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[1/3] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/09/california-fire-memory
How building houses in areas of frequent fire within LA built up the conditions for worse fires. It could be that leaving some areas vacant would help protect the rest of the city from fire. But not necessarily. The end to fire suppression in certain areas would cause more frequent fire in those areas. Those would not directly harm anyone if the areas were uninhabited - but these fires have been spread by
[2/3] burning embers which can travel a long way. It could be that the frequent fires in those areas would spread each time to inhabited parts of the city. I can see the question, but I don't know enough to propose an answer. Building all buildings so that they have nothing flammable on the outside would make them safe. Eliminating all trees would help too. Is anyone working on a fire-extinguishing robot? To have 10,000 of those in the LA area would be expensive, but it might be worth the
[3/3] cost.
Burning embers tend to find their way into gaps the buildings and light anything flammable inside - you would need to fill in any gaps as well (pretty much impossible to do for tile roof buildings).
>Eliminating all trees would help too.
That would probably make fires worse, as trees have a cooling effect (that slightly mitigates the heating effect of concreting or asphalting everything) and hotter temps mean drier grasses and shrubs.
As far as I can tell, fires are primarily spread by dry grasses and shrubs, as trees require a lot more heat before they start to burn (although in many cases fires were started by tree branches rubbing on powerlines and the resulting sparks ignited the leaves, which then lit up the tree).
It is true that a lot of the fires wouldn't have started if decent maintenance was done on the power distribution network and tree branches that rubbed against power lines were cut.
>Is anyone working on a fire-extinguishing robot? To have 10,000 of those in the LA area would be expensive
It'll be a much better idea to install more fire hydrants and water tanks and keep the tanks full, than to rely on robots that runs proprietary software.
@rms
> It'll be a much better idea to install more fire hydrants and water tanks and keep the tanks full, than to rely on robots that runs proprietary software.
Fire hydrants and build more firewalls where it makes sense, increasing shades with trees or construction design would also reduce heat and make wildfires harder to start, on top of reducing heat strokes on people.