What they should do is pay a little more for water and get desalinated seawater instead of river water.
We are looking going in with our neighbors.
In the last fire, some non firemen guys and a few gals saved many homes of people that we know.
Today we talked to a woman who was told to evacuate and leave with her husband. They sneaked back in with a lot of hoses and rain bird sprinkles and nailed the rain birds to their roof, connected the hoses to them and to outside faucets. Then they turned the faucets to the on position and threw their yard chairs into their back yard away from their
home and left.
Their home was spared the yard chairs were burnt up and neighbors’s homes were destroyed. Their water bill was over 2 grand, but their home and garage were okay with some paint blisters.
Imagine a fire crew pulling up and instead of a shiny engine and six guys , 6 modern water tankers pull up with 4 bobcats on trailers, all operated by construction workers with extensive excavation experience in all types of terrain (for example)
the government wildland fire establishment is lame and uncoordinated, top heavy with admistrative idiots running the show and wasting money
Hooray for the private sector..!
But seriously:
This is looking more and more and more like the Third World, with elites UNDERSTANDING that the public sector is basically BROKEN.
They are insulated from the consequences of the election outcomes they aggressively sponsor.
Smart people with money want to get around damaging government actions such as not allowing proper forest management.
If Victor Davis Hanson were a freeper, I would sooooooo ping him his thread with a double-black flip.
Or, sometimes, it was Clowns vs. Firemen."
Kanye and Kim do.
O holy hell.
Some Californians are hiring private security.
Some Californians are hiring private drivers.
Some Californians are hiring private swim coaches / tutors / pilots / singing coaches / acupuncturists / chefs.
IN OTHER WORDS, RICH PEOPLE CAN HIRE PEOPLE TO WORK FOR THEM. Duh.
Competition is more competent? I always wondered why those planes and helicopters didn’t spray the fire retardant directly on the towns and around the towns instead of the backwoods .... seems like the towns like Paradise always burned completely because of it.
From the comments-
If anyone had done a little research they’d find that the ‘private’ firefighters are either currently employed as ‘real’ firefighters somewhere or retired with years of experience. It’s not like they’re some derelicts picked up from a prison or under an overpass, put into yellow shirts and given a list of addresses to spray foam on. These guys are professionals with as much or more experience than the union guys who don’t want them on scene and do everything within their power to prevent them from gaining access. Clearly CALFIRE and other jurisdictions are overwhelmed every year by these predictably costly fires. To say they present a liability and safety problem is only a smokescreen to further their single-minded and stoic operational routines which prevent entry of any fresh ideas or management. These private companies offer additional resources that are every bit as valuable and deployable as any city or county fire department resources. They don’t need to be ‘rescued’ and ‘evacuated’ any differently than the ‘regular’ firefighters; and it doesn’t cost the regular firefighters/management anything for them to be there...oh...except the overtime that the regular guys would have made by having to protect the structures that the private companies were denied access to! Hmmm... agenda???
“Some Californians are hiring private fire crews to save their homes”
Probably illegal in that shithole state.
Homes with swimming pools could have a pump hooked to draw water from the pool to feed a fire suppression system. Seems like a no brainer.
We will see this with police also.
15,000 of those homes were in Paradise, Concow, Magalia, Yankee Hill, and they've confirmed the deaths of 88 people so far. It is unlikely that all remains will be recovered at this point.
And the real meat that belies the title - insurance companies don't want to take the loss when firefighters are stuck doing rescues and traffic control instead of fighting the actual fires, something that happened in Paradise - by 9:30am, very few fire crews were actually fighting flames, most were rescuing those who were trapped, protecting those who sought shelter in commercial properties, or bulldozing through abandoned cars to help others reach safety.
Just coming full circle to the beginnings of community firefighting in 18th century colonial America—pay an annual premium which supported the fire company, receive a marker on your property, or else burn, baby burn.
Nothing new under the sun.
I wonder how many of these people have shingle roofs.