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Paradise, CA is not in the desert nor is it in Southern California. It's over 100 miles north of San Francisco and gets an average of 58 inches of rain a year.
Again, try to understand that in California, no matter how much rain may fall in a certain location annually, there is a very prolonged dry season. There is normally plenty of water in Northern California for the needs of people, but the vegetation dries out over the summer.
Are you saying that people shouldn't live there?
^^^This.
People, California is not all desert. Only 25% is true desert however like saibot said, even the areas that get a lot of rain have a pronounced dry season in summer.
I'm saying that a major fire season is a risk that needs to be priced into insurance and thus the local cost of living. And that may make it less attractive to live there.
There's separate insurance for fire. Earthquake insurance too.
I lived in California and have witnessed some fires(not as bad as this one), but i could smell the smoke from miles, i mean fire gives three major warnings: smell, ashes, and visible smoke. Even if the fire is advancing quickly how can one not notice any of those?
You still don't really understand firestorms. If you're sleeping, you notice when flames wake you up.
And by the way, "barely a death or two per decade" in Cuba due to natural disasters is just a wee bit of an underestimate. 10 people died in in Cuba in Hurricane Irma in 2017. 11 people died in Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Hurricane Ike in 2008 killed seven. If you're counting, that's already 28 people in less than a decade, not "one or two."
Compared to 266 in the US. Do you have the numbers for all decades, or just one, cherry-picked? And Cuba had comparable population and area in the direct brunt of those hurricanes, with comparable potential exposure.exposure. You can quibble with the numbers but not the principle.
I read today in the news that there are over 1000 people missing ,it seems to me dramatic.-.
I am astonished by the lack of criticism of the failure of the fight against fire-,./
And lack of proposais to make to avoid repeating these disastrous fires .I see much resignation .It seems as if they thought that nothing else could be done in this Forum.-
Because there was very little time to do anything, most fires are not this deadly, for instance the fire in Malibu only killed 2-3 people. Also as the entire town of Paradise evacuated they got stuck in traffic, the roads are not designed for everyone going in one direction at the same time.
That being said investigations are still ongoing, though one likely cause of the fire was from electrical power lines, which happens to start many of the fires in CA. Hopefully this will be a wake up call for Californians to bury all electrical power lines. Also American houses are built of wood with tar roofs, maybe from now own developers will start building houses with the very least metal roofs.
Because there was very little time to do anything, most fires are not this deadly, for instance the fire in Malibu only killed 2-3 people. Also as the entire town of Paradise evacuated they got stuck in traffic, the roads are not designed for everyone going in one direction at the same time.
But there should be, and hurricane-prone areas have dedicated evacuation routes. And posts above confirm that this is one the most fire-dangerous places on earth. With only four exit bottlenecks for 26,000 people.
People, California is not all desert. Only 25% is true desert however like saibot said, even the areas that get a lot of rain have a pronounced dry season in summer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gentoo
There's separate insurance for fire. Earthquake insurance too.
You are (and others too) missing my point. Areas prone to natural disasters should be less inhabited. Full stop.
The problem as I see it is that we shouldn't have millions of people living in what amounts to a desert. There is a reason that most of Southern California and Arizona was sparsely populated until massive water transfers were engineered. As a Northeasterner I resent the subsidies for those projects, and for the funding of an Interstate Highway network on our dime.
New York and New Jersey got remarkably little aid for Hurricane Sandy, and that was a very rare natural disaster for this area. In general, much of the Northeast has very few natural disasters, which is why it was among the first thickly settled parts of the U.S.
You could say the same or similar about everywhere...Texas gets floods and tornadoes and hurricanes, the entire east can get hurricanes, the Midwest gets hail, tornadoes, and so cold you can freeze to death....so everywhere has issues. I do agree that people that knowingly build their house on Destin Beach, Fl sand shouldn't get bailed out every couple of years.
California is just awesome place to live actually but fire and earthquake risk is always going to be there.
You could say the same or similar about everywhere...Texas gets floods and tornadoes and hurricanes, the entire east can get hurricanes, the Midwest gets hail, tornadoes, and so cold you can freeze to death....so everywhere has issues. I do agree that people that knowingly build their house on Destin Beach, Fl sand shouldn't get bailed out every couple of years.
California is just awesome place to live actually but fire and earthquake risk is always going to be there.
The point I am making is that without artificial transfers of water, on the U.S.'s dime, much of California would be uninhabitable by the millions who live there. And the rest of the state would have higher insurance rates, making it less desirable. There was no good reason to rot out the northeast and the Rust Belt to subsidize populations elsewhere.
Compared to 266 in the US. Do you have the numbers for all decades, or just one, cherry-picked? And Cuba had comparable population and area in the direct brunt of those hurricanes, with comparable potential exposure. You can quibble with the numbers but not the principle.
"Cherry-picked"? I looked at statistics for the most recent decade, as being the easiest to research and the most relevant.
The burden of proof is on you, to back up your statement that "barely one or two people per decade" die in Cuba as a result of natural disasters.
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