Fires in California - Why ???

[SWR]

To those of you in that area, could you please give us some insight as to why there continues to be an apparent stance by all that are empowered to not change they way you view or manage things. I am told that the environmentalists or public opinion / law refuse to allow the forest to be managed or harvested. This would help to control the fire problem in a heavy urban area greatly. Know all about it, lived next to a forestry area in Florida for years. They did control burns for underbrush and vegetation once in a while in different areas and we were never threatened with fires in even our worst drought times.

WHY, why, why ???? Does it not bother anyone the catastrophic loss of lives and property because of such an arrogant viewpoint of forest management or preservation.

You are losing a whole lot more in these fires than you would lose in "proper and responsible" management.

Just my view, what do yall think ??

Steve

 

[ChiefMuzz]

I would hesitate a full on challenge to "why you wont do things right?", until you have the full story on what things are being done and why things are done the way they are. "I've been told" could easily just be tainted heresay. What type of research have you done on the laws and practices of California? That might be a really good place to start.
I know this post may come across harsh, but I think jumping to conclusions happens way too often.

 

[rkrcpa]

This is actually something I've thought about recently. I would like to see an unbiased discussion of the subject because I don't know the details. Maybe start with the simple things like how do the fires start? I've seen mention in the news about electric utilities being the start of some but nothing concrete.

That of course then morphs into why are they so intense? Is it a forest management issue? Or something else? Are the fires more frequent now than in the past or are they just receiving more attention?

It seems that getting "just the facts, M'aam" is harder these days, even with all of the "news" outlets we have.

 

[Mus408]

How did Nature manage the forest before Man arrived?

 

[rugerguy]

bottom line is that many folks want the privacy and solitude of the forest or the view out over the ocean, with beach front property, then do NOT be surprised when there is a forest fire or a hurricane, you can and will suffer at the hands of Mother nature, and she can be a "Rosie O'Donnell" at times...........
then others move out to the dry climates of the deserts and wonder why there is NO water.....one of the main reasons we stay here ,in the midwest have the great lakes and get to enjoy the 4 seasons.....what a country 8) :wink:

 

[Fox Mike]

I am not that knowledgeable about forestry and controlled burns, however, with relative humidity in single digits it would seem that even a controlled burn could easily turn into a wildfire with a little wind and just one errant spark.

 

[Big Old Boy]

From what I have heard not what I know you can not take anything from the state and federal forest. From my understanding folks in California can not remove dead trees or under brush for any purpose, that leaves much fuel for the fires and of course the Santana winds turn the fire into a blowtorch.

 

[mohavesam]

Life is dangerous. God made it that way on purpose. :roll:

 

[bogus bill]

I have been sitting on my thoughts too as I haven't been around any "inner circle" of thoughts of people with the power. I may be somewhat influenced by old experience from many years ago. I did have a little tech schooling on forestry and lumber technology back in the late 1950`s uncredited followed by about three years "grunt" working for the NPS and my home state conservation dept. The "college educated people" got the power jobs and the old grunts that did the dirty work had no input. Several times I and others were assigned to tasks or jobs we didn't believe in. My insticks probably were somewhat tainted by that and being very politically conservative to start with. Most often the "experts" were hired or started out just because they had a sheepskin even though they likely never done any hands on grunt work.
Has anyone EVER seen a public vote on ANY state conservation, national park service, state u.s. or forestry regulations laws or rules? NO,NEVER!! They are made by college boys that got their sheep skin from college teachers that likely never done the job either! I lived that perspective and heard my more experienced co-workers comment on it the same way. One last thought. The public automatically assumes the rangers, wardens and workers of all those departments know whats best etc and glamorize them just because of their position or uniform. Yet being a grunt at it fifty to sixty years ago my impression sometimes was a percentage of them were "back stabbers"!
I will concede this: I don't know about now, but back in the early 1960`s, the people that spent years going to college for a job that likely was lower paying than any other field they could have studied for it`s understandable.

 

[Pat-inCO]

How did Nature manage the forest before Man arrived?

With somewhat regular burns that started from lightning. Those burns
would clear undergrowth and much of the trees. The ash plus rains would
restart the growth.

That was BEFORE a bunch of stupid bipeds decided to build their houses
in the middle of very fire prone areas, and then scream loudly when any
fire started in "their" area.

Then came the tree huggers refusing to let others trim and manage those
areas so that any fires that did start, could be reasonably controlled.

Same thing in CO. Called the Hayman fire that burned 330 THOUSAND
acres. BUT in CO there were areas where (some) people understood
fire mitigation, and the loss of life and structures was reduced. Notice I
said reduced, because some in CO, much like CA, refused to use fire
mitigation techniques. Most of their houses burned.
(I'll save you war story like specifics)

https://www.fema.gov/wildfire-mitigation-faqs-and-resources

Colorado version
https://csfs.colostate.edu/wildfire-mitigation/protect-your-home-property-forest-from-wildfire/

 

[bogus bill]

How did Nature manage the forest before Man arrived?
Good question Mus408!
Years ago in the 1960`s, I visited a small museum at one of those towns in the Sierras in that area. On the wall was a huge blew up early photograph of the area. You could look out the door and see the same exact terrain as the blew up photograph that probably was made with the earliest cameras. A very old man was probably volunteering for the small museum. I asked him why the photograph showed the mountain range outside as being bare and not heavily forested as it was now? He said the local Indians would burn the high country before migrating to lower elevations for the winter with the idea it would make for more game to hunt when they returned the next year! Think about it. There isn't good grass in heavy timber under the trees! The Indians knew more what they were doing as they were closer to and part of nature than "college professors" that teach future forest rangers.
Remember seeing a video some of those "Tree huggers" sitting under trees and crying for the trees? Thats where some of these "professors" might have got their schooling!

 

[sfhogman]

For a good read on the urban/forest boundary fire problem - and a good intro into the way arsonists work - read "The Esperanza Fire". A page turner, for sure.

Or, to learn about the beginning of forest fire policy in this country, google "The Great Fire of 1910", or "The Big Burn". That's where it all started, kiddies. 78 firefighters dead and misguided decisions to follow.

I know that in the San Francisco Bay Area the people we now call the Ohlones practiced area burns on a yearly basis. They were semi-nomadic and would set the fires as they left areas on their mini-migrations, thus insuring a good seed crop when they returned the following year. You can learn about it in "The Ohlone Way", easily got from Alibris, etc.

Jeff

 

[Idiocyabounds]

If you haven't seen this TED Talk on forest fires then I highly recommend it. It explains some of the problem, which is then exacerbated by years of drought, insect infestation and the increase of dead trees in the forest.

https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_hess...ad&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

I lived 53 years in California before moving to Colorado and know from my friends in the California forestry business that not only is there no easy solution, but that money (lack of) is also part of the problem. It is not easy, economical, nor even possible in many locations to thin forests in the extremely mountainous and remote regions. Where it is possible, the money has to come from somewhere.

Then there are these facts to consider which I have copied from an article online:
"The federal government is the largest owner of forest lands in California, holding about 57 percent of the roughly 33 million acres. Families, individuals, companies or Native American tribes own about 40 percent of forested land in California, while local, state and land trusts own the remainder.

Most of the timber companies operating in California today are family owned or part of family trusts. Those companies primarily get trees from their own lands by filing a harvest plan with the state for lumber production or through the sale of trees through federal forest programs, including some that allow them to salvage trees after forest fires.

California has no commercial timber operations on state-owned lands."

I think there are changes coming with money from the Farm Bill and from HUD to go to the states to assist with forest thinning and management. As with everything bureaucratic I'm sure the change will come slowly.

 

[CGDustDevil]

How did Nature manage the forest before Man arrived?

Forests cleaned themselves... But the causes of the fires were also from natural sources and not man made. Forest fires are not 'necessary' if humans properly manage the lands.

 

[CGDustDevil]

Here is an interesting read from Free Range Report:

[/quote]California Gov. Jerry Brown blamed “those who deny” global warming for wildfires devastating the state, while President Donald Trump blamed the blazes on the state’s “gross mismanagement of the forests.” So, who is right?

Both of them are wrong, according to University of Washington climate scientist Cliff Mass.

“The situation is complex,” Mass told The Daily Caller News Foundation. “And most of the politician are getting things wrong.”

“President Trump is not correct that forest management is a major issue in these fires,” Mass said via email. “The recent fires are predominantly in grassland and chaparral.”

“And Governor Brown is not correct that global warming is a significant issue,” Mass said. “The grasses and chaparral would have been dry enough to burn no matter what, since California is typically dry after its typical long warm/dry summer and the offshore-directed Diablo/Santa Ana winds would have dried it out in any case.”

http://www.freerangereport.com/land-management-policies-population-growth-at-root-of-california-wildfires/?fbclid=IwAR0jhF0b2KlrsnqyrN72QAI54dVOp5JHmFB1wkpfPCL-WdoTv4DKcSotc9k[/quote]

It should be noted that Brown recently signed a 'wildfire' bill that lets PG&E pass on some of its costs to customers. PG&E was evidently behind some of the trouble last year, and there is speculation that one of their transmission lines or substations may have sparked the deadly and disastrous "Camp Fire".

https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/09/21/brown-signs-bill-allowing-utilities-to-pass-costs-of-wildfire-lawsuits-onto-consumers/

The "why" is a VERY complicated question. Suffice it to say there are myriad reasons.

 

[Bear Paw Jack]

The California politicians passed a bill to take down the 129million dead trees that are nothing but tinder in California and Moonbeam vetoed it. It would have put a lot of people to work and it would have made the state and people there safer.

I forget the guys name that Sean Hannity uses for weather reports but he predicted these fires earlier in the year. His theory is that weather is going to do what it's going to do, but we can do things to protect ourselves from it if we use our head.

Joe Bastardi: Before the Fact: Why Another Big Wildfire Season May ...
https://patriotpost.us/.../56002-before-the-fact-why-another-big-wildfire-season-may-...
March and April have been wet again in California. ... Joe Bastardi · May 17, 2018. March and April have been ... Now, about the wildfire season. ... Or, if like our hurricane forecast is hinting at, imagine a storm blows up in someone's backyard.

 

[Tom W]

I told my wife yesterday that PG&E was responsible for the Camp Fire. I also suggested that they would raise their rates to compensate for the fines and lawsuits that will probably come due to the fire....Everyone looses.....

 

[bogus bill]

We retired to cedar city utah fourteen years ago. Cedar Breaks NP is up behind us. When we moved here the 9,000 ft high country above us was all green and pretty. Then it got hit with bark beetles (from not logging) and it killed most of the trees. A fire got away from a property owner at Brian Head last year and burned over 50 square miles and 13 houses.
Mostly beetle killed dead trees fed the fire. Now I see they are sawing down the dead burned trees that they could have/should have before the fire and used! I was taught in forestry school, the meaning of the word "conservation" is "The WISE use of our natural resources." Snowflake politics and schools has influenced the powers of our betters away from that.

 

[caryc]

I told my wife yesterday that PG&E was responsible for the Camp Fire. I also suggested that they would raise their rates to compensate for the fines and lawsuits that will probably come due to the fire....Everyone looses.....

Since they are allowed to pass on the cost of fines and lawsuits from fires to their customers, they really have no incentive to upgrade their equipment. Any time these fires get started it's during a period of Santana winds that turn a manageable fire into a raging inferno. We have the equipment like foscheck bombers and helicopters to fight these fires but once those Santana winds kick in they are just not manageable.

Now what they want to do is randomly turn off our electric when these winds come up for fear of fires. Yep, that will take care of the problem. We have had fierce Santana winds continuously for about a week here in Southern Calif. Today we finally have winds about 3 or 4 MPH. It's the Santana winds that make our fires different from fires around the country. Without these winds, our fires would be manageable.

 

[bogus bill]

I was a fire fighter the season of 1960 in Yosemite NP. They also used us for a large fire in Sequoia/Kings canyon and a large fire above Hetch Hatchi reservoir out of the park. We had helicopters. The older workers said they seen them for the first time in 1959, the year prior. We mostly had spot fires after every lightning storm. The fire in Kings canyon was started by a tire coming off a trailer and rolling down the mountain I was told. That one was my first helicopter ride. The pilot I recognised later on the tv series "Highway Patrol" where Broderick Crawford used him a lot. A few years later I was a guard for Universal Movie studios and met Crawford. I mentioned the pilot and Crawford told me the pilot later got killed crashing in a fire. While I was on that fire we were on top of a mountain by a cliff with the fire racing up at us and they had a chain of helicopters picking us up and flying us off. The pilot that flew me off later that day crashed too but lived. I then was assigned to work the heliport and met a dozen or so contract chopper pilots. Every fire after that the pilot would recognize me and ask my boss to use me. One of the pilots had a son that he was training all he could that I worked with. Years later I read where that son was flying some structure for a power company crashed and was killed. All these fires and other tragedies have consequences even years later!

 

[redhawker]

There's yer problem...

...not only the afore mention forest mismanagement but the general mismanagement of the entire state by the dumb-o-crats.

 

[Mobuck]

When I spent the summer of 2010 working in Colorado, I was amazed at the lengths people would go to in the interest of building a house in a spot nearly inaccessible in winter and highly prone to wildfires during summer/fall.

 

[blackhawknj]

Throw in a prolonged drought, MJ cultivation.....

 

[Rick Courtright]

I am not that knowledgeable about forestry and controlled burns, however, with relative humidity in single digits it would seem that even a controlled burn could easily turn into a wildfire with a little wind and just one errant spark.

Hi,

Yes, there's a reason many of us joke that the most dangerous people to give a box of matches to are USFS employees planning a "controlled burn." I can't tell you how many of those have gone south on 'em in the half century I've lived within 15 minutes of the forest.

On the "management" issue, it's a little more than just treehuggers. I may stand to be corrected on this, but I seem to recall a figure of 40% of the lands within CA's borders are Federally controlled, either USFS or BLM. Without calling out anyone in particular who gets his paycheck from Uncle Sam for working with either of those agencies, there is a tremendous amount of inertia when it comes to getting either of them to change something they've been doing for decades, even if it can be proven detrimental.

After the Yellowstone fire--1988?--it was decided that 100 years of putting out everything that looked like a flame bigger than a birthday candle was bad practice. Yellowstone had the very same problem we see throughout the West: incredible amounts of fuel in the form of underbrush, which would not exist with a better thought out "prevention" program of truly controlled burns. But here we are 30 years later, and we haven't gotten all the forests burned down/cleaned out. In fact, most of what has been done is the result of major fires, not general housecleaning of the forest by any particular agency.

Add that in a desert area, which large parts of many western States are, the plant life may not be impressive for size like 100 ft tall pine trees, but for survival purposes, it's developed a variety of wax/oil defenses to retain what water it can get. From a fire standpoint, this stuff can be very close to explosive. In some local areas, most of the underbrush is comprised of this kind of plant life, so when it gets going, it's extremely tough to get under control. Especially with problem terrain: there was a fire that started just about the 4th of July, maybe 20 minutes from me. It roared up the side of the mountain, and they were able to hit most of it by air. However, there was a small patch of around 1300 plus acres where it was virtually inaccessible: they couldn't fly, get ground crews in, or otherwise work on it. So they "let it go" with an observation crew watching it 24/7 so if it got out of its closed in little area, they could call for aerial support on the other side of the hill. It burned in there until well after Labor Day! 1300 acres burned for over 60 days? What does that tell you about the fuel buildup?

This is not a problem limited to CA, either: a large part of the entire western US suffers from this. So when we hear the likes of Mr. Trump telling us he won't help because we mismanage our lands, it's face palm time, big time! Regardless of whatever's involved in the little personal piddling match between him and Jerry Brown, which I think is really more of an exercise in soaking their socks than doing anything impressive in the distance department (for both of them), most of the major fires in CA right now are on "his" turf...

Just sayin...

Rick C

 

[Highhawk1948]

Run by a bunch of moonbeams. Take the money spent on homeless, global warming, and illegals and spen it on Wildfire Midication. Several states have successful programs to follow. I was in the business for 37 years and have seen it work.

 

[Bull Barrel]

Trump did not say he wouldn't help, in fact he promised help.

 

[Colonialgirl]

I took a course called "Man and His Environment" many years ago; They had a section on the work of a Ranger in Florida that Demonstrated that forests were greatly improved by controlled burns that cleared out the over grown underbrush, PLUS it made them more resistant to forest fires.

 

[gramps]

There used to be asbestos siding on homes, used to be adobe, tiles on roofs, all that replaced with vinyl, asphalt roofing shingles. Now we wonder why homes go up in smoke? Rick you have told us the reason for the fires. The mesquite, sage, chaparral etc, can be kept away from houses, combined with better building practices, and a PLAN for sprinkler systems ( yeah I know it is a desert-a whole nother conversation), and what happens if there is a fire. I have friends that work in The Great Smoky Mountains, and Big South Fork, that get paid extra to go fight fires out west. Fires out west have been going on since before I was born, and it doesn’t seem, that anything preventative has been done. They can pay the firefighters overtime, buy nifty neato planes etc, but the fires go on.
gramps

 

[redhawker]

Then there's this too...

 

[caryc]

I heard someone on the radio say that of the last 21 fires, Pacific Gas & Electric was responsible for 17 of them. I don't know how true that is but that's what I heard.