Dude, I live in a city of 95K and have witnessed homes squeezed on 3500 (50x70) sq. foot lots,congestion and lack of aesthetics. Squeeze in 3 homes when 2 would suffice.Not to mention a modern S fam jammed in between 2 3deckers built in 1920 in the inner city area. I'm not talking about high on the horse NIMBY suburbs here where 2 acres are required bro that refuse to accommodate ANY form of affordable/lower income housing ,I'm talking about O privacy,no yard scenarios,roof to roof ember jumping fire hazards also ,in a city that is ravenous to increase the tax base. I WAS on board when it started in the 90's w/the view that it would hold down prop. tax reasonably,but 30+ yrs. later it has made NO diff. at all,and all that's left is congestion and out of place looking developements largely. I've got a small 900sq. ft old s.fam cottage on 13K ft. corner lot and there is shit in my mailbox 2-3 times a week to sell,and the result would prob be 2 more homes plus existing if the developer had the juice,I could put 150k in the pocket dividing into another lot w/a variance but I resist,like I said I'm not talking some snobby burb that zones to exclude here,my city has the 3rd biggest housing authority in the state last I knew despite being the 6-7th sized city in MA. ,also a leader in Sect. 8 housing vouchers,it's the outlying suburbs who refuse to do their part,they want to keep working poor OUT and it's them who crush the American Dream.
American Wildfires
- Thread starter hanimmal
- Start date
injinji
Well-Known Member
I feel for you. There is no good answers. We need less folks. And to build some cities from scratch with high density housing from the start. But it's the chicken or egg problem. Or jobs and houses.
I'm pretty much anti social, so when I moved in with my wife 35 years ago, her little town of 2.2K felt like NYC to me. Now we live on my farm. When I was a kid there were three houses on my two mile road. Now there are 10 or 12, plus another dozen or so down on the river. Hurricane Michael did take about quarter of the houses on the river.
My wife has a file of all the offers we get to sell. It's pretty big. Some of the offers are laughable. Around here land in 40 acre lots go from $3-5K per, and we have got offers for $35K for the Sandhill, 40 acres with a house.
Funkentelechy
Well-Known Member
*/
I think for most folks when they think of California it conjures up images of L.A. or maybe San Francisco, sprawling urban landscapes overlooking the ocean. But truthfully the urban areas represent a tiny percentage of California geographically, the vast majority of California is covered in forests and/or vegetation and this is where the fires start. There are thousands of wildfires in California every year, it's a huge state, it only makes the news when they reach populated areas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires#:~:text=Statistics[edit,Hectares
When fires get really big and then spread into towns and cities there's really nothing that can stop them, they have to burn themselves out. Big fires get so hot that the heat evaporates the water and combustible compounds out of the trees before the fire reaches them, it creates it's own wind and the combustible compounds in the trees become aerosolized. The air catches on fire before the fire even touches the trees and the fire can move huge distances, from ridge to ridge without even touching the ground.
To stop towns from burning down you have to stop wildfires before they reach populated areas, which has always been very very hard in the past but with climate change it's basically impossible.
Increasing fire hardiness in new and existing homes helps to slow down fire progression which gives firefighters a better chance of saving homes. That's super important, but the increased complexity and cost involved with navigating building codes and regulations does have an unintended effect on the housing crisis because it makes it much harder to rebuild. The town where I live was established during the gold rush so there were many historic houses and buildings. The majority of new houses going up after the fire are singlewides and manufactured homes because it's to expensive to jump through all the hoops necessary build you're own house or work with a contractor or architect. So the town went from many charming goldrush era brick buildings and victorian houses to trailers and singlewides because few can afford to build a traditional house due to building codes. I think that the government could and should work with fire victims to cover the cost of building code compliance, it would be an investment in the future and it's in everyone's best interests.
Forest managment plays a huge roll in all of this too, but like everything else is more complicated than it might seem. A lot of California's public lands are undermanaged or mismanaged in regards to fire safety. Some of that is changing, but not enough and as not quickly as it needs too. It's a monumental task to address the overabundance of fuel in the forest, there are 48 million acres of government owned land just in California.
The primary method to reduce fuels in the forest has been through contracting with logging companies to thin areas that have to much fuel load. These thinning projects are very useful and important. However, the logging companies can't just do it out of the kindness of their heart they need to make money so in order to pay for these thinning projects they need to be able recover a certain percentage of saleable timber. The big trees take a long time to catch on fire and often times they can make it through small fires. Removing large trees isn't the most effective way to reduce fire danger, it's the small trees and brush, the understory, that make up the fuel ladder that allows fire to get to get out of control and ultimately reach the tree tops where the fires can get out of control. Small trees and brush represent the biggest fire danger but are not saleable as timber so there is not as much focus on removing them as there needs to be in order to effectively reduce fire danger.
In my opinion we need to as a nation find ways to monetize small diameter timber and brush. Other countries have done it with the production of wood pellets for heating and power generation, CLT(Cross laminated Timber) for building materials, and making hydrogen from wood byproducts through biomass gasification. Hydrogen is an eco friendly fuel and converting these materials into hydrogen would make us a more energy independent country as well.
Climate change is a huge factor in all of this and we can't just keep doing it the same way that worked before, the world has changed and we have to adapt and create new solutions.
Building codes, like you mentioned, are very important and helpful and defensible space is hugely important. California does have some strict building codes in place for all new buildings including requiring automatic fire sprinklers, metal vents, and defensible space around your home. Aeroknow lined it out perfectly in my opinion, both in how important these things are for fire hardiness and how ultimately there is nothing that can stop the fires once they get to a certain point. In my town the fire house, which had metal siding and a metal roof, burnt to the ground including some fire trucks that were inside. The fire trucks were reduced to just the frame and a few body panels. There were puddles of liquified glass and aluminum that you could pick up after the fire. It melted the windows and anything that wasn't steel or iron into puddles.
I think for most folks when they think of California it conjures up images of L.A. or maybe San Francisco, sprawling urban landscapes overlooking the ocean. But truthfully the urban areas represent a tiny percentage of California geographically, the vast majority of California is covered in forests and/or vegetation and this is where the fires start. There are thousands of wildfires in California every year, it's a huge state, it only makes the news when they reach populated areas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires#:~:text=Statistics[edit,Hectares
When fires get really big and then spread into towns and cities there's really nothing that can stop them, they have to burn themselves out. Big fires get so hot that the heat evaporates the water and combustible compounds out of the trees before the fire reaches them, it creates it's own wind and the combustible compounds in the trees become aerosolized. The air catches on fire before the fire even touches the trees and the fire can move huge distances, from ridge to ridge without even touching the ground.
To stop towns from burning down you have to stop wildfires before they reach populated areas, which has always been very very hard in the past but with climate change it's basically impossible.
Increasing fire hardiness in new and existing homes helps to slow down fire progression which gives firefighters a better chance of saving homes. That's super important, but the increased complexity and cost involved with navigating building codes and regulations does have an unintended effect on the housing crisis because it makes it much harder to rebuild. The town where I live was established during the gold rush so there were many historic houses and buildings. The majority of new houses going up after the fire are singlewides and manufactured homes because it's to expensive to jump through all the hoops necessary build you're own house or work with a contractor or architect. So the town went from many charming goldrush era brick buildings and victorian houses to trailers and singlewides because few can afford to build a traditional house due to building codes. I think that the government could and should work with fire victims to cover the cost of building code compliance, it would be an investment in the future and it's in everyone's best interests.
Forest managment plays a huge roll in all of this too, but like everything else is more complicated than it might seem. A lot of California's public lands are undermanaged or mismanaged in regards to fire safety. Some of that is changing, but not enough and as not quickly as it needs too. It's a monumental task to address the overabundance of fuel in the forest, there are 48 million acres of government owned land just in California.
The primary method to reduce fuels in the forest has been through contracting with logging companies to thin areas that have to much fuel load. These thinning projects are very useful and important. However, the logging companies can't just do it out of the kindness of their heart they need to make money so in order to pay for these thinning projects they need to be able recover a certain percentage of saleable timber. The big trees take a long time to catch on fire and often times they can make it through small fires. Removing large trees isn't the most effective way to reduce fire danger, it's the small trees and brush, the understory, that make up the fuel ladder that allows fire to get to get out of control and ultimately reach the tree tops where the fires can get out of control. Small trees and brush represent the biggest fire danger but are not saleable as timber so there is not as much focus on removing them as there needs to be in order to effectively reduce fire danger.
In my opinion we need to as a nation find ways to monetize small diameter timber and brush. Other countries have done it with the production of wood pellets for heating and power generation, CLT(Cross laminated Timber) for building materials, and making hydrogen from wood byproducts through biomass gasification. Hydrogen is an eco friendly fuel and converting these materials into hydrogen would make us a more energy independent country as well.
Climate change is a huge factor in all of this and we can't just keep doing it the same way that worked before, the world has changed and we have to adapt and create new solutions.
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Funkentelechy
Well-Known Member
I'm 25% Karok.
injinji
Well-Known Member
There were two Creek chiefs in our area at the time of the trail of tears. Chief Blount (who owned Blountstown) took the gov't money and left with his people. The other one didn't. His daughter, Polly Parrot, took a small band of people up to the Chipola River on the edge of what is now Jackson County. The name of their new place sounded like Boggs. Over the years some of them took the Boggs name as their own and have been the first family of our local Creeks until the present. Well I'm kin to the Boggs and was raised on stories of Polly Parrot. So ten or fifteen years ago when I did my 23&me I found out I was 98.5% western European. I understand how the numbers are halved with each generation, but it was still a big bummer.
Where I worked hosted events, and the Creeks had an annual get together. I was telling my story to one of the old men, he told me I was 100% Wannabe. lol