Thomas Fire

[Pfhorrest]

Pretty sure there are building code requirements for roofs around here that prohibit things like wooden shingles or require things like ceramic tile, to keep embers from landing on buildings and catching them fire. There are also weed abatement requirements that prohibit people from having yards full of overgrown dry grass and such, and possibly some "such-and-such amount of defensible space" requirements, though those might just be recommendations, I'm not sure.

[Thesh]

I think the two parts fo the question are "can we relocate where we build houses to avoid creating fire issues" and "can we redesign how we build and plan our houses and developments with fire in mind". I know in hurricane-sensitive areas it's a matter of both; you want to build away from beaches and floodplains that are likely to get the brunt of flooding and you design houses to be sensitive to winds and flood by raising the floor height, requiring storm shutters or covering windows, etc. Is there anything like that that's doable for fires?

You can build away from areas with dry brush, which is not easy in that area. You can have plants and trees near your house, or surrounding the development that are more resistant to fire and irrigated so they are not dead or dormant during a dry winter. Other than that, sprinkler systems are probably the best method of fire control (not common in single-family homes), but using clay tiles instead of shingles to protect against embers can help a lot.

[freezeblade]

Chicago requires all homes to be a certain percent stone ever since the 1871 fire.

Chicago also isn't built on fault lines. California homes are overwhelmingly stick frame construction, as (un-reinforced) masonry is actually against building code, and reinforcing masonry is expensive to the point where it's actually impractical from a cost standpoint.

That said, there is an abundance of codes for new construction specifically focusing on flammability, including extensive sections on fire-abatement, addressing methods described by Pfhorrest (Mainly building materials specifications).

The problem is that these affect new construction, not existing (grandfathered in) buildings.

[dg61]

I wonder if shifting landscaping practices away from grass(which is a massive water hog) and towards drought-sensitive plants would help.

[Soupspoon]

I meant to check where the tumbleweed town was, with respect to the Pfhorrest Fire area. Probably nowhere near, but also might feature well in the fire/mud/whatever cyclic competition.

[Pfhorrest]

Victorville is out in the desert, toward Barstow. There's not enough vegetation for a fire like we had, nor enough hills for mudslides, nor enough rain for mudslides even if there were hills to slide (hence the lack of vegetation, natch). Instead they have wind, and dust, and, apparently, tumbleweeds. And probably meth. The desert is full of meth. Fuck the desert.

[CorruptUser]

So, drought/desert beats mudslides, and tumbleweeds beat desert, and meth beats tumbleweeds? Then fire beats meth?

Fire, beats meth and weeds, beaten by mud and drought
Mud, beats fire and meth, beaten by drought and weeds
Drought, beats mud and fire, beaten by weeds and meth
Weeds, beats drought and mud, beaten by meth and fire
Meth, beats weeds and drought, beaten by fire and mud

[CelticNot]

So, drought/desert beats mudslides, and tumbleweeds beat desert, and meth beats tumbleweeds? Then fire beats meth?

Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock meets the Five Horsefolk of the Modern Apocalypse?

[Pfhorrest]

Thought I'd share this nice photo from last weekend of the burn area near the lake regrowing:

Stupid why does it look upside-down when I post here but nowhere else...

[eran_rathan]

Your gravity generator appears broken. Have you tried turning it off and back on again?



Nice spot though.

[CorruptUser]

Nah, it's California. Everything is topsy-turvy over there.

[ucim]

Sheeple! Don't you see? There is no such thing as "California" - it's all fake news. Pfhorrest lives in Australia and is trying to pretend to be in the United States, so he invented "California" and has managed to infiltrate all the newspapers, books, maps, and the entire internet to convince people that he's on this side of the globe flat earth. He's one of the lizard people who lives underneath theaCV;a :E Wait a minute, what are thqdxm[xaf dsa doing here? ;NO! Youcan'tqmq23m aq ...

Sorry about that. No problem here. Everything is hunky dory. How are you?

It's just the image metadata - some programs interpret it, others ignore it.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Jose

[Pfhorrest]

It's just the image metadata - some programs interpret it, others ignore it.

That doesn't explain why the image looks upside-down when embedded in the forum, but if I right click to view image, even the thumbnail shows up right-side-up in the same browser, as well as if I click the link to see the full-size image off the server, or if I view the full-size image in the same browser locally.

You're right about the lizard people thing though, in any case.

[ucim]

Different parts of the same program may implement photo viewing differently. It's almost as if different people wrote different parts of the code, and then mashed it together under a shipping deadline. As a test, take a picture using all four orientations, under all camera settings of orientation preservation. See what happens.

(Note - computer programming should not be an experimental science, but all too often it comes out that way.

Jose

[Chen]

It appears correct on my phone too. I was super confused at all the comments here because I first saw the thread on my phone. Now at work I see the upside down image. Very odd.

[CelticNot]

Similarly, my phone knows how to read metadata from pictures I take with it so it knows which way is "up", but Discord does not. It's kind of frustrating sharing pictures that end up canted 90 degrees left or right.

[ucim]

Even if a device knows what the metadata means, sometimes you want the other device to ignore it. Otherwise, you get a vertical picture taken with a regular camera held sideways displayed on a cell phone in such a way that it's letterboxed, rotated, and pillarboxed, always in the manner that no matter which way you hold your phone, the image won't fill the screen because the software keeps rotating the image the wrong way.

Robots will soon be smarter than us, but right now they're teenagers.

Jose