Hurricane Harvey

[RedNeckGeek]

I am just going to assume you have cleared your land of all the trees and had your entire acreage paved to minimize the threat of wild fires. Between that and the fire sprinkler system you surely had installed in your house, you should be good to go.

FYI, 8 of the 13 acres here were cleared of brush in 2011 using a bulldozer and chainsaw. I kept the larger oaks, madrones, and ponderosa pines, in most cases removing the lower limbs to break the fire ladder. The 35 greyhound bus sized slash piles were burned the following winter. An erosion control mix of barley, rye, and red clover was planted in the dozed areas, and I keep it mowed until it dries out in the spring and stops growing. The 30' of landscaping around the house is composed of low fire energy plants and decomposed granite ground cover. The house itself is covered in a fire resistant stucco like product, and the roof is concrete tile. There are no roof vents, and the airflow into the attic is through screened openings at the eaves. In other words, the home was designed to be as fire resistant as possible. I don't have a sprinkler system in the house because the odds of fire starting inside the home are no higher than anywhere else in the country, and probably much lower as the home wasn't built until 2007 and met all current code requirements. Even with all that, I'm looking into a system that can autonomously spray fire retardant on the house and surroundings, even during a power outage. It won't be cheap, but it's had a very good track record during the many wildfires out here last year.

Last year on Labor Day, a fire started across the canyon from here, burned two homes and a mobile directly across from me, spotted across the river to this side, and burned several thousand more acres. I sat with two CalFire firemen in my driveway all night waiting for it to reach my property, but a rock outcropping below the house stopped it. The firefighters were quite confident that the fire safe space I'd created would have allowed them to save the house should it have come to that. The next morning all of the fire incident command personnel met in my driveway to asses the status of the still burning fire, and by noon were convinced enough that there was no longer a threat that the firemen and their pumper truck were redeployed to more urgent needs. Maybe I'm just whistling past the graveyard, but in my mind that was pretty concrete evidence that I had successfully identified the wildfire risks and that the associated mitigation strategies I'd implemented worked.

I hope you have as much success with Harvey. I've attempted to have a level headed dialog with you, but you insist on using hyperbole and exaggeration. In the future, I'd appreciate it if you kept your snarky comments to yourself, as they do nothing to strengthen your arguments and only waste time for both of us.:2cents:

 

[sseelhoff]

For those who keep posting about Houston's lack of building codes contributing to a natural disaster, I suggest you report this egregious lapse to 60 Minutes. They can investigate the millions of dollars spent by the City promulgating and enforcing building codes that apparently do not exist.

Building Code Enforcement | www.houstonpermittingcenter.org

The City has apparently set up a fake website, complete with....wait for it... permit applications for all new construction.

There is also a flood plain review for new construction.

Floodplain Guidelines | City of Houston Department of Public Works and Engineering


Quite the scam the city is operating. Requiring permits and floodplain review where no codes o r floodplain rules exist.

 

[sseelhoff]

FYI, 8 of the 13 acres here were cleared of brush in 2011 using a bulldozer and chainsaw. I kept the larger oaks, madrones, and ponderosa pines, in most cases removing the lower limbs to break the fire ladder. The 35 greyhound bus sized slash piles were burned the following winter. An erosion control mix of barley, rye, and red clover was planted in the dozed areas, and I keep it mowed until it dries out in the spring and stops growing. The 30' of landscaping around the house is composed of low fire energy plants and decomposed granite ground cover. The house itself is covered in a fire resistant stucco like product, and the roof is concrete tile. There are no roof vents, and the airflow into the attic is through screened openings at the eaves. In other words, the home was designed to be as fire resistant as possible. I don't have a sprinkler system in the house because the odds of fire starting inside the home are no higher than anywhere else in the country, and probably much lower as the home wasn't built until 2007 and met all current code requirements. Even with all that, I'm looking into a system that can autonomously spray fire retardant on the house and surroundings, even during a power outage. It won't be cheap, but it's had a very good track record during the many wildfires out here last year.

Last year on Labor Day, a fire started across the canyon from here, burned two homes and a mobile directly across from me, spotted across the river to this side, and burned several thousand more acres. I sat with two CalFire firemen in my driveway all night waiting for it to reach my property, but a rock outcropping below the house stopped it. The firefighters were quite confident that the fire safe space I'd created would have allowed them to save the house should it have come to that. The next morning all of the fire incident command personnel met in my driveway to asses the status of the still burning fire, and by noon were convinced enough that there was no longer a threat that the firemen and their pumper truck were redeployed to more urgent needs. Maybe I'm just whistling past the graveyard, but in my mind that was pretty concrete evidence that I had successfully identified the wildfire risks and that the associated mitigation strategies I'd implemented worked.

I hope you have as much success with Harvey. I've attempted to have a level headed dialog with you, but you insist on using hyperbole and exaggeration. In the future, I'd appreciate it if you kept your snarky comments to yourself, as they do nothing to strengthen your arguments and only waste time for both of us.:2cents:

Per the bolded remarks, you chose to ignore the known risks. If you are going to criticize on possibilities, not probabilities, then you should hold yourself the same standard. FYI, fire suppression systems guard against more than just wildfires. There are kitchen fires, electrical fires, dryer fires (vent lint accumulation). All KNOWN RISKS. So if you are going to blame others for accepting known risks, you should probably practice what you preach, unless you are willing to accept the same blame when some tragedy befalls you, which you could have prevented against had you taken extreme measures against very low probabilities.

As to the snarky comments-they are snarky to you because they point out the illogic of your position. You are the one who chose to come on here and blame the victims of a natural disaster. It seems that you are willing to blame others for their situation, but don't want to be held up to the same scrutiny.

If you view my posts as anything but civil, then apparently I've struck a nerve. Not because that was my intent, but because you now are beginning to realize the folly of your position.

I wish you well.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Would you advocate evacuation of all 9 San Francisco counties today and demand they relocate from earth quake zone, only 20 million people. It's going to happen.....

I would advocate building or retrofitting all public structures to tight seismic standards and requiring all residential construction to meet seismic codes. Oh, wait...

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Larry you come from a State thats subsidized, you produce a cheese. I like tillamok but Wensleydale is better. Really. You want the next plastics facility built next to you? Most the aviation fuel comes from Shell on the Houston Ship channel, been on a plane lately, it was powered by fuel made in Houston by people you are watching lose their home! Well let's get started, building a plant in Oregon. Houston people make your life possible. Without Houston no one gets a drop of oil from the ground anywhere in to world. Your life, you business revolve around the chemicals produced there and in Texas city. Exxon Baytown is 20% of the gas in the country, yes one in every five gallons you use comes from there... Want a plant like that next to you? Well, pipe down, you are a none producer of much of anything useful. You couldn't shampoo your hair this morning without those people. Wake up.

My fuel comes from Anacortes, not Houston. It may come as a shock, but Texas is not the center of the universe. I agree that Texas has a great tax scam going on crude, though. They tax every barrel of crude that goes through the state, so everybody east of the Rockies pays tribute to Texas, and that includes Europe. Europe relies on diesel much more heavily than the US, so we ship the diesel fractions to Europe and they ship us their gasoline. Not much of it ever makes it to the West Coast because the Suez and the Panama Canals are too small for the big tankers. Sending them around South America or Africa adds enough cost to make Atlantic supplies less competitive in the Pacific Rim trade.

Exxon shutting down their refinery in Houston will have little effect on the West Coast. Shell is just a US subsidiary of a much larger international company. I'm sure they can pick up the slack with storage and refineries in other countries. Frankly, shutting down Houston International Airport will have more effect on US air travel than a tighter supply of jet fuel. Airlines have had to divert thousand of flights to other cities.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

He lives in a state that does not experience these events, and is prejudiced against an entire region of the country. No amount of facts can open his mind. It's a hard life being filled with that amount of ignorance and hate. He is lashing out as projection. How he envisions southerners is actually who he is.

Once again, your ignorance is showing. We are in the middle of our own disaster, but you don't hear us whining about it.

More than 32, acres ablaze in Oregon | OregonLive.com

 

[Larry Caldwell]

And all the predictions were Hillary would be president...

Predictions are at best an educated guess...

There is a fine line acting prudently or going to either extremes...

Some situations only have bad to worse choices and some could be no-win either way.

I have to wonder what is extreme about buying an inflatable raft and filling used pop bottles with drinking water. But you are right; being a victim is a personal choice.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

Not so much here in the SF Bay Area... the coverage was mostly about Politics of will Trump and Cruz go against "What they have said" and help on a government level or not...

Citizens need help... damage being inflicted and the Bay Area news outlets are making it political right out of the gate... with much more coverage on the Trump supporters that canceled their permitted rally...

You obviously watch different national news than I do. Mine comes from ABC and doesn't have much political commentary.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

For those who keep posting about Houston's lack of building codes contributing to a natural disaster, I suggest you report this egregious lapse to 60 Minutes. They can investigate the millions of dollars spent by the City promulgating and enforcing building codes that apparently do not exist.

Building Code Enforcement | www.houstonpermittingcenter.org

The City has apparently set up a fake website, complete with....wait for it... permit applications for all new construction.

There is also a flood plain review for new construction.

Floodplain Guidelines | City of Houston Department of Public Works and Engineering


Quite the scam the city is operating. Requiring permits and floodplain review where no codes o r floodplain rules exist.

Very little of that has anything to do with Houston. The flood plain standards are federal standards, required to obtain subsidized federal flood insurance. The flood plain maps are FEMA maps. Bans on construction in a floodway are federal bans. Requiring the low point of all structures to be 18" above the 1% flood risk is a federal requirement for flood insurance. There's no indication that Houston said, "Hey, we're flat as a pancake with no drainage and right next to the Gulf, maybe we should have higher standards than Poughkeepsie."

 

[rekees4300]

The elephant in the room is why those low lying areas were allowed to be developed to begin with. Developers knew right from the start that they would flood, but zoning agencies let them put neighborhoods and businesses there anyway without showing that adequate drainage could be provided.

The real elephant in the room is 7,000,000,000 **** sapiens that are consuming the Earth. Many problems would go away if 1/2 of them went away. That may happen by the end of this century when Mother Earth makes a climate change "adjustment". If you think Hurricane Harvey was bad just wait, you ain't seen nothing yet!