Will Californians move after the fires? (not an anti-Cal thread) (San Diego: 2015, neighborhoods)

[WestGuest]

I just wonder where people will go. If your area burned, would you stay perhaps thinking it wont burn again? Would you live in a heavily-treed area again? Washington and Oregon are no respite except the areas on the coast. Might you move to a big city?



What are people thinking?

[stone26]

I live in a forest. If my town burns down, I’ll probably move to wherever my job takes me.

[apple92680]

Originally Posted by WestGuest

I just wonder where people will go. If your area burned, would you stay perhaps thinking it wont burn again? Would you live in a heavily-treed area again? Washington and Oregon are no respite except the areas on the coast. Might you move to a big city?

What are people thinking?

If I lived in Oregon or Washington, the coast would be the last place I'd move!

The Really Big One

An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.

July 13, 2015

Kathryn Schulz -- The New Yorker

Just north of the San Andreas, however, lies another fault line. Known as the Cascadia subduction zone, it runs for seven hundred miles off the coast of the Pacific Northwest, beginning near Cape Mendocino, California, continuing along Oregon and Washington, and terminating around Vancouver Island, Canada. The “Cascadia” part of its name comes from the Cascade Range, a chain of volcanic mountains that follow the same course a hundred or so miles inland. The “subduction zone” part refers to a region of the planet where one tectonic plate is sliding underneath (subducting) another.

When the next very big earthquake hits, the northwest edge of the continent, from Northern California to Canada and the continental shelf to the Cascades, will drop by as much as six feet and rebound thirty to a hundred feet to the west—losing, within minutes, all the elevation and compression it has gained over centuries. Some of that shift will take place beneath the ocean, displacing a colossal quantity of seawater. The water will surge upward into a huge hill, then promptly collapse. One side will rush west, toward Japan. The other side will rush east, in a seven-hundred-mile liquid wall that will reach the Northwest coast, on average, fifteen minutes after the earthquake begins.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2...really-big-one

[ambient]

I live in the Bay Area. Fires aren't likely to really directly ravage here, but the impact on the air and quality of life is dramatic. After 12 years here and a good career, kids, house, etc., I am seriously considering moving back to the Midwest where I came from. I have no hope that this will get any better in my lifetime, and I'm tired of this ****.

[apple92680]

Originally Posted by ambient

I live in the Bay Area. Fires aren't likely to really directly ravage here, but the impact on the air and quality of life is dramatic. After 12 years here and a good career, kids, house, etc., I am seriously considering moving back to the Midwest where I came from. I have no hope that this will get any better in my lifetime, and I'm tired of this ****.

Look up: "Oakland firestorm of October 1991"

People lived through that, rebuilt and carried on. Just like they do in the Midwest after a tornado, flood or derecho.

[ambient]

Originally Posted by apple92680

Look up: "Oakland firestorm of October 1991"

People lived through that, rebuilt and carried on. Just like they do in the Midwest after a tornado, flood or derecho.

Those are individual events. I guess I just don't see a different future here then literally black, toxic skies for weeks or months every year. The first nine or so years here weren't like this. Now it's every year for there last four or five, except progressively worse. This is climate change, and I don't think this protracted annual West Coast fire season is going away in our lifetime.

[Bluefox]

Originally Posted by ambient

I live in the Bay Area. Fires aren't likely to really directly ravage here, but the impact on the air and quality of life is dramatic. After 12 years here and a good career, kids, house, etc., I am seriously considering moving back to the Midwest where I came from. I have no hope that this will get any better in my lifetime, and I'm tired of this ****.

Yeah, I’m with you on that. The annual smoke is getting to an intolerable level. I’m healthy and fairly young (30s) but it causes major respiratory issues for me. I might consider somewhere in the Upper Midwest, Northeast/New England, or somewhere abroad if the smoke continues to worsen every year.

[joosoon]

Originally Posted by WestGuest

Would you live in a heavily-treed area again?

Been here forever and fires are a part of life. However they don't tend to propagate in just "heavily-treed areas"; more like brush choked areas with lot's of fast burning fuel. That all said, if someone had told me prior to 2003 that a fire (Cedar) way out on the eastern fringe of the county would burn all the way across the 15 across whole urban neighborhoods, I would've been skeptical. To see a repeat of that in 2007 was just as surprising.


I'm still here though.

[Bill the Butcher]

Originally Posted by ambient

I live in the Bay Area. Fires aren't likely to really directly ravage here, but the impact on the air and quality of life is dramatic. After 12 years here and a good career, kids, house, etc., I am seriously considering moving back to the Midwest where I came from. I have no hope that this will get any better in my lifetime, and I'm tired of this ****.

I’ve sort of been pondering the same thing. We are in the central valley. Historically bad air quality but this summer was OK. I was able to go cycling pretty much every day. That is until the fires broke out around the middle of August. Haven’t gone cycling since then. And the gyms being closed just makes things worse.

[sav858]

Originally Posted by ambient

Those are individual events. I guess I just don't see a different future here then literally black, toxic skies for weeks or months every year. The first nine or so years here weren't like this. Now it's every year for there last four or five, except progressively worse. This is climate change, and I don't think this protracted annual West Coast fire season is going away in our lifetime.

Agreed. If I wasn't from here with all my family still here I'd look to move away too. The weeks on end with smoke filled skies is just unbearable especially with this COVID crap and everything indoors closed. I want to move back to San Diego, despite the frequent wildfires there it was never this bad; weeks and weeks of smoke filled skies.