But as some others pointed out, it was hardly mass chaos, and apparently no serious crime was committed. I’m sure some people got into ights, but we’ve no reports of maiming, murder, rape, etc. It was certainly unpleasant, but they got by and there were much worse places to be. That’s good enough considering the corrupt and useless county/city government they chose.
That’s actually a good point. It would make sense to build fire breaks into the general scheme of things along with annual back fire control of areas that need it. But that has it’s obvious risks. Not sure how environment groups help or hinder this area of prevention.
What I don’t understand is the lack of development in fire technology. It’s been demonstrated that misting techniques are extremely useful in dealing with flashovers and it is also an effective use of a limited resource (water). When Saddam Hussein set Kuwaiti oil fields on fire they used jet engines with water injected into the stream to stop the fires. The technique of pressurising water into a fine mist for fighting fires has been tested before. There was a company in Cincinnati working on this:
From a PBS show
NARRATOR: They are even beginning to look like weapons. The Cincinnati Fire Department is testing out this quick action water cannon that fires a fine mist at more than 300 miles an hour. No hydrant hook-up is needed. The mist gun is completely self-contained. The small water tank provides enough ammunition for 35 shots, each one powered by a slug of compressed air. This gun may be most useful when water is scarce. One squirt has the same effect as 35 gallons of water from a conventional hose.
Environmental groups tend to advocate not extending development into very wildfire-prone areas in the first place. The tendency of development to sprawl right up to (and over) the edge of high-risk fire-prone areas is a significant contributor to the current disaster, as noted in this WaPo article:
So it sounds as though the chief problem isn’t that residential areas don’t have firebreaks. (Would making firebreaks of the necessary size even be feasible? How wide would a firebreak need to be to keep out flame surges from 90-mph winds? Could developers afford to keep that much acreage undeveloped as a “safety zone”?) It’s that the residential areas are just built too close to the most fire-prone places and thus are bound to take a beating when the inevitable fires break out.
Is that technology intended for fighting large-scale wildfires, though, or for use in built environments? The show you linked to seems to be all about disastrous fires in cities: the London Underground fire, the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and so on. It’s not clear to me whether this “water cannon” would be equally useful against wildfires on the scale that southern CA is now facing.
The technique is designed to remove one of the 3 elements of fire (heat). taking a large stream of water and breaking it down into a fine mist drastically multiplies the cooling effect. Per the article, one plast of the portable unit has the effect of 35 gallons. It has not been scaled up for larger fires except in the case of kuwait but the concept was proven on fires that were extremely difficult to work with. Imagine a blimp hovering over a fire with such a system. It could track the fire as it moves and deliver water in a highly effective manner.
How big do you think these fire breaks need to be? The problems happen because of the high Santa Ana winds. The fires jumped I-15 which is four lanes each way with big shoulders.
Against a wildland fire of any scale this is like trying to stop a freight train by shooting at it head on with a BB gun.
A blimp would need to hover thousands of feet up to avoid getting battered by the extremely unpredictable airflow over a major wildland fire. Air tankers have a hard time already and they have alot of inertia to keep them going in the right direction compared to a blimp.
If you have not been exposed to any real material on the techniques of wildland firefighting, its difficult to build good perspective on ways to fight it. Firebreaks are not all that good at truly stopping a fire alone, it just gives you a place to fight from and will slow it down enough that you might be able to contain it. With a wide enough break, you will be able to handle spot fires as they start on the far side hoping that there is not enough wind blown embers to get the other side of the break going. Driven by wind like the santa anas at 50+mph, fires can move fast enough to make it nearly impossible to fight them. Remember 50mph is 75 feet per second. Thats fast enough to stretch flames across 4 lanes of road and directly light up trees on the other side. Fires moving uphill also create their own wind via updrafts, making them rocket up hillsides at terrifying speeds. Alot of the firefighting will occur on breaks or roads on downhill runs of a fire. They move much slower.
Wildland fires of this scale are full blown wrath of god scale events.
Against the santa anas firebreaks are damn near worthless. CA regularly advertises “Create a defensible space” and many jurisdictions requre no significant foliage for 100’ away from any structure. This alone thins out the available fuel as well as creates enough room for fire apparatus to come in and make a stand.
As a pilot I understand the problems fighting a fire with 50+ mph winds. I’ve been hit with clear air turbulence before and I remember well the tanker that folded a couple of years ago. The blimp was a “what-if” swag on my part. It would requre serious altitude to be functional and the Santa Anna Winds would not allow this anyway. But I see a place for something like this in conventional forest fires. It would be a marriage of existing technologies.
What strikes me as interesting is the number of homes burnt to the ground that are surrounded by green grass and shrubbery. I’m convinced the method of high pressure misting is far more effective than conventional water streams for fighting fires. I would imagine a relatively low cost system could be added to new homes that would envelope the house with mist. All it would take is a pump, some tubing and a source of water. It would be very low tech. It wouldn’t even need to be a misting system. Pipes on the roof and under the soffits would probably do it. I’ve seen houses in Phoenix that used water sprayers to cool outer walls during summer. It’s not rocket science.
Also, the Santiago Canyon fire jumped the 241 toll road, which everyone considered the mack daddy of firebreaks. It is 8 lanes wide, and it didn’t hold the line.
Fires are Nature’s way of brush clearing and renewing soil. If we are going to live here, we must expect some fire activity, I suppose. Except for that asshole arsonist who got a boner watching coverage of the Malibu fire and decided to start his own… :mad:
How about a eucalyptus eradication program? Each and every eucalyptus tree is cut down and the roots dug out, and make planting eucalyptus a hanging offense.
That would really not make much difference at all. There are not vast groves of eucalyptus trees down here. The fires are moving through low brush and they burn whatever landscaping is around peoples houses. The TV anchors really like to go on about how oil loaded the eucalyptus trees are and how they explode into flame but it is mostly hype. They burn just like other tall trees, which is pretty well.
Ceramic roof tiles and stucco walls are most effective. Look for this when you see those unburnt houses surrounded by piles of ash lining the street.
Unless the folks leave their garage door open and embers waft in. Yep- it’s happened. 
No, but my forementioned BB gun analogy holds true here as well.
We are talking about sheer ability to dissipate heat. Just because something is wet does not mean it will not burn, it just takes alot more heat to get it going. If you want to protect a structure from a full on forest fire you are looking at clearing 200+ feet in all directions of any significant plant life, soaking everything, tile roof, stucco or brick siding, internal sprinklers system, independednt power, and 10000+ gallons of water available. That means 1-2 acre parcels per house with minimal foliage.
Misting systems can be very effective, but we are not talking about a typical residential structure fire. In this case the structure is little more than a tiny fraction of the fuel involved.