managing the forests to reduce wildfires >

Notice that you said "Green trees don't easily burn." Coastal California has two seasons: green and brown. Brown is in the summer. Green is in the winer. Normally it rains in LA during December and January. It didn't rain this year, so brown continued.

Most of the fires aren't in what you'd think of as forests. It's chaparral. Low scrub, bushes, and grasses. It is mostly what you'd refer to as underbrush. The only way to "thin it out" would be to remove all the vegetation. This environment has evolved to periodically burn.

> Trees have evolved to survive fires as well.

Trees have two broad strategies for surviving fires. One is to resist fire. The quintessential example is a redwood. The other is to burn and regrow faster than anything else. The quintessential example is a blue gum. Eucalypts evolved to literally explode when they burn. The environment in The Palisades is much closer to the second than the first.

This environment is, by its nature, an environment that burns. Yes, we've needed to allow more frequent burning. Environmentalists have been arguing this for decades. The difficulties with these conversations in the US is the Republican party's actual definition of "thinning the underbrush" doesn't mean controlled burns. It means clearcutting forests.

> These fires are HOT and don't just catch houses on fire with little embers.

Yes, in fact they do spread by embers. This is why the fires jump several streets at a time. The wind blows embers, and those embers ignite further buildings before the fire front even reaches them. This is one reason why it is so hard to set up fire breaks during a high winds.

> The houses could be made fire-resistant, but making houses to be fire-resistant is going to be more expensive

Here's an example things that you can do to increase the fire survivability of your home: https://flash.org/mitigation/protect-your-eaves-soffits-vent...

> and storing more water

LA had plenty of water. It didn't have enough water pressure.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/08/los-angeles-...

We had some earthquakes before, I was on the 10th level, you could feel the house "flex" in a way. Nothing happened and it's been standing there since Soviet Union or longer (obviously with maintenance).

We don't get many earthquakes here though, we do get storm but it doesn't cause power outage at all.

And considering most of Europe is basically low risk territory, it makes sense?

Afaik, only Turkey and a small part of the Balkans is considered earthquake territory. And there's no fracking in Europe to induce minor manmade earthquakes either.

> And give many of Europe's house's a small rattle and they would fall down.

In areas where we don't have earthquakes, yeah, what's the problem?

All of those are a result of American's favorite hobby though, not maintaining infrastructure, because ooh no taxes. LA has not raised enough revenue for decades it seems. The amount of pot holes in even the most expensive neighborhoods was already to damn high.

At some point the US really needs to do bit of cultural reform so they can start paying for all that low density development and the costs associated with it. So stuff can actually be maintained.

Peak internet right here. I’m out