California on fire again

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yep, had some buddies working in Carson, they went out to the end of Balboa Pier to get a better view...should be raining on the West Coast by now....but nope.

 

It can only burn so much. When the fuel's gone, it will be a while before the next firebug is successful. Those people should be burned at the stake.

 

It doesn't take much to start a fire under the conditions there right now. Santa Ana winds are really bad for fires. It could have been anything - cigarette butt, homeless guy trying to stay warm, car with catalytic converter parking in tall grass...

What they really need to do is more logging and controlled burns. The brush there is so overgrown, it is a disaster just waiting to happen.

 

Most of what's burning is brush, not trees. That shit is flammable even when it is not dry, which it is.

 

I blame this on over development preventing controlled fire burning, over population, bad environmental policies that prevent "trimming" of over dry brush and trees. Too many people all around, homeless, campers, hikers, riders, drivers, etc., who can easily spark a fire when the weather makes it so easy. We have only ourselves to blame. Nature is just doing what it's been doing for hundreds of years in areas like this.

 

The brush is overgrown too. It isn't natural for it to grow without burning for decades at a time. If you aren't going to do controlled burns or bull dozing it down occasionally, you are asking for trouble.

 

Yikes - stay safe out there!

 

Some forestry areas in the UK have switched to regular controlled burning off to manage this sort of risk. Where this has been done it may not look picture book pretty for a few months, but nature soon springs back, and a controlled fire ensures animals have ample time to move clear. However they have easy access to plenty of lakes with water. It looks like much of California is tinder dry, so even a minor fire can quickly get out of control and then it takes a lot of water to stop. In this day of high tech communications - it seems we still cannot get everyone to take the hint and move out of harms way. A lost property can be replaced, a lost life is gone forever.

 

In this case, the fire moved very fast and the roads did not have the capacity to handle all of the people fleeing the fire.

 

We are finally forcasted to our first rain event since April 16th next week. A month over due. Not all due to humans, probably climate change to blame as well. The “Camp Fire” fire started last Thursday morning and has become CA’s deadliest fire in history. Good rains in the first few months made grasses and bushes flourish, then no rain since has made them perfect fuel for fires. The major factor in the extraordinary speed of how it spread were the 70 mph winds from the East, not the normal off shore winds. When they issued the evacuation for the town of Paradise, they tried to manage it by having people leave in groups, but the winds were too great, and the flames overtook them. 400 people still missing, my neighbor’s cousin lost everything.

 

I live in the East Bay, and the air quility is poor today, difficult to breath from all the smoke. I have to brush the ash off my bike before a ride. 160 miles away!

 

Glad to hear that they try to clear stuff out but, really, it isn't their job. They need to allow more logging, selective culling or even clear cutting. And when they clear cut, all the underbrush gets cleared out too. Logging roads make good fire breaks. I know it makes the environmentalists crazy but it isn't natural for the forests or the underbrush to be so dense.

 

This is not necessarily true:
"But, as we saw in the 2013 fire near Yosemite, known as the Rim Fire and one of the largest in California history, commercial logging and the clear-cutting of forests do not reduce fire intensity.

In the case of the Rim Fire, our research found that protected forest areas with no history of logging burned least intensely. There was a similar pattern in other large fires in recent years. Logging removes the mature, thick-barked, fire-resistant trees. The small trees planted in their place and the debris left behind by loggers act as kindling; in effect, the logged areas become combustible tree plantations that are poor wildlife habitat."

 

Interesting. What is the solution to overgrowth that is caused by aggressive fire fighting then?

 

"Who is We" that conducted this research?

 

Update:
The Camp Fire, which ignited Nov. 8 in Butte County, continued to grow slowly, reaching 140,000 acres on Thursday, with containment reported at 40 percent.

The number of missing people continues to skyrocket, rising from 297 on Wednesday night to 631 on Thursday night, Honea said.

The number of structures that have been destroyed stood at 11,862, including 9,700 single-family homes — about 1,000 than were reported on Wednesday.