neighborhood.
very interesting and important information, thank you
I was on the ferry coming back to Chelan when the Pioneer Fire started this year. We were fifteen minutes from the start, and it was already going up the hill. Fires go FAST up hills like this. My Grandfather, who was with us, had fought many fires on those hills when he was younger, working for the forest service. He said that they should be sending in air support immediately or it would grow fast, given the past and future weather (dry and windy). They sent a mop up crew instead, which was quickly overwhelmed and useless. 38k acres and four months later, it’s finally out, after threatening the town of Stehekin and hurting the local economy.
Wind is absolutely the driving force, but as we have more drought, and more heat waves, this will only get worse. I’ve lived in California and Washington a long time. We didn’t used to get “smoke season” even though fire season has always been very much a thing. Please vote for representatives and policies that support your local forest management. We need to fund these agencies so they can send out a dang helicopter when it’s really needed, even though the fire seems small.
Grew up in rural North San Diego County in a house on a ridge surrounded by an Avocado grove that made it through three major fires. My parents sure didn't build for wildfires, but somehow managed to do the right things anyway with a white quartz rock roof and siding made of redwood. They also had a large lawn area in front of the house, bordered by ice plant on the ridge cliff. All of those things saved that place from being destroyed although we lost lots of trees and suffered damage to our tractors.
Thank you guys! I dream of my own home one day and I will definitely take into consideration fire proof material. Like. I realise there's so much more to the topic of material and planning!
AWESOME & very INFORMATIVE !!!!!! I live in the Miami area and it rained 3 times THIS WEEK, so FIRE is NOT something we tend to worry about down here …… watched SEVERAL of your videos 😎🌞😎 & usually ❤ the content 👍🏾👍🏾👍🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👍🏾👍🏾 YOU 💯🎯💯
The 1994 Highway 41 fire in coastal central California burned 30,000 acres in 6 hours. It eventually burned 42,000 acres and 42 homes. Most of the acreage burned was in Los Padres National Forest.
I would blame another factor in these fire storms. My sister, in San Diego, had been dealing with major flooding throughout Southern California. Unusually wet winters that allowed brush and grasses to thrive.
Once growing reached the point of mature brush, the environment went in the opposite direction, Dry and Hot. Ince that brush catches fire with the Santa Anna winds to become a raging monster.
The Eagle Creek fires were insane. And the craziest part was when it finally did rain it went from 0 to 100. Like it was dry and smoeky for months. And the rain hit so hard i thought someone was shooting at me and i dropped to the ground. And looked up and it was just the hard rain
3:02 Dec. 2021 devastating Boulder County Marshall Fire was also crazy fast moving - insane winds, like LA fires, means no air support
I built my home in a wooded area of Rancho Plaos Verdes in 2008. I had to install fire sprinkles and the Fire Dept was on the list of plan's checkers to say what I could plant, how many and how far from the structure.
I know a 78 year old bloke with an orange face that doesn't have a clue about any of this. If only he had been to school and had the ability to learn...
Did you blame the fires on DJT the day of the inauguration?
@@toogsintheteeth Dude, people that understand science don't blame natural disasters on people.
The orange moron doesn't even understand that sea-level rise means less beachfront property, that tariffs are paid by the US consumer, and that political asylum has nothing to do with mental conditions.
The US is the stupidest country in the world, and your inanity simply provides more evidence of that standing.
Just the other day, I drove through the area the Caldor fire destroyed for the first time - along highway 50 going up to south lake tahoe from the valley. I was devastated and heartbroken seeing how much of the lush pine forest I've seen my whole life was reduced to burned piles of trees and clear cut scars. It was insane how rapidly that fire got out of control, and how close it came to getting into the tahoe basin itself. Christmas valley, on the eastern side of Echo summit was barely spared itself by some miracle
We have got to get beavers back out in nature
I have been trying to "FireSmart" my BC house for ten years by removing trees within 30 meters, maintaining a green lawn, putting on a metal roof, and removing a wood deck. I still need to remove another deck, and put metal siding on the house and a shed instead of wood. This work is very expensive and time consuming. Fortunately I live in a generally damp climate, but some summers are very dry and my house is beside a large area of forest.
Have you found any steel siding or cladding that’s also insulated?
In the 2008 ‘The Shakeout Scenario’ report by USGS, the economic loss in S.Cal was estimated at $213 billion - with $65 billion of that due to the fires ignited during and spreading after ‘The Big One’.
Ever since the 2017 Tubbs fire that took out the N.Cal neighborhoods in Santa Rosa, I’ve been preparing my S.Cal home to improve the odds of surviving a fire (plus earthquake, flood, wind, hail, lightning, and water/gas/electric interruptions). I have a 2 story wood home in the San Gabriel Valley near Pasadena which experiences Santa Ana winds seasonally. If those occur during a fire upwind I anticipate a shower of embers. So most of the grass is gone to be replaced by gravel with succulents and cacti going in for landscaping. I paid to have all the evergreens along the property line removed, including my neighbor’s. It already has a gravel coated steel roof. Ultimately I’m planning on exterior sprinklers on the house supplied by an on-site water tank and electric pump, with large batteries and a permanent propane generator for power backup. I also plan to douse the property with fire gel using a propane powered modified pressure washer.
There isn’t a decent regional evacuation plan yet and this is the capital of gridlock on a normal day. So staying and fighting might be the default option. I’d just have to survive the neighbors on either side burning down. So I’m looking for a really fire resistant cladding (other than concrete or stucco - bad in an earthquake). Steel and mineral wool? Hopefully some company will get a product on the State Fire Marshall approved list.
It’s an invasive grass. Would it help to plant ice veg, also invasive, but doesn’t really dry out?
We need ideas and solutions to protect ourselves from climate change as well as to combat climate change. We need to protect our forests and wildlife from fires as well as homes and people.
Sorry but we should of acted decades ago if we wanted to fight abrupt cc
I lived in the high Sierra within the dense tall forests around Lake Tahoe, I lived on the north shore a mile above the lake, the advantage being that the wind came across the lake so fire was not as much of a threat as living in the middle of a large forest. I only had to worry about my careless neighbors below me, next to me within the immediate vicinity. They were too careless, too much of a threat. Eventually seeing many more fast fires, I sold my dream home and now struggling to find another home at 67.
Thank you
I found the Canadian concept of "crossover" interesting. Thats not something we really think about here in Australia because the temperature in summer is usually above the relative humidity. 40c with relative humidity of 15% is pretty standard. From a young age we have fire prevention and preparedness drilled into us, especially since Black Saturday. A hot, windy day triggers a "catastrophic fire danger" day where schools and public gatherings are closed and everyone is encouraged to get to somewhere safe if you live in a fire prone area BEFORE a fire starts
Stop fires by starting fires. You have to remove the leaf litter. The duff from the forset floor
In the Troublesome fire, the Town of Grand Lake had 20 minutes between pre-evac and Leave Now.
Here in the NYC area we’re having very dry conditions here, and the authorities are putting fire warnings out.
0:04 Having a golf course water shrinking system around the streets and houses wetting down tress and grasses and homes would slow firer spread down and this can be turned on just by the flick of a switch also underground water tanks on properties would help to hold water for firer protection I hope this idea was helpful. Never seen this type of firer control anywhere
Evacuated twice this year from Borel and Red Hill fires. We know our home will eventually burn but we've added rooftop sprinklers and an oscillating deck top sprinkler to keep embers from igniting those vulnerable surfaces. If our home burns we will not rebuild here.
Thank you!
@11:15 Stop "building communities in the path of fire"!
I survived a DESERT FIRE this last summer, twenty miles south of Phoenix. The Sonoran Desert here is the rainiest of all deserts in the world. We can get intense weed growth when it rains, that dries out and can behave like gasoline. A fire started a half-mile from me. I didn't know the county had issued a run for your life directive, and I did a measly rapid fill of a 200-gallon water tank on a little trailer, with a gas-powered water pump, two-inch hose and a genuine fire nozzle I'd bought in case this day came. I pulled the trailer to the edge of my property and watched as the Fast fire came. Fortunately for me, neighbors with their tractors, with scoops or dozers on the front, tore out the dry vegetation just ahead of the fire and won the battle just as the fire trucks finally arrived. The fire stopped immediately across the road from my property.
-- I think the moral to the story is Sometimes we have to Stand & Fight. It was high risk. This fire had jumped much wider things than the dozed strip, like a paved road, because the fire created burning whirlwinds that carried flames ahead. The homes that didn't burn were ones where the owners always scraped away all vegetation from their acreages.
just a little over 40-45 days before the Palisades Fire and Eaton Fire...smh
I was evacuated from the Rodeo-chediski fire in Arizona 2002 that burned 500,000 acres and within 10 feet of my mother in law’s house. I was on evacuation standby for the 2009 saddle fire in Flagstaff Az. I housed evacues from the Black Forest fire CO where me family still lives. I moved to Superior CO right after they rebuilt from the Marshall fire. I moved to Southern Oregon last summer (2024) in time for the Applegate fire and then suffered to smoke of the other fires there most of the summer.
I’m clearing my land and cutting all the tree branches 8’ up. No wood fences or roofs! No rows of Roman trees or anything within 5’ of my house
we all know the story of the 3 little pigs and their houses.
We've known for a long time that we need to change how we build houses to be firestorm defensible. Out here and Arizona, many of us are taking that seriously these days.
This has got to be prophetic
Fire seems worse than flooding even though they cause the same devastation.