Vision for how Eden’s AI landscape design tools could help regrow LA in a more beautiful and fire-resilient way:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P5MsEPjOhNoaEQCqxAJiEoo_hYevKXbkIsaL0HNSBKw/edit
running notes & links:
- Details on fire-safe landscape design
- Non-native species of grasses and plants are one of key culprits of the LA fires
- *what you plant and where is really important to protecting against fires
- https://apple.news/AwMe4WbNfSLm0mxm0IxYngg
- “In many places, vegetation management was not taking place. It’s hard to assign fault, because it’s a mix of private, city, county, and state property. But there was lots of brush, trees over structures, people who put juniper bushes next to their house, all in areas we’ve long known to be high-hazard. It’s devastating that it occurred in this way.”
- “And it’s tempting to think, I did my roof, I did my siding, and I did my vents. But I really love that juniper outside of my window. Well, if that juniper catches on fire, it is going to produce 15-foot-tall flames. It does not matter how strong your windows are; that’s going to shatter them and spread inside.”
- “…if you’re close to your neighbor who hasn’t done anything, and their house catches fire, those flames will be so huge, there’s just nothing you can do. You need the whole community to start making changes. If everyone’s making a lot of changes, even short of perfection, you start to see bigger impacts.”
- “One hopes that if you do that at scale, you can discount some of the design aspects of building resilience into properties and landscaping, so that it’s cheaper for everyone. “
- 12,000+ structures destroyed or damaged
- https://apple.news/AdwS1UOKnTVu7Q9cqTp4DFQ
- “No longer is it a matter of preventing wildfires but instead preventing points of ignition within communities by employing "home-hardening" strategies — proper landscaping, fire-resistant siding — and enjoining neighbors in collective efforts such as brush clearing.”
- “The belief was that urban fires no longer exist, but they’ve come back. “It’s like watching polio return,” he said. “It’s happening repeatedly.”
- “We don't necessarily need a trillion-dollar program and a fire czar to get control of the fire problem,” Pyne said. “What we need are a thousand things that tweak the environment in favorable ways such that we can prevent these eruptions.”
- home values, rents, and services are all expected to rise — based on what typically happens after disasters
- 180,000 people under evacuation; insurance companies are advising 2-3 years to rebuild in the pallisades
- already a list of architects and landscapers offering to help those who need to rebuild:
some open questions:
- how many homes were lost?: 12,000 so far
- what is avg value of the homes lost, and in what areas?
- what public areas have been destroyed? what is the scope of public works projects that need to be done?