Ah, the place that inspired Silent Hill's setting. Just shows the incompetence of bureaucracy in general. Although I do remember America did almost nuke itself TWICE and there is more of a reactionary stance than a preventative stance to disasters.
A lot of the disasters over the years can be avoided by proper maintenance and using your head to know don't introduce fire elements to an exposed coal vein..
There was a documentary that came out about it around when that article was written that's pretty good. IIRC the state fire department was a few days away from containing the fire shortly after it started, but they had to stop because their funding ran out.
I visited there in 2017. They'd pretty much torn everything down by then. I watched the documentary in the hotel after I'd spent the afternoon there, trying to match photos with locations in the documentary (which had only been made a few years before I went there), and it was tricky. Decay sets in quickly once everyone leaves a place.
The Salton Sea area in Southern California is also an interesting spot. In the 50s-60s it was this big tourist destination, and a bunch of celebrities owned houses around there. My mom had been there in its heyday and was telling me about some parade she went to there. Now it's all desert rat hippies, tweakers, and sex offenders.
The basic premise behind the Chinatown movie is still relevant 50 years later.
One day when someone writes the book on "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire" there will be a whole section dedicated to "if you ever decide to settle the desert, your number one priority is commanding the political will to maintain and expand your waterworks."
Although I would class Cocoroc near Melbourne, and Kiandra and Cabramurra in NSW, in the same category of utter government dickery that resulted in total community destruction for no good reason…
Unfortunately the difference between Auswegians and Yanks is that people here do not give a fuck when this happens, except when it involves Aboriginals, and therefore they can score woke points by virtue signalling about how “terrible” forced town closures are (see: Mutjulitju, Maralinga, Roebourne and most notably Oombulgurri).
If it’s a majority-white settlement..? City folk, who make up the vast majority of my countrymen, couldn’t give a rat’s arse, as the saying goes…
Ah, the place that inspired Silent Hill's setting. Just shows the incompetence of bureaucracy in general. Although I do remember America did almost nuke itself TWICE and there is more of a reactionary stance than a preventative stance to disasters.
A lot of the disasters over the years can be avoided by proper maintenance and using your head to know don't introduce fire elements to an exposed coal vein..
There was a documentary that came out about it around when that article was written that's pretty good. IIRC the state fire department was a few days away from containing the fire shortly after it started, but they had to stop because their funding ran out.
I visited there in 2017. They'd pretty much torn everything down by then. I watched the documentary in the hotel after I'd spent the afternoon there, trying to match photos with locations in the documentary (which had only been made a few years before I went there), and it was tricky. Decay sets in quickly once everyone leaves a place.
The Salton Sea area in Southern California is also an interesting spot. In the 50s-60s it was this big tourist destination, and a bunch of celebrities owned houses around there. My mom had been there in its heyday and was telling me about some parade she went to there. Now it's all desert rat hippies, tweakers, and sex offenders.
California + Water could be the subject of a tragedy in many acts.
The basic premise behind the Chinatown movie is still relevant 50 years later.
One day when someone writes the book on "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire" there will be a whole section dedicated to "if you ever decide to settle the desert, your number one priority is commanding the political will to maintain and expand your waterworks."
This sort of shit happened (and continues to happen, albeit much more rarely) in Aus, too. Most notably this place: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittenoom,_Western_Australia
Although I would class Cocoroc near Melbourne, and Kiandra and Cabramurra in NSW, in the same category of utter government dickery that resulted in total community destruction for no good reason…
Unfortunately the difference between Auswegians and Yanks is that people here do not give a fuck when this happens, except when it involves Aboriginals, and therefore they can score woke points by virtue signalling about how “terrible” forced town closures are (see: Mutjulitju, Maralinga, Roebourne and most notably Oombulgurri).
If it’s a majority-white settlement..? City folk, who make up the vast majority of my countrymen, couldn’t give a rat’s arse, as the saying goes…