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In 1666 London had a bit of a problem with fire, after that some building codes were introduced. Buildings made entirely from wood were not allowed and roofs had to have a parapet.

If you don't know what a parapet is, take a look up to the roofs on London's older buildings, the front wall rises up past the bottom of the roof. If there is a fire in the building then the parapet keeps the burning roof inside the footprint of the building rather than let it 'slide off' to set fire to the property on the other side of the street.

The parapet requirement did not extend to towns outside London, which makes me wonder why.

The answer to that is to see what goes on in the USA. After a natural disaster they just pick themselves up and keep going. Florida was obliterated in 2024 but nobody cared after a fortnight. Same with the current wild fires, nobody will care next week, it will be forgotten, even though having one's home destroyed might be considered deeply traumatic.

I think that the key to change is to not have too many natural disasters, ideally nobody has living memory of the last fire/flood/earthquake/pandemic/alien invasion/plague of locusts so that there is no point of reference or 'compassion fatigue'. Only then can there be a fair expectation of political will and the possibility of change.

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andsoitis 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Florida was obliterated in 2024

That’s an huge exaggeration. FL was not obliterated in 2024.

Stats:

Total storms 18

Hurricanes 11

Major hurricanes (Cat. 3+) 5

Total fatalities 401

Total damage $128.072 billion

(Third-costliest tropical cyclone season on record)

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addicted 17 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That damage is like 10% of Florida’s GDP.

That’s absolutely nuts.

It’s also a lot worse than the pure numbers suggest because the damage here is taking away actual built up stock, so capacity for generating future GDP. And the GDP in Florida includes a lot of economic activity used to rebuild after past damage.

And all of this without Miami even being flooded out of existence. Miami can’t even build dikes due to the porous ground it’s built on.

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swiftcoder 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The weird part of living near the tropics is we all look at that and go "not too bad a hurricane season". Everyone not-from-the-tropics stares at your list in horror.

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Theodores 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I forgot that any exaggeration is not allowed on HN!

128 billion dollars is equivalent to 200,000 homes, or even more, which does not represent total obliteration, however, if that level of devastation happened in the UK, the only comparison would be what the Luftwaffe did during WW2.

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andsoitis 13 hours ago | parent [-]

> 128 billion dollars is equivalent to 200,000 homes, or even more, which does not represent total obliteration,

As of 2023, FL has over 10.4 million homes.

> however, if that level of devastation happened in the UK, the only comparison would be what the Luftwaffe did during WW2.

If you are referring to The Blitz, the numbers I have access to is that over 1.1 million homes and flats were destroyed in London alone.

	▲	Theodores 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Those 1.1 million homes were destroyed over a period of years, not days.

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SturgeonsLaw 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> ideally nobody has living memory of the last [...]

Funny, I would have said the exact opposite. If people forget how bad things were, they seem more likely to repeat them.

Nazism, for one. And the rise in antivax sentiment - people today have never come across an iron lung, which is a testament to medical technology, but it means some silly opinions get way more traction than they should.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana

	▲	Theodores 17 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yours is an interesting point as I am now questioning: > "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana I have expressed that idea with different attribution before now, but, on reflection, it is a 'trite quote' that can be trotted out far too easily!