Thomas Fire

[ObsessoMom]

The Desolation of Smaug, ain't it?

The topsy-turvy orientations of the photos seem appropriate for the world turned upside down.

[Soupspoon]

Most of these images seem to be rendering upside-down or sideways in-browser even though they're right-side-up when I view them locally, not sure what's going on there, sorry about that.

Best guess is that EXIF-like orientation information that your phone/device wrote to the images, based on its internal sensors' information depending on how you naturally hold it, was read back by your device to correctly rotate them in whatever manner makes best sense. But, outwith the native rendering of your device, uploading and embedding as <img>s then just renders in unmodified form and 'base' raster-order orientation. If you naturally hold your device 'upside down' (and of course one or other version of sideways, for portrait-orientation) then the discrepency is now no longer de-descrepencied.

Either take this as a cue that you're using your camera device upside down (though getting away with it, 'locally'), and perhaps try to remember to use it the other way up from what you're used to (which doesn't help with the portraied pics that will always be sideways without the adjustment!), or else find a freebie image clipper/manipulator app (if you don't care to send it to a desktop for Paintbrush/GIMP/Photoshop/etc checking and turning) that can rotate (and optionally clip/resize, though none of that is at explicit issue here) the image prior to your uploading.

Sort-of-related, to the above, but straying much more from the thread topic:

Spoiler:

Note that one of my devices acts funny with such editing. Loading a photo/screenshot into my Image Cropper (but not just that, it's a cross-app issue) making a change and saving it, the browser-based Upload function will only ever upload the pre-change image, even though the File Manager (and opening the changed image via the File Manager) shows the very same filename as being the post-change one. I put it down to some form of virtualised 'versioning' by the FS, which different levels of FA access deal with differently. (There's also the awkwardness that adding an external USB to the device provides a third 'disk', after the perma-internal memory and the SDcard expansion area, but some Apps see only Internal and SD (still) and others see only Internal and USB. And it takes extraordinary effort to transfer things from USB to either internalised (semi-)permanent store, or from either of them to the USB, because the File Manager is one of the things that doesn't see the USB. Files compatible with the minimalist Office software I use on here can be loaded from(/to) USB then to (or previously from) the other areas, but then properly ejecting the USB screws up any other unsaved Officesque documents, that have happily loaded and backgrounded across device reboots, but now suddenly revert for 'reasons'. Grrrr...

And it seems to be a proprietry problem, only affecting one of my devices. (Another one doesn't even support USB plug-ins or act as USB OTG, so it can't suffer these problems. But at least its SD card can be unloaded (without spoiling everything) and mounted onto a PC via an adaptor dongle. Methods which doesn't work at all for the one above, for unknown reasons.

Sorry, just getting that off my chest, and drifting even further from the topic at hand, I know.

(I was going to ask why you'd claimed the fires to be in California, when it was obvious they were somewhere in Australia. )

[Pfhorrest]

Thanks for the thoughts on the odd rotation. I thought it might be some thing like that. I did bring them to my desktop computer first, and viewing them there they look correct. Also viewing them directly in their own browser tabs shows correct orientation too. It's only linked into the page that they get all turned around.

(I was going to ask why you'd claimed the fires to be in California, when it was obvious they were somewhere in Australia. )

The climate in southern California is remarkably similar to Australia, and also to Chile, Spain, Morocco, basically anywhere with a climate on the threshold of dry semi-arid and tropical sub-humid (aridity index around 0.5). Ventura had a nascent botanic garden that was just destroyed by the fire, and the only parts of it that they had built up so far were the native, Australian, Chilean, and Mediterranean sections, because those are all the easiest to do, what with not requiring any special irrigation or shading or anything since the climate is already perfect for them.

Also, eucalyptus is an invasive species here, so some parts look even more Australian:



(It's even upside-down like Australia!)

(...wait, was that the original joke?)

[Pfhorrest]

Today I took a really long (8-9mi round trip) hike from my house up to the top of the nearest foothills, up to the top of Pratte Trail and back down Cozy Dell Trail. I got some more really great shots of the desolation out there, some of them contrasting with the unburnt valley below:

Spoiler:

I recommend right-clicking to view them in their own tabs for maximum effect.

[Pfhorrest]

Finally at 100% containment today, hurray!

Now there's just more mudslides to worry about as the rain continues.

[Soupspoon]

Mud quenches Fire
Fire ???es ???
??? ???es Mud

(How soon until we see which new disaster fills in the blanks, do you think?)

[CorruptUser]

Kudzu vines. Kudzu prevents mudslides, is destroyed by burning, but is an environmental disaster as it grows so fast that it chokes out everything else.

[Sableagle]

The fire is out ... five miles out to sea and slowly sinking.

Mud quenches fire.
Fire burns lizards.
Lizards climb trees.
Trees grow on rock.
Rock ..... er ..... ignores mud, mostly.

Actually, I think mudslide beats just about anything.

You know, if it's big enough, a mudslide doesn't stop for anything short of a mountain.

[CorruptUser]

Telling you man, Kudzu vines. Mudslides and avalanches don't happen when the vegetation is thick enough.

[Pfhorrest]

I approve of fire-mudslide-kudzu.

[freezeblade]

Telling you man, Kudzu vines.

*shudder* Oh man Kudzu. That stuff is impossible to get rid of once it's burrowed into a place, it's even worse than Algerian ivy, or Bermuda grass!

[Pfhorrest]

Whoever called "mudslides" was right. There's an "atmospheric river" (TIL) dumping all over the Thomas fire burn area for this whole week, and every neighborhood anywhere close to a hill (thankfully not including mine) is under mandatory evacuation again.

[CorruptUser]

That's you, right?

Still say that maybe we should stop building new homes in these areas...

[Thesh]

I say we just mandate disaster insurance.

[CorruptUser]

No, because it'll be subsidized the way flood insurance is, which is a disaster all on its own.

[Thesh]

Is that a law or something?

[Dauric]

Frontline: The business of Disaster

Gets in to the details of flood insurance and how it's currently (at the time of publication in 2016) failing the victims of Hurricane Sandy four years after the disaster.

[Sableagle]

That's you, right?

Still say that maybe we should stop building new homes in these areas...

A lot of people have been saying for a long time that we shouldn't build where the river goes.

New Orleans is proof that we do build where the river goes.

Here's a wall in France: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@44.39529 ... 6656?dcr=0

That plaque on it marks the height of the flood waters one bad year.

Here's the view downriver from a short way east of it: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@44.39856 ... 6656?dcr=0

Both places can be seen in this satellite view: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@44.39731 ... !1e3?dcr=0

Historically, easy access to water was very important. These days, we have pipes. Still, there's a lot of land there that's "occasionally" flooded, and it's the best farmland in the area.

[Grop]

Indeed, who would believe the river can go this high.

[Pfhorrest]

You guys get that in this case I'm not talking about a literal river right? (I mean, there is a literal river into which all this water drains, but nothing's built in its bed even though it's usually completely dry half the year and has barely a creek in it the other half).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_river

I just learned about that too. TL;DR: it's super heavy rains, which doesn't so much cause flooding given the geography here, but on the recently-burned hillsides is expected to cause severe mudslides.

[sardia]

You guys get that in this case I'm not talking about a literal river right? (I mean, there is a literal river into which all this water drains, but nothing's built in its bed even though it's usually completely dry half the year and has barely a creek in it the other half).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_river

I just learned about that too. TL;DR: it's super heavy rains, which doesn't so much cause flooding given the geography here, but on the recently-burned hillsides is expected to cause severe mudslides.

Do you still want to live in a disaster heavy zone where you have to evacuate all the time?

[CorruptUser]

Edit to be slightly less callous.

If you insist on living in a dangerous area, someone has to eat the cost somehow. Ideally that'd be the people that live there, smoothed out through insurance. E.g., my home has a 1 in 100 chance of burning down or otherwise destroyed, I can't afford the 200k to rebuild, but I can afford $2500 per year in premiums to help others rebuild. But when I can pay $2500 per year no matter how likely the house is to burn down? That's when you run into the disaster that is federal flood insurance. Homes get built where the chance of destruction is much greater, homes that flood a dozen times get rebuilt in the same locations, and it represents an entire $25 BILLION of our national debt.

[CelticNot]

TL;DR: it's super heavy rains, which doesn't so much cause flooding given the geography here, but on the recently-burned hillsides is expected to cause severe mudslides.

Do you still want to live in a disaster heavy zone where you have to evacuate all the time?

In fairness to Pfhorrest, it doesn't seem to me that the area is "disaster heavy" - they had a couple bad scenarios back to back. Also, I'm at a loss to think of any place of human habitation which is "disaster-light" - storms and fires can hit just about anywhere.

On a different note, I live in a city which has had to absorb a sudden population increase, to the tune of about 50% more people, thanks to two floods to the south of us and one massive fire to the north of us over the last couple of years. The local government did not and still has not accounted for this explosive growth, at least to my satisfaction.

Amendment: Given the current city population, a 50% increase may be heavily exaggerated... but it sure as hell FEELS 50% busier everywhere I go.

[sardia]

In fairness to Pfhorrest, it doesn't seem to me that the area is "disaster heavy" - they had a couple bad scenarios back to back. Also, I'm at a loss to think of any place of human habitation which is "disaster-light" - storms and fires can hit just about anywhere.

On a different note, I live in a city which has had to absorb a sudden population increase, to the tune of about 50% more people, thanks to two floods to the south of us and one massive fire to the north of us over the last couple of years. The local government did not and still has not accounted for this explosive growth, at least to my satisfaction.

Amendment: Given the current city population, a 50% increase may be heavily exaggerated... but it sure as hell FEELS 50% busier everywhere I go.

Any city away the wilderness or water is safer, aka any city in the heartland. Try Illinois or Iowa etc etc.

[DaBigCheez]

And yet it doesn't feel safer when a tornado in that area quite literally wipes a city off the map. (Okay, it was a *small* city, but still.)

[Pfhorrest]

Technically this isn't even a couple of disasters back-to-back, it's still all the one disaster and its predicted aftermath (which is why I posted in this thread instead of starting another). The one disaster that was literally a once-in-a-century event and still mostly only destroyed uninhabited wilderness. Which is largely why it got so huge to start with: wherever it encroached on population centers, it was quickly pushed back, and only homes on the edge of the wilderness areas were affected, but in the other direction that wilderness just goes on for miles and miles and there's barely any way to even get out there to fight it, much less reason to do so, so that all burned. And it's that same area on the edge of the wilderness that's threatened by the aftermath now. (Not that there seems to have been any real damage that I've heard of yet, and right now this morning is supposed to be the worse of it).

[sardia]

Are you saying you do not plan on moving because you don't think a disaster will happen again and again? (At your location)

[CorruptUser]

If you move to Rhode island, I can recommend a great landlord. If to maine, I could probably help further. Like I said earlier, if your house burns down or something and you somehow end up in the northeast...

[Thesh]

Most people usually want to try and continue on with their lives. This is partly why I think having generic disaster insurance would be the best option - you pay for the risk so that you are covered even if some once in ten lifetime event occurs. No matter where you live *something* is eventually going to happen, but with insurance everyone pays for their lifestyle in the long run.

[Pfhorrest]

Are you saying you do not plan on moving because you don't think a disaster will happen again and again? (At your location)

I wasn't saying tha,t because I'm not talking about me in particular, but yes that is true. Well, I don't plan on moving (from the general area) for lots of reasons, but fear of disasters doesn't factor into it either way.

[CelticNot]

And yet it doesn't feel safer when a tornado in that area quite literally wipes a city off the map. (Okay, it was a *small* city, but still.)

Having lived through a tornado that destroyed a trailer park (I was well away from it, but I was also twelve, so it sure didn't feel safe to me), I can concur, and it's the main reason I don't consider plains or heartland to be "disaster-light". Not to mention high winds of the less dramatic sort, torrential rains, wildfires...

[DaBigCheez]

What, you don't enjoy golf-ball-sized hail?

[CorruptUser]

I was out jogging once when out of the blue we got pebble sized hail. Maybe 5 mm across. Fun times...

[Zohar]

I was out jogging once when out of the blue we got pebble sized hail. Maybe 5 mm across. Fun times...

Like I always say - sports is dangerous to your health.

[Sableagle]

I'm at a loss to think of any place of human habitation which is "disaster-light" - storms and fires can hit just about anywhere.

Harrogate. Not the cheapest place to live if you want at least 3 bedrooms, but not known to suffer much in the way of earthquakes, volcanic ash deposits, mudslides, cliff collapses, tornados, rivers of blood, swarms of locusts, outbreaks of malaria, school shootings, pyroclastic flows, flooding, snowdrifts, droughts, wildfires, ...
Does consistently elect a Tory to Parliament, though. Someone ought to look into that.

[sardia]

And yet it doesn't feel safer when a tornado in that area quite literally wipes a city off the map. (Okay, it was a *small* city, but still.)

Having lived through a tornado that destroyed a trailer park (I was well away from it, but I was also twelve, so it sure didn't feel safe to me), I can concur, and it's the main reason I don't consider plains or heartland to be "disaster-light". Not to mention high winds of the less dramatic sort, torrential rains, wildfires...

The inability to discern the probable damages is the major reason our disaster spending is skyrocketing. Like there are houses that flood every year, and yet they act all surprised at the damage.

[CorruptUser]

Inability? Hardly, the Army Corps of Engineers specializes in it. It's a matter of political willpower. If ACoE were to condemn all the high risk homes, or we decided that instead of rebuilding in the same place we rebuild nearby on a hill, well, the people have to move somewhere. That means that some political districts will change, taking in people who might not vote for the same asshole each year. Or the people might move to another city entirely, and then you have a local recession. Maybe the riverfront is full of poor people, and the people on the hilltops don't want them living nearby. And so on.

[CelticNot]

The inability to discern the probable damages is the major reason our disaster spending is skyrocketing. Like there are houses that food^sic every year, and yet they act all surprised at the damage.

I mean, I'm not going to argue that continuing to live in a place like that isn't foolhardy; I've been through a minor flood and the main reason we still live there is that we were able to determine the cause and mitigate against it (no thanks to the insurance agency that tried to argue the cause was something they wouldn't pay for), and it hasn't happened again since.

I suppose it's a matter of degree and personal preference; how much risk of disaster and/or danger to life and limb are you willing to accept to live somewhere? Insurance increases a person's risk tolerance.

And now I think we're getting way off topic...

[dg61]

I think the two parts fo the question are "can we relocate where we build houses to avoid creating fire issues" and "can we redesign how we build and plan our houses and developments with fire in mind". I know in hurricane-sensitive areas it's a matter of both; you want to build away from beaches and floodplains that are likely to get the brunt of flooding and you design houses to be sensitive to winds and flood by raising the floor height, requiring storm shutters or covering windows, etc. Is there anything like that that's doable for fires?

[CorruptUser]

Chicago requires all homes to be a certain percent stone ever since the 1871 fire.