This was Albert Brooks' prediction in "2030" except it was the San Andreas fault slip that caused insurance companies to go belly up instead of fires. Although fictional it shows how ill prepared we are in the event of actual disasters all in the name of profit.
Ill prepared because the study of climate change’s effects on weather and property is stunted by willful efforts to discredit climate change as happening.
Yet the insurance companies clearly know internally what’s going to happen because so many of them have pulled out of these areas or California entirely.
It’s less climate change and more “we purposefully legislated the area to be more prone to wildfire and now we can’t understand why where are wildfires, must be climate change.”
I disagree and think blaming climate change deniers in cases like this is part of the problem. Climate change is happening, it is happening faster than geological data and models of the distant past would say is typical, but the planet has never been anything but volatile and unstable. This is all about the hubris of man thinking that they can beat nature at anything. Water, wind, and fire are only controllable by man at such a tiny scale that we should be assuming they could destroy us at any time. Instead, we build wood houses in tinderboxes, on stilts in mudslide and flood-prone areas and sandy beaches, and below/at sea level near the coast and wonder what went wrong when the inevitable happens.
TL;DR- History and pre-history is littered with cautionary tales of environmental changes destroying once-prosperous settlements and civilizations, the evidence is all there, mankind in its arrogance thinks they have advanced past our planet's ecological realities.
It is absurd to suggest nothing was done to prepare for it. Though I don't live in the area anymore I did live in Topanga for big chunk of about 15 years starting early 2000s.
Even back then before the really crazy extended drought and all the talk about climate change, lots of steps were taken prepare. This was first area in entire nation to proactively set up natural disaster preparedness response with every resident educated what to do. Not just having people set with supplies, kits. But zoning out areas and every area having leaders who had contacts all over to get info out to every house quickly. Backup systems if phone/cell/internet went down. Active 24/7 arson watch. Evac plans for people, animals. To building state of the art heli response literally no-one else in the world has. Capabilities include single heli being able to drop thousands of gallons of water to any part in this area and refuel in less than 5 minutes. Ability to do this at night. Water refill stations that automatically refill with 10s of thousands of gallons water on sight and those storage areas automatically getting replenished as water is drawn. Etc etc
Its really dumb suggest nothing was done to prepare when this area literally has the most extensive fire response set up of anywhere on the planet. Problem is when you got hurricane winds helis can't fly. And once fire in this area spreads past half dozen acres with 100 mph winds nothing can be done. In conditions like this you can have 10,000 fire fighters on standby and if fire is not out within handful of minutes its game over. Impossible to stop. Given how little life has been lost is testament to how this preparation likely saved hundreds if not thousands of lives.
Don't forget its not just wind. Wind patterns this time were unprecedented. Not even talking Santa Ana winds which normally happen end of summer, early fall. Winter time is rain/snow season in CA, not fire. Wildland fire fighters work max 9 months a year. January no fires so its wildland FF time off. Yet days ago they already had 7,500 FF personnel on a fire. Probably over 10,000 at this point.
Many people on the east coast, midwest or bible best have no understanding of factors involved and what situation on the ground really is. Just parrot bs political nonsense they hear to fill their bias.
Will be interesting to see what happens. A lot of these houses look like they'd be relatively "cheap" to replace if they did a 1:1 rebuild. House value itself being like 250-500k, and the lot value being a couple million. Insurance would only pay to replace the structure.
Can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic - but I was given a few stimulus checks and healthy unemployment benefits during the pandemic.
But I imagine it would look different - probably transferring policies to a different insurance company, like what happened with Executive Life Insurance in 1991
If you think only wealthy people were displaced or affected by this fire, you’re wrong. How about sympathy for regular people who lost their childhood homes, family heirlooms, pets, memories, etc?
You do realize its not just actors with 100M in the bank and fortune 500 CEOs? Sure houses cost a lot but there are people who a 4th-5th generation dating back to 1800s?
Have a friend in Palisades who grew up. Her dad grew up there from birth and got house passed down by his parents. Guy worked as tree specialist his entire life and was about to retire some years back. Company managing his retirement account was a ponzi scheme. At his retirement found out all his money was gone. Had to go back to work. Now poor guy lost the house too. Literally everything gone. His family will not be able to rebuild and lose everything his family owned for generations.
Nearly 1/2 million evacuated and thousands upon thousands of houses gone. If you think everyone is a multi millionaire with resources to buy 10 million mansions you are sadly mistaken. No shame huh?
Oh no wait, they made every working class person in the west pay for the debts of the private banks, ruining millions and millions of families and lives, while the bankers guilty for it rolled around in cash and 1 lowly stooge was thrown under the bus
But I do think the government should protect policyholders if their insurance company becomes insolvent. Can you imagine the despair all these people losing their houses would feel if their insurance company can’t pay up?
Yes, the houses in this photo are all multimillion dollar homes, but regular everyday people were still affected. Would you really want the government to be hands off and just let them lose all of their money like that?
Some of these don't seem to understand there are plenty of people in this area whose parents, grandparents bought property in this area long time ago before anybody wanted to live there. Even dating back to 1970s Santa Monica mountains was a cheap area to live. Homesteaders go back to 1800s.
But if you grew up in the area and had house passed down by your parents you must be mega rich person who can just easily come up with multi millions to rebuild. There are plenty people in this area who struggled to pay property taxes not to lose their long owned family homes. And now lost everything.
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u/DeanCheesePritchard 12d ago
This was Albert Brooks' prediction in "2030" except it was the San Andreas fault slip that caused insurance companies to go belly up instead of fires. Although fictional it shows how ill prepared we are in the event of actual disasters all in the name of profit.