Aerial views of Santa Rosa CA

[rcjordan]

>call yesterday from our insurance company telling us they were cancelling our policy

This has been going on for a decade or more in eastern coastal states, except it's for wind instead of fire.  Most, maybe all, of those states have formed their underwriting pool, so I buy that portion from the NC insurance pool (supposedly woefully underfunded).

>We probably won't.
>I'll wish we had sold.

Same.

Don't you love the NC coast?

[creative666]

That really surprised me too - that shot where every house is destroyed, and the trees right around them look fine. I'd really like to get a fire expert to explain that.

https://www.quora.com/If-live-trees-cannot-burn-how-do-we-have-forest-fires - gives sort of an answer

In Africa we have some pretty tough fynbos (bush veld) that survives through hot fires. We have two mountain fires in Cape Town at the moment - one on the slopes of table mountain and the other at Constantia Nek. This one fire has made it's way over a mountain top to threaten three suburbs in one week, I woke up this morning to throw open the windows and view the mist rolling off the sea and instead got a mouth full of ash and smoke, the wind had changed direction over night and is now blowing the fire in our direction.

[Mackin USA]

>>> Don't you love California?

Born & raised...

WE MOVE

[buckworks]

The main weather drama we get around here is extreme winter cold. It can be dangerous if you're caught outside but it doesn't wreck things.

Sometimes boring is better!

[ergophobe]

The main weather drama we get around here is extreme winter cold.

Grew up in Vermont. I remember when the car tires wouldn't "round" out for a mile because they were frozen in place at -30F, but no earthquakes, no forest fires, no tornadoes, no hurricanes, no flooding except in a few river bottoms, no real drought compared to what we see in CA.

California just feels always on the edge of collapse for one reason or another.

[littleman]

Lots of California fatigue, but I have to say I love my state.  Along the coasts you can't beat the weather.  It is beautiful here.  Sure we have a share of natural hazards, but what place doesn't?  I enjoy the cultural diversity.  I like that most people here are forward looking instead of lamenting about how about how some rosed colored vision of the past was better than today.  The biggest problem is that there are too many people and more people coming in, but I can't blame them for wanting to come.

[ergophobe]

We love living in the Range of Light, but honestly, Aug - Oct are stressful.

When we lived in Berkeley, we didn't have those worries. The last big fire close by was the Oakland fire of 1991 (which was only five years before we arrived, but for all people thought about it, it could have been 1891).

In Yosemite, we have at least a few weeks every year where a nearby fire makes it dark enough during the day that it changes the behavior of the birds. We have had ash falling like snow at least once almost every summer. You pull out the snow brush and brush it off your windshield. I can't think of a year we have not had a giant fire within 15 air miles of us. And the 2010 (?) Telegraph fire was 15 miles away and briefly moving at 30 mph in our direction (fortunately there are two high ridges and a river in those 15 miles). We have twice in the last ten years stood at the guardrail in our neighborhood and looked across the canyon to watch the towns of El Portal and Foresta burn (fortunately only a few lost houses, but one belonging to an acquaintance). From that same guardrail, we look a mile away at the still massive burn scar from the 1990 A-Rock/Steamboat fire that barely missed our neighborhood.

It feels way different out here than it did in the Bay Area where I lived blissfully ignorant of most such things aside from a very minor concern that the Big One could shake the ground any day.

[rcjordan]

Despite clear risks, Santa Rosa neighborhood that burned down was exempt from fire regulations

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-coffey-park-explainer-20171011-story.html

<added>
US, states struggle to pay spiraling cost of fighting fires

http://kkol.com/news/politics/us-states-struggle-to-pay-spiraling-cost-of-fighting-fires

[ergophobe]

Despite clear risks...

US, states struggle to pay spiraling cost of fighting fires

I could go on forever about this. I've been tangentially involved in local fire issues, cleanup projects, grant applications and so forth over the last decade. It is analogous to the flood insurance problem. Short version: We need

- legal changes -  for example, if I can't compel my neighbor with a vacant lot to cut trees down, I should at least be allowed to do it at my own expense.

- enforcement changes - years ago inspectors used to come through and if you were non-compliant, give you 30 days to get compliant and, failing that, they would send a crew out and send you the bill. The funding for those inspections was cut.

- cultural changes - we still have neighbors, almost all second home owners, who say "I would never cut a tree" even though their houses are full of wood flooring and stick-built walls and they buy newspapers and magazines. The won't cut a tree on their lot, to the point that one second home owner from the city is building a porch *around* a tree, which is completely in violation of California fire code, but she won't listen and, as mentioned, there is almost no enforcement of the laws on the books.

- funding. I've heard people complain about the $130 annual fire prevention fee we pay. It needs to be $1300 for a decade until we undo some of the damage from a century of fire suppression, but I think I'm in the minority. We need what people in the business call "resilient landscapes," but that requires a huge investment of labor. Ideally, fire crews should be funded at much higher levels than currently and should be spending a lot more of their time *setting* fires and less of their time suppressing them.

[rcjordan]

>but I think I'm in the minority.

I know you are.

[ergophobe]

Hhh... I suppose so. Like everyone else, I want it all for free, I'm just not surprised when in the end it turns out that I have to actually pay for what I get.

[Mackin USA]

>Along the coasts you can't beat the weather.

WE DO MISS THE WEATHER

[littleman]

firefighter video:
http://www.sfgate.com/local/article/Watch-as-Berkeley-firefighters-arrived-in-Santa-12279786.php#3

[grnidone]

My brother-in-law's house burned to the ground.  He died a few days later.  (He had home hospice care.)

He said he was happy that he was able to spend time with his other relatives in the Bay area.

Side note:  he was an artist for many years (30 or 40, I think) for Industrial Light and Magic and helped make many of the Star Wars costumes. 

He helped design the Gamorean (piggy) guard costume photo.

He said:
"The costume was built around my frame because they wanted a little guy that wouldn't tower over Mark Hamill. The design was inspired by Conan the Barbarian, so George wanted them to be chunky knuckle draggers. The forearms were 16 inch extensions covered by bracelets."

He also played the Amanaman in Jabba's palace scene.

[littleman]

>My brother-in-law's house burned to the ground.  He died a few days later.  (He had home hospice care.)

That's terrible, sorry Heather.