Crazy fires in Los Angeles

mrk said:

Hmm.
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Insurance companies dropping cover for properties in this area isn't a conspiracy theory. They spend millions of dollars on looking at risk and probably identified the risk before others did. That includes the risk that cuts to the firefighting budget increases the likelihood of properties being burned.

I used to work for investment banks in their IT departments and I could always tell when a recession was coming, because they laid people off six months to a year in advance. Investment banks, just like insurance companies, dedicate entire departments of people to look at upcoming risk.
 
Hopefully they learn from Japan with their earthquake buildings on how to build a city protected from natural disasters.

It seems odd that a country as developed and as modern as the USA cannot do town planning correctly.

If they decide to rebuild then building regs will have to change as will house planning.

I know what will happen though. Some wooden house contractor worth hundreds of millions will have some local senator as a best buddy and nothing will change because it will effect his business.
 
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adam cool dude said:
If they decide to rebuild then building regs will have to change as will house planning.

I know what will happen though. Some wooden house contractor worth hundreds of millions will have some local senator as a best buddy and nothing will change because it will effect his business.
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First part ...if America is anything like over here any time the regs change contractors will complain that steel work is oversized they've built stuff to a lower spec for years and it's never fallen down etc etc. Plus it adds cost to builds. There's always push back. E.g up in Scotland when the ser scheme for engineers came into effect years ago we heard the above from many contractors.

Second part....bingham67 linked a twitter post and I added a bit more info onto it. It's a timber frame building and it survived so I doubt if a timber frame contractor will have someone in their pocket. Due to earthquakes in the area as well timber frame would actually be better than brick / concrete as it's more forgiving in that scenario.
 
Hades said:
Insurance companies dropping cover for properties in this area isn't a conspiracy theory. They spend millions of dollars on looking at risk and probably identified the risk before others did. That includes the risk that cuts to the firefighting budget increases the likelihood of properties being burned.

I used to work for investment banks in their IT departments and I could always tell when a recession was coming, because they laid people off six months to a year in advance. Investment banks, just like insurance companies, dedicate entire departments of people to look at upcoming risk.
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Funnily enough my daughter's mates dad was just laid off after 18 years. Risk within IB :D
 
mrk said:
Wonder how the next president is commenting about this situation, let's take a.....


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... Good luck America.
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Sounds like a perfectly reasonable tweet to me.
 
koolpc said:
The government should step in and make all the insurance companies pay for the rebuilds etc....
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Were you not saying how sorry you felt for insurance companies earlier in the thread or did I pick you up wrong?

I’m all for rinsing insurance companies but as Eddie99 said, they don’t have a magic money tree.
 
The insurance thing is a doozy. I get why they dont want to insure some properties now... but on the flip side a person gets inspections done on their property and presumably ground and area inspections were carried out prior to granting planning permission . If they do their due dilligence part of the value of what they buy will be based on being able to insure it (same as in the uk with flooding)

So in a way you buy a home and part of that contract is the agreement that you can insure it for the future. With insurance companies reverse ferreting and refusing to cover a property it will make some of them worthless.

but OTOH it isnt the fault of insurance companies if

1) houses are built in stupid places (and often it is the stupid houses which have a knock on effect on the sensibly placed ones
2) it isnt the fault of the insurance companies that climate change is a thing and that what may have been a sensible risk 20 years ago isnt today.
3) it isnt the fault of insurance companies that the safety features like controlled burns, or in the UK WRT flood defences, ditches and what not stopped being cleaned out.

whilst on 1 hand i think it is wrong to not allow someone to get insurnace on a property that has had cover previously, OTOH i cant blame companies for not wanting to be forced to bancrupt themselves due to changes which they we not in control of.

Perhaps the government / council need to be forced to offer some form of insurance for properties which have now become high risk. And whilst some of that money would come from the coffers, going forward perhaps the companies who build new buildings , or those who greenlight planning need to also kick into a fund (just spit balling) to give them skin in the game when allowing new properties to be built.

I genuinely do not know the answer to be honest.... the people like Trump spouting crap like its just people doing a bad job and it would all be so easy to put right if it wasnt for incompetence does not help...... This fire would likely have happened even with fire mitigation and regardless of if it was Biden or Trump at the helm.
 
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bigmike20vt said:
Perhaps the government / council need to be forced to offer some form of insurance for properties which have now become high risk.
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This is basically how it works in the UK.
The gov basically underwrites excessive losses to allow the insurance companies to allow "sensible" premiums for properties in known flood risk areas.

IE the rest of us socialise the risk.

Main problem with putting emphasis on new builds is that if it was enough of a premium on the purchase price to go into the fund and make a real difference you may add say 25% to the cost of the house.

Many, if not most of the properties that flooded each year are not new builds.
Older houses may have been fine for years, but a combination of climate change and man made changes to the local environment have tipped some houses that were historically safe into risky.
 
mrk said:
Wonder how the next president is commenting about this situation, let's take a.....


k6jFMIU.png



... Good luck America.
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i wonder what he said about the Texas Smokehouse Creek fires in 2024 (second largest in US history at the time).

So far the LA fires have burnt 38,629 acres. The Texas fires burnt 1,058,482.

I wonder what Trump's views on the GOP governer's and politician's who controlled Texas were...
 
shifty_uk said:
Were you not saying how sorry you felt for insurance companies earlier in the thread or did I pick you up wrong?

I’m all for rinsing insurance companies but as Eddie99 said, they don’t have a magic money tree.
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Insurance companies should help towards the costs...they pulled the carpet out from those living there in regards to fire cover...thats despicable...

Yea, i know they are businesses but, its just not right...
 
koolpc said:
Insurance companies should help towards the costs...they pulled the carpet out from those living there in regards to fire cover...thats despicable...

Yea, i know they are businesses but, its just not right...
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Have you grabbed a headline and ran with it?
 
The amount of people working on these fires is pretty crazy and yet they still struggle to contain them.

12,000 fire fighters with 1,100 fire trucks
3,000 police and medical staff
100 aircraft
 
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Grim5 said:
The amount of people working on these fires is pretty crazy and yet they still struggle to contain them.

12,000 fire fighters with 1,100 fire trucks
3,000 police and medical staff
100 aircraft
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Is that including the ~1800 deployed from the national guard?
 
Latest updates are 14% and 33% contained but if the NASA FIRMS data is correct looks like they are mostly controlled for now.

EDIT: If I'm reading the data right - Palisades is 13% contained, estimated 24th to get it fully under control, 5123 people deployed to fight it, 115 fire crews, 540 fire appliances, 44 helis, Eaton 27% contained, estimated 22nd to get it fully under control, 3408 people deployed to fight it, 42 fire crews, 375 fire appliances, 16 helis.
 
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SpellowHouse said:
What an *******. Rich coming from someone who is first to his underground bunker when anything goes wrong.

He truly is a monster.
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Jimmy's latest episode was really good, thankfully he didn't mention trump once but instead showed just how much coming together of the people there was:


But on the subject of the fires etc, here is what the governor had to say:

 
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