01/12/24 - Los Angeles Wild Fire Edition!

[Purely coincidentally, all the posts that came up today are about the wild fires.]

“I recall a rather interesting comparison.

A certain female TV host at CNN, Laura Coats, practically cried as she reported on almost half of the 11 victims in the fire so far, their names, their photo, and their life story.

The 7-8 people she reported on, aside from a middle-aged man with mobility issues, were all older people. Several were in their 80s. The middle-aged man died in the fire with his dad. His dad was found dead next to his bed. According to his family who escaped danger by being out of state, according to what they know of their dad, he probably didn’t want to abandon his son and run himself.

But this isn’t what I want to share today. I admit, when I was watching this report, based on my instinctual fear of death, I was in a very heavy mood. But now that I recall this piece of news, I just feel confused.

According to the explanation, aside from the father and son pair who might have wanted to run and just failed, almost all the other victims absolutely had the opportunity to leave but insisted on staying and dying. Some were super confident, thinking they can put out the fire, and refused to evacuate with their family. Some refused to listen to warning until everyone else had left, insisting on staying where they were with all their pets (including parrots, turtles, cats, etc, which don’t seem like they’d be hard to take with you???). And some people said (based on someone else’s recollection afterwards), “God is in charge of my life. He’ll decide what happens.”

Compared to us, forget about how party members and community workers and emergency departments are going to send out all the manpower they can spare whenever a natural disaster is predicted, fully prepared to sacrifice their life if they had to, to painstakingly convince people to evacuate. There’s no way they’d just abandon someone because they refused to leave, especially not older, disabled, or sick people.

And whether or not your religious or not as an individual is up to you, but when you have plenty of time to run from a disaster, to completely give up on your own agency and brainwash yourself that, “If I die, it’s because God wanted me to die?” What? Please. If you died, it’s not because God wanted you to die, it’s because you actively chose to die! What is this if not foolishness?

Then I recalled that in all the past forest fires, hurricanes, and floods, it’s pretty common to see American locals say the exact same thing as in the news report today. The more I thought about it, the more scary it got. I want to give other human beings with a basic level of respect, but I don’t even know what to say to these people, especially when I feel like there’s quite a lot of them.

A country declines because the people in that country, as a whole, are declining. Why would people decline? Maybe this is one of the countless reasons.

Just some half-formed thoughts.”

Comments say, “I heard the old man was taking care of his son with cerebral palsy and he’d called the emergency number but nobody came. And I heard that Los Angeles issued two fake evacuation orders in the middle of the night…”

“The more I see, the more I realise that not every ethnicity has the spirit to fight the heavens and the earth. No wonder some civilisations end.”

“You often hear words like hard-working, brave, kind, wise, practical, determined, fearless to describe Chinese people. I used to think they were really hollow, but now I feel they’re more accurate and real than ever. You can’t tell you’re living in the plains without mountains around.”

---

“Los Angeles fire. Supposedly, some big Chinese directors house in America got burnt down and he lost most of his valuable collectibles. Is he going to return to China to make patriotic movies again?

The famous Christian who plays PLA soldiers had his house in America burned down.

Big Hong Kong celebrity’s house burned down too.

And the former richest man’s son’s house burned down too.

Other people who lose their houses include Hunter Biden, Biden, Harris, Paris Hilton, Jamie Lee Curtis, Mandy Moore, Madonna, Steven Spielberg, Justin Bieber, Ben Affleck, Tom Hanks, Mark Hamill, James Woods, Anna Faris, F1 racing heiress Petra Ecclestone, Leonardo DiCaprio, John Goodman, Anthony Hopkins, Miles Teller, and Lidon Meister.

This time around, the Los Angeles wild fire has caused 52-57 billion USD in damages—and the amount of insured losses is probably around 10 billion USD or so.”

Comments say, “Seems a bit neglectful for the God that these Christians worship to not protect his believers’ houses.”

“Who’s the big director?”

“So I guess it’s just a rumour that American firefighters only save the rich and don’t bother with the poor.”

---

“The truth about the Los Angeles wild fires isn’t what you think.

There’s all kinds of news flying around about this Los Angeles fire, and my friends in China and all asking me, “Are you okay? Have you been roasted?”

I’m fine, sire. Pretty good.

The entirety of Los Angeles didn’t get barbecued. It’s just the Hollywood area that flamed out like a Hollywood blockbuster…

Sorry, playing around with Chinese here, maybe it’s inappropriate…

So, just what caused this fire, and just how bad is it? Is it really because of smelt fish that none of the fire hydrants had water?

Is this actually the fault of the liberal left??

TL;DR: This is almost an entirely natural disaster, although there is room for improvement.

First of all, the reason the affected area’s fire hydrants didn’t have water isn’t because Los Angeles lacks water. It’s because too much water had been used to fight the fires that water pressure station that supplies water to the whole network ran out of water. And from how high the flames were, even if there were water, it wouldn’t have helped much. It has nothing at all to do with smelt fish. The water level at the actual dam is actually higher than any past year, so for the last couple of days, I was actually considering watering my lawn more, not to mention normal household water consumption.

So first of all, the greater Los Angeles area doesn’t have a drought problem. The dams are not empty. This is the clarification the Washington Post published, and it fits in with what I’ve observed in Los Angeles myself.

Second, why did such a big fire break out? This fire is just a highly unlikely black swan event as a result of the general climate in Los Angeles over the long term and the weather in the last couple of days coming together.

First of all, after that rain that held me up in a Starbucks parking lot in March of last year until today, we’ve passed a long, hot summer (30-32C) and made it halfway through wet season (which is winter, for all you people who need to study up on mediterranean climates), and aside from a super light shower that was almost just a mist two weeks ago, we basically haven’t gotten any rain at all. And even this rain barely got the ground wet. This meant that the hilly and forested regions of southern California which frequently experiences wild fires in the fall has a much higher than average risk of fires this year, reaching the highest value in the last ten years.

Second, there was extraordinary winds this Tuesday afternoon, a pretty rare thing to see in California. The wind was strong enough to actually kick up a dust storm in Los Angeles which we haven’t seen for decades. The amount of sand that got thrown around would be shocking even for you Shanghaiese people, much less for Los Angeles natives.

In reality, it wasn’t just sand that got picked up by the winds, but tree branches and leaves too. This is what my yard looked like a couple of days after the wind (I’ve got a gardener coming on Monday to clean it up). And gardeners have been making bank bright and early the next day after the wind. A lot of traffic have been blocked by fallen tree branches, and he’s having to emergency clear them out.

So you’ve got a super dry forested area, plus fallen leaves all over the ground. It’s basically like having a gas station that’s covered in leaked gas. All it takes is a single spark.

This is the basics of how long-term climate and short-term weather brewed a forest fire together.

Thirdly, the area of the fire is a high risk area. It’s got souther slopes that span from east to west. To put it in layman’s terms, there are kilometre, even tens of kilometres wide hill faces spanning east and west. It faces the sun and has been mercilessly baked by the Los Angeles summer for the whole season. Without some much needed fall or autumn rain, it’s going to become a natural fire pit that only takes a single spark to set aflame.

Then as the heated air rises from the fire and cool air from the surroundings flows in, it’ll cause the fire to create wind and the wind to spread the fire, growing each other and urging each other on.

It’s the difference between trying to start a fire on the ground and starting a fire in a fireplace.

As soon as it starts burning, it’s extremely hard to put out.

And that explains why I’m perfectly fine, and yet it seems like half of Los Angeles is on fire.

The biggest factor here is that one of the areas affected was filled with Chinese Americans. And these Chinese people then posted about it on Chinese social media, and OMG, it seems like every single Los Angeles person on wechat is losing their house…Is all of Los Angeles burning down?

Of course not. Half the city is perfectly fine.”

Comments say, “Scientific knowledges pierces through rumours and turns misfortune into luck. Don’t blame God for being mad at you, you picked a fight with nature.”

“If they cleared away the fallen leaves in time and created a buffer zone, would it have reduced the losses?”

“I got it. It’s divine punishment.”

---

A compilation of posts from the same blogger that wrote the post above, talking about the wild fire, “You want California to learn from Chongqing? Hahahahahahaha. I just want to know, does China even have professional Boeing 747 fire-fighting planes? Hahahahahaha.”

“A single Boeing 747 can form a 5km long, 40m wide buffer zone within a minute. And Chinese people still aren’t satisfied and think America is behind the times…Guess China must be really badass…”

“A summary of the key points today:

Most of the work in fighting a wild fire is based on large cargo planes, from Beoing 747s to DC-10s. They can make hundreds of flights every day, and there’s 30 of them in the federal government, and 50 of them in California, and 11 available to rent, for a combined almost 100 large cargo planes.

Most of fighting a wild fire is making large air planes spray down fire extinguisher to form a buffer zone and letting it burn to the edge of the zone and completely burn down everything within the zone.

It’s the same for all the residential areas that the wild fire went through. They have to burn down to nothing. There’s no way to really stop it.”

Comments say, “Form a 5km long, 50m wide buffer zone in a minute, but you still have to let everything burn down and there’s no way to stop it? Is he schizophrenic or something? Attacking the strongest shield with the strongest spear?”

“Someone’s calculated that in a 5km long, 50m wide buzzer zone, each square metre would get around 8 ounces of water.”

“If they have fire extinguishing planes, why aren’t they putting out the fires? Is this some sort of mass-scale sacrificial ritual? Wouldn’t America be even weirder then?”