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The house that climate change built

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When it comes to the American dream, home ownership looms large. 

“It’s that weird combination of stability and security,” Carlos Martín, the project director for the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, said. “We have a very unique way of thinking about housing. It is associated with a lot of our cultural imagery in this country, as well as our financial situation.”   

As the frequency and devastation of disasters increase, we’re starting to realize how infrastructure, climate, and longtime institutions interconnect. And as the climate changes, our housing is uniquely vulnerable.

As the world emerges from a record year for climate disasters, damages have reached a new peak. This year, there were 24 disasters that each incurred more than $1 billion in damages, claiming 250 lives and displacing hundreds of thousands of others to shelters and temporary housing. 

As the climate changes, our housing is uniquely vulnerable

“The reality is that people have been going through disasters since time immemorial, but now the frequency with which we’re going through them and the severity of damages is becoming more disconcerting,” Martín said.

While there are a number of cutting-edge designs as well as building and retrofitting techniques that can be used to make our homes more climate-resilient and prevent such disasters from taking a massive toll, it’s going to take a lot of time and money to protect US housing stock and do it without forcing the most vulnerable populations to live in disaster-prone areas. 

Aging homes and the American dream

There are around 144 million homes in the US (as of 2022), according to the latest data from the 2021 American Community Survey, built mainly along the coasts and in areas prone to flooding, hurricanes, and wildfires as the climate changes. Around 85 million of those are owner-occupied. Slightly less than half were built before 1980, and roughly 35 percent were built before 1970, according to the National Association of Home Builders. Only 8.3 million new units of housing were added from 2010 to 2021. 

Austin Trautman, the founder of Vali Homes in Phoenix, Arizona, notes that as homebuilding technology has changed and building codes have evolved to meet energy and efficiency codes, we’ve come to discover that there are several problems with our housing.  

“Spray foam would be the most egregious example all across the board,” Trautman said. “It doesn’t insulate in the way that you’d hope it would. It reduces resiliency of most buildings, increases mold growth, plus from a carbon standpoint, you’re putting huge amounts of carbon into a home, upfront.” 

“The majority of housing in the United States is going to experience at least climate-related hazard in some way or another,” Martín said, noting that these could present as acute incidences, like hurricanes and wildfires, or chronic events, like an extended heatwave or drought. “It’s going to mean we have to start thinking much more about not just building a generic house that we think of historically in this country,” he continued.

Housing is highly place-specific and must be built or retrofitted to meet each area’s climate dangers. Martín points out that we only build about 1 million new houses each year, and they’re only as resilient as the most recent building codes. He notes that building to code only means building to a minimum requirement. 

“Buying time” with tech

In many cities and towns, climate resiliency work is already underway.

Louisiana and Mississippi are fortifying their seawalls and levees to fight an encroaching saltwater wedge and improving their roofs. Californians are trying to harden their homes to fire. Martín says that, in many ways, we’re just “buying time” against the eventual impact of climate change on our homes. What’s worse is that climate disasters hit vulnerable populations especially hard. Climate change, housing, and social vulnerability are intimately linked. 

“The majority of housing in the United States is going to experience at least climate-related hazard in some way or another”

The slow-rolling climate disaster has come to the doorsteps of climate-vulnerable areas like Florida and California, which also have some of the most expensive real estate in the country. This year, insurance companies like Allstate, State Farm, and Farmers Insurance have pulled out of states like Florida and California because climate-related disasters are getting worse and more expensive. That pullback will tremendously impact current and future housing — especially as the country grapples with the confluence of a number of significant factors.

Yet, it’s not all bad; innovators in building, construction, and materials are working hard to figure out how best to make our homes more climate-resilient, and even the government has stepped in to address the crisis. While plenty of unique-looking and sometimes outlandish concepts are publicized, many aren’t practical or even real and won’t see the light of day.  

Handling rising temperatures

As headlines around the country documented how unbearably hot it was in places like the South and West, architects like Stephanie Halfen of SDH Studio in Miami, Florida, say they’re continuing to focus on passive design, orienting new homes to lower energy costs.  

David Warner, the owner and CEO of Redhorse Constructors in California, leverages geothermal heating and cooling, traditional heat pumps, and specially glazed doors and windows in his builds to help make new homes more comfortable. He also uses things like rammed earth walls to help insulate a home from heat and cold.

Trautman of Vali Homes (a self-described “construction translator”) takes another approach and looks to nature and history for inspiration. As someone who loves the Sonoran Desert, he says he looks for clues as to how best to build in hot climates — and his company has taken cues from the saguaro cactus. They designed and built a home with a self-shading and self-ventilating shell (similar to what the saguaro uses) to keep the home comfortable in the desert heat. 

Surviving more intense storms

Building and retrofitting homes to be more resilient to heat is relatively easy. However, creating homes that can withstand hurricane-force winds and frequent flooding is not. 

While some unique ideas and innovations around storm and flood resistance exist, not all work. For example, the Float house was built in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina as part of the “Make It Right” program. It is designed to float up to 12 feet above its foundation when flood waters rise. But since 2016, several mortgage holders of “Make It Right” homes have filed lawsuits against the organization, claiming that the homes were not built with humidity and rainy climates in mind. It turns out, some of the homes have started rotting and decaying. 

His company has taken cues from the saguaro cactus

Many hurricane-prone locations like those in Florida have already hardened their homes against massive storms and wind — a move that happened after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Halfen says that one of the critical things she designs homes around are strong hurricane windows, doors, and roofs. While these innovations are not new, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, continues to redraw flood maps, and Halfen says it has significantly changed how high the finished floors of homes must be above the floodplain. 

She also says that there is less green space for rainwater runoff because home footprints have become so much larger in Florida (lots are expensive, so people want to maximize their interior space). To prevent flooding after heavy rain, she designs catch basins and collection tanks so that the water can be reused for irrigation. 

FEMA is the only agency that provides flood insurance for homes in floodplains, and they’re responsible for drawing flood maps. After a growing number of floods in places like California’s Central Valley and Vermont in the last year, maps have been redrawn, which, in some cases, as Martín points out, put many of the most vulnerable populations at risk of losing their housing. 

To offset this, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) offers funds for areas to help retrofit or buy out housing impacted by climate change and flooding. The Disaster Recovery Buyout Program allows localities to buy commercial and residential properties in disaster-prone areas. The properties are then demolished to create park amenities, open spaces, or flood mitigation projects​. Vermont is using funds to buy out homeowners who were flooded this summer. 

Fighting fire

While most land management professionals will tell you that wildfires are natural, the impact that they have on our homes is becoming more acute. “There have been over 200,000 wildfires nationwide since 2020, and from a homes and businesses and communities perspective, we simply need to learn how to live with fire,” according to Harry Statter, the founder of Frontline Wildfire Defense, a wildfire protection company that installs specialized sprinkler systems for homes and businesses in the West. Global climate change will increase the amount of dry plant fuel, which will increase the chance of wildfire. 

The Frontline system uses a combination of machine vision, machine learning, and AI to spot and track wildfires via satellite and terrestrial cameras. Wildfire embers can travel as far as 24 miles and start a new fire, Statter says, and the Frontline system can be activated remotely to prevent homes from burning and help firefighters contain fire more quickly. Statter says that he currently has a little over 300 clients who use the system. Because major insurers have said they will stop covering homes in California due to wildfire, Statter says systems like Frontline are more critical than ever. 

According to Warner at Redhorse Constructors, new fireproof materials are also coming on the market. He points to innovations like mycelium that can be grown into fire-resistant sheetsleather-like, fire-resistant materials made of plant material by a company called MycoWorks that can be used for upholstery, flame-retardant paint from companies like Flame Security International, and coatings for concrete that prevent it from exploding during fires. 

Going with green power

As we transition to greener, more sustainable power, homes need upgrades that include everything from solar power to new, more efficient electrical panels and battery backups to store energy. While solar systems aren’t new, and the sector has had issues, experts still believe that solar-powered homes will continue to increase our climate resilience. 

Creating homes that can withstand hurricane-force winds and frequent flooding

Warner says plenty of new home energy technologies are on the horizon. “We’re going to be toying with flywheel systems for energy storage, which are not lithium-based,” Warner said. “We’re going back to the old-school mechanical flywheels that NASA deploys on our satellite systems to make homes more efficient.” 

He also noted that he’s built and designed homes that leverage solar warming for hot water and a new product called Span smart energy panels, electrical panels designed to allow customers to manage their energy throughout the day in their homes. Warner also mentioned that geothermal is becoming a more feasible energy source for homes with access. 

Costs, zoning, and NIMBY-ism

Building new, ultra-luxury, climate-resistant homes with advanced technologies is much simpler than retrofitting aging housing and multifamily dwellings in underprivileged communities to survive the next big climate event. Martín argues that when climate disasters occur, the government often tells Indigenous and low-income people that they’re living in the wrong place.   

“I think it’s completely disrespectful and, in some cases, racist, to say this is the wrong place,” he said, noting everything from housing costs to zoning, NIMBY-ism, and our housing institutions plays a significant role in preventing the US from creating equitable, climate-safe housing.

“We have a history in this country of not letting certain kinds of people buy time against climate change,” Martín says. “They’ve been forced to live in certain places, not of their own choosing.” 

One of the largest structural issues is the cost of making homes in disaster-prone areas more climate-resistant. Those costs run high and frequently prevent those with lower incomes from being able to rebuild or retrofit their homes. 

“We’re going back to the old-school mechanical flywheels that NASA deploys on our satellite systems to make homes more efficient.”

In Florida, for example, any reconstruction, rehabilitation, addition, or other improvement to a home that equals or exceeds 50 percent of the value of the structure before the start of construction is deemed a “substantial improvement.” Those improvements require the entire structure to be brought into compliance with the current code standards for everything from flood to hurricane resistance. In some cases, homes damaged by climate disasters in low-income areas are simply too expensive to rebuild. While HUD and FEMA have funds for such things, they frequently favor the rich

Look at what’s happening in Fort Myers, Florida, an area largely devastated by Hurricane Ian in 2022. According to Bloomberg, wealthy homeowners have been rebuilding their homes, driving the gentrification of the beach town and forcing lifelong residents out. 

Billy Grayson, the CIO of the Urban Land Institute, notes that “correctly pricing climate risks into the value of real estate will cause winners and losers.” It may decrease the value of some existing homes in highly vulnerable areas, and it could be good for those looking for affordable places to live in the short and medium term. But in the long term, it won’t be good for home values, he said.

“For the market as a whole, over the long term, getting this right is really important,” Grayson said. “And it will lead to better outcomes for both the financial industry, the home building and construction industry and for future homeowners and renters.” 

“Correctly pricing climate risks into the value of real estate will cause winners and losers.”

There’s also the issue of zoning laws across the country. Most of America is only zoned for single-family homes. Yet housing advocates argue that to fight climate change, we need to consider ideas like the 15-minute city, complete with more dense multifamily living and access to all services within a 15-minute walking distance. The design would cut down on carbon emissions from transportation and make housing more affordable. 

In terms of retrofitting homes to meet climate change, many zoning laws don’t recognize the difference between large and small homes. For example, in many places, a home with just 1,000 square feet is limited by the same rules that govern how many people can live in a 10,000-square-foot home. A number of zoning laws have also narrowly defined what constitutes a “family,” which highlights issues around racial and class segregation in housing. 

A close relative of zoning issues is NIMBY-ism, which represents a push by residents of an area to prevent meaningful changes to a neighborhood. NIMBYs (which stands for “not in my backyard”) frequently fight against multifamily housing and often block the rebuilding of affordable homes after natural disasters.

This concept extends to established housing institutions that work against climate resiliency and equity. These include everything from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to government disaster assistance programs. Martín argues that we must completely rethink the American homeownership ideal to tackle the problem. 

“We’re starting to see how all of these things interconnect,” he said. “When our housing institutions were created, we just had one focus: get people in a house, give people the leverage to get private sector financing to buy a home.” 

He added, “Everything from builders to remodelers, appraisers, realtors to your tax assessor will be involved to solve the problem, and it’s going to cost a lot of money.”

Making our homes more resilient

In the face of these challenges, there is still some hope for an equitable and fair path toward climate-resilient housing for all. 

“The best way for us all to buy time is to reduce future climate change,” Martín said. “So investments in climate mitigation and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels across the board is the number one best investment we can make.”  

There hasn’t been enough research into housing resiliency because the focus has been on driving energy efficiency and energy reduction. Still, there’s reason to hope. 

“What I envision happening isn’t a breakdown in housing, but transformation, and if it’s one thing Americans do, we pivot,” Martin said. “We can reinvent ourselves. We’ve been able to do it. So the question is, what does that look like that doesn’t revert to our previous issues around housing.”  

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How AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are responding to the LA wildfires

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As wildfires continue to devastate parts of Los Angeles County, hundreds of thousands of residents are without power as utility crews work to restore connectivity. Mobile carriers are also taking action to keep their services online and provide relief to affected residents.

Here’s how major carriers are responding.

In an update on Thursday, Verizon said it will waive call, text, and data usage incurred by prepaid and postpaid customers in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura counties from January 9th to the 18th. Verizon will automatically credit customers if they were billed for overages during this time.

Additionally, the company is extending service end dates for customers using prepaid services, including Straight Talk, Tracfone, Total Wireless, Simple Mobile, Walmart Family Mobile, Net10, GoSmart, and Page Plus, until January 18th, 2025. It’s also working with LA County officials to “aggressively deploy portable generators and mitigate impacts for those customers affected across the area.”

T-Mobile is similarly offering unlimited talk, text, and data for T-Mobile and Assurance Wireless customers across Altadena, La Cañada Flintridge, Los Angeles, Palisades, Pasadena, and Sierra Madre from January 8th to January 15th.

Meanwhile, the T-Mobile-owned Mint Mobile will increase the available data for users on 5GB, 15GB, and 20GB plans to 50GB through their current billing cycle, while Mint Unlimited customers in the area can use up to 2TB of high-speed data with no hotspot restrictions.

T-Mobile is also teaming up with SpaceX’s Starlink to temporarily deploy an “early test version” of its direct-to-cell satellite service, allowing people in affected areas to receive wireless emergency alerts and send SMS texts. At the same time, T-Mobile is working to deploy and refuel portable generators to keep its network online.

AT&T FirstNet’s satellite-equipped truck provides emergency communications.

AT&T will waive overage charges for prepaid and postpaid customers affected by the wildfires through February 6th. The company notes that customers in parts of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Ventura counties may experience home phone and internet disruptions due to power outages in the area.

Along with continuously deploying and refueling generators, AT&T has dispatched its disaster response team to help keep its wireless and wireline communications up and running. Its FirstNet Response Operations Group — a team led by former first responders who help during emergencies — “have been deployed to support firefighters and other first responders on the front lines where they need connectivity the most,” according to AT&T.

Starlink is providing free services to these areas affected by the wildfires.
Image: Starlink

Though Starlink isn’t a mobile carrier, it’s still working to provide LA County residents with satellite internet connectivity. Residents impacted by the wildfires can access Starlink for free through February 10th by placing an order through starlink.com/residential and choosing the “Disaster Relief” service plan. However, users still need to purchase a Starlink kit to access the free service.

Customers who already use Starlink will receive a one-month service credit.

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Joe Biden’s national climate adviser sees AI as a ‘massive opportunity’

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Sure, President-elect Donald Trump is probably going to try to blow up efforts to tackle climate change as soon as he steps into office. There still isn’t enough renewable energy available to reach US climate goals or even meet skyrocketing electricity demand from AI. And time is running out to spend down climate funds from the Inflation Reduction Act before the Trump administration can attempt to claw it back. Despite it all, Joe Biden’s top adviser on climate change, Ali Zaidi, isn’t sweating it.  

He’s managed to keep the perhaps cloyingly upbeat optimism that’s become a trademark of the Biden and Harris camp even when that enthusiasm doesn’t necessarily reflect sentiment on the ground. The Verge spoke with White House national climate adviser Zaidi this week about what he sees ahead for clean energy technologies and where there might still be room for progress.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

You have a background in law. How did climate change become your thing?

I came to the United States at the age of six, and for me, for my family, the story of America is the story of economic mobility. I really came to Washington wanting to work on putting more rungs in the ladder into the American dream, and it turns out that the biggest economic opportunity of the moment is tackling this crisis that impacts the most vulnerable Americans and the most vulnerable folks around the world.

“A tech-agnostic race”

I did not come to this work from the tree hugging side of the movement. I came to it with real, deep conviction that this was my way to give back to the economic opportunity engine that this country has been for so many who strive to reach the American dream.

President-elect Donald Trump says he’ll take the US out of the Paris climate accord and “drill, baby, drill.” How worried are you about the Trump administration undoing progress the US has made on clean energy? 

You know, I think that US progress will continue in a pretty robust way. This project is not just a project about climate and reducing emissions. It’s a project of invigorating our energy security and bringing economic revival to places that have been left out and left behind. 

The incentive to finish the job is stronger because the incentive is shared, and that’s how we’ve structured it on purpose. The other thing that I think is really powerful is that we’ve really set out a tech-agnostic race to net zero emissions as the North Star.

When we talk about decarbonizing the electricity grid, making it more modern, making it more resilient, sometimes that conversation is caricatured as a conversation about solar and wind. But look at what’s been happening in the United States, you’ve got a mega project now under construction in Utah. It’s a two gigawatt project, the size of the Hoover Dam in terms of electricity that’s going to produce power from hot rocks under our feet — geothermal energy. You’ve got wind, not just being deployed on the plains as it has been for decades, but now delivering electricity from offshore.

You have a nuclear renaissance taking place in the United States, the first new nuclear reactor in decades. I was there in Georgia as it came online. Plants that have been retired, like the Palisades plant in western Michigan. I went to the Palisades plant coming out of retirement, the workers coming out of retirement to bring electricity back to the grid and the next generation of reactors

We, as a federal government, should be a partner in helping catalyze all of that progress, whatever shape it takes. And you see that repeated in other sectors. With the transportation sector, it doesn’t matter to us if it’s strong, hybridization, fully electric, hydrogen, sustainable aviation, or biofuels. What we care about is two things: bending the curve of emissions and widening the aperture for economic opportunity.

The culture war over clean energy often swirls around this idea of individual choice — I should be able to choose to drive a gas-guzzling car if I want to or cook on a gas stove instead of going electric. What’s your take on that? 

We have to meet people where they are as we take on the climate crisis, period, full stop. One of the things that the world has learned so clearly about decarbonization is that there is no social license for decarbonization pathways that put upward pressure on consumer prices. So part of decarbonization has to be about making people’s lives better, delivering a better product, winning them over.

We saw this with LEDs. I was around at the beginning of the Obama administration when, for the first time, the United States got in the business of manufacturing LED lightbulbs. They used to cost a lot of money, but there was a technology cost curve there. And because we invested in it, the US was able to help make those cheaper and more affordable, and it turned out to be a better product. And now, across the country that technology is ubiquitous. I think that’s the way we win the future, is by delivering people a better product that also, by the way, doesn’t pump a bunch of pollution into the sky.

Countries that have signed onto the Paris agreement are supposed to update their national climate plans this year, and the Biden administration submitted a more ambitious plan last month of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60 percent by 2035. How can the US still achieve that goal?

I think the way we go the distance and meet this next target in 2035 is by continuing to invest in America, and here’s what that looks like. The farm bill will be in front of the Congress. It’s overdue, but it will be in front of this next Congress. They have an opportunity to act on whether they invest in increased total factor productivity in the agricultural sector. Turns out precision agriculture is also climate-smart agriculture. So will Congress, through the farm bill, invest more into climate-smart agriculture, into precision agriculture technologies, into the things that shore up the economics of our family farmers and boost the competitiveness of the sector? 

What we’re seeing at the state level is a massive mobilization to continue to accelerate decarbonization on the grid and in the transportation sector. There’s also this incredible industrial capacity. When we came into office, you barely made any batteries in the United States. Tesla, maybe a few others, but very limited battery capacity. By 2030, factories that are already underway, either operating or in construction, will have the capacity to manufacture 10 million vehicles’ worth of batteries in the United States. We sell, on average, 15 million vehicles a year. I think you’ll actually see private capital continue to build on the momentum of that transformation. 

And so another reason we think we’re going to keep picking up momentum is because private capital sees the win and is actually going to continue to make that bet in sectors like power and transportation. Clean energy is literally cheaper than dirtier power. And so that’s just where the smart money is going. In 2024, for example, we expect that 96 percent of what will have been built will be clean energy.

I think what we will need to do more of as a country — and that means state and local as well — is help families cut their utility bills at home. There’s this massive opportunity in our built environment to reduce energy waste and put consumers in control of their energy bills. And if we do that, that’s obviously great retail-level economics. It’s also going to be a big win for the climate. 

When it comes to lowering Americans’ utility bills and taking action on climate change, one of the concerns I hear a lot about is AI and the energy demand of data centers. How are you thinking about that? 

I’ve joined meetings with CEOs of the technology firms. I’ve also met with CEOs from the electricity sector. There is a consensus in industry and there is a consensus in the US government that we will and must seize the leadership opportunity in the development of AI technologies. And that means we must take away the barriers deploying clean power on the grid that is necessary to facilitate the buildout of these data centers. 

I have full confidence, not only in the federal government and in the technology entrepreneurs and their companies, but in state and local governments that they see the economic opportunity, they see the security imperative, and they also get that deploying clean power in almost all cases will be the cheapest, fastest, and safest way to get electricity to these new data centers. 

And so I don’t see these objectives at cross purposes with one another. I actually see AI as an accelerant to our ambition on the electricity grid. AI as an accelerant to advance grid modernization. This is a massive opportunity. But I also am the person who often sees opportunity in headwinds. So maybe that’s my bias.

We have to talk about the Inflation Reduction Act — the biggest piece of climate legislation to date, creating $369 billion for climate action and clean energy. But Trump says he’ll rescind any unspent funds. How much is left to dole out?

Very little. I remember this was a Google doc on my computer back in the summer of 2020 and Zoom calls with, at the time, the candidate. One of the big things that we did when we were designing what became the Inflation Reduction Act was to make sure it was structured in a way that reached every part of the economy. That it was structured in a way where the IRA came in, or the government came in, as booster packs to a rocket. The rocket was the private sector. And I think what you find with the Inflation Reduction Act now is that the rocket’s achieved escape velocity in so many parts of the economy. You’ve got 100 gigawatts of energy that relied on these tax credits to get off the ground, but now it’s up in the air. It’s flying. You can’t put that back in the bottle.

On the unspent funds, we are at a place where we’re north of $9 out of every $10 of grant funding and other similar dollars that have already hit the economic bloodstream across the country. 

The question then becomes, do you want to go and unplug economic opportunity that is now responsible for thousands of factory jobs and construction jobs all across the country? And I think that’s both a challenging economic proposition and also a very challenging political proposition. It’s why what you’ve heard even in Congress is that maybe they are interested in a scalpel approach, if I’m quoting the incoming speaker. That is still quite challenging. The way I think about it is, you know, Jenga blocks. When you’re pulling the blocks out of a Jenga tower, you don’t know which one is going to threaten the structural integrity of the whole thing. 

We are in a moment of economic uplift and revitalization, a manufacturing renaissance. America at the frontier of energy security and energy technology, finally fighting to win the global competition and pulling along jobs and opportunity at the local level. I don’t know that I would want to be in the business of pulling blocks out of the Jenga tower, but we will leave that to the judgment of the team that comes in in a few weeks.

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Drone takes out Super Scooper fighting Los Angeles wildfires

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An aircraft helping to fight wildfires that are raging across Los Angeles was struck by a civilian drone on Thursday. The collision damaged the wing of the aircraft — a CL-415 “Super Scooper” capable of scooping up 1,600 gallons of ocean water to drop onto nearby blazes — according to a statement by the LA County Fire Department posted on X, putting it out of service until it can be repaired.

Cal Fire spokesman Chris Thomas told The New York Times that grounding the aircraft will likely set back local firefighting efforts. Super Scoopers can typically refill in about five minutes. But even if it takes ten, that’s six water drops that are lost each hour according to Thomas. “So whose house is not going to get that water to protect it?” The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) says the Super Scooper landed safely after the drone impact, and that the incident is now under investigation.

Temporary flight restrictions have been implemented in the Los Angeles area that prohibit drones and other aircraft from flying without FAA authorization in an effort to protect firefighting efforts.

According to LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone, the drone was not assigned to help tackle the Palisades fires, and was destroyed in the collision. Marrone told the LA Times that the FBI is now planning to implement so-called “aerial armor” in the area to prevent further interference from drones.

Several people online have violated the FAA-enforced flight restrictions, posting viral drone photos and video footage across social media showing the devastation from what appears to be prohibited airspace. Fire response agencies are often forced to ground their own aircraft to avoid collisions when dummies fly drones near wildfires for online clout.

“It’s a federal crime, punishable by up to 12 months in prison, to interfere with firefighting efforts on public lands,” the FAA said in a statement. “Additionally, the FAA can impose a civil penalty of up to $75,000 against any drone pilot who interferes with wildfire suppression, law enforcement or emergency response operations. The FAA treats these violations seriously and immediately considers swift enforcement action for these offenses.”

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