Damn! accidental double post, and I still misspelled “Pollyanna.” (bows head in shame)
Hey 'possum, that’s one of my pet peeves, too. Just a note to the rest of the world: ecology is the study of ecosystems (at least in modern usage). You sound very retro, and not in a cool way, when you refer to things as harming/aiding the ecology (unless you’re talking about budget cuts, of course). For the love of Cecil, try to be more nowtro.
Maybe, maybe not. In a dense housing tract it won’t do squat because there isn’t 30 feet of property between the houses, but it might do something for houses on larger properties as it would make it easier for firefighters to get to the fires. Basically, it makes it a bit harder for them to catch on fire and a bit easier to do something about it if it does catch - but it’s certainly not a guarantee.
The OP is so full of shit, spontaneous combustion is an imminent threat. And since the board hasn’t been thinned in awhile, the potential for catastrophe is high.
1.) Most of the fires are brush-fires: chaparral, manzanita, sage, scrub oak, etc. The thinning-the-trees argument does not apply here. Furthermore, I’m aware of no law in California prohibiting the thinning of brush. On the contrary, there are laws requiring the thinning of brush under certain circumstances. Others in this thread have indicated this as well. In the end, fire is a normal part of the life-cycle of this biome, and neither can nor should be fully eradicated.
2.) At the higher elevations–Lake Arrowhead/Big Bear Lake, Julian/Cuyamaca–there are trees burning. However, the fires have almost nothing to do with a lack of thinning. For one thing, these woods are thin as they are: these are dry, relatively sparse stands of pines, not dense stands of redwood/douglas fir, etc. that you see farther north nearer the coast. Even more importantly, drought has dried up much of the sap that inhibits overinfestation of bark-beetles. The result is that the beetles have been able to bore deeper into these trees, killing the trees and allowing the beetle to thrive uncharacteristically. The result is that half of the trees in any given stand are dead or dying, and are thus the perfect fuel for forest-fires.
3.) Most of these fires are on private lands. If there is any blame to place, it is with the landowners. But again, I’m not convinced this kind of argument has much merit at all.
4.) Were these fires away from development, they would likely have been contained long ago. The problem is that these fires are raging at the urban-rural interface–rural suburbs, if you will. Since the primary goal is to save property, all rersources are directed to that end, allowing the fires to burn freely in the areas between developments. If there is a land-management issue here, it concerns unrestricted development, not a lack of tree/brush-thinning.
5.) Almost all of the areas burned are bastions of conservative politics in Southern California: Simi Valley, San Bernardino County, eastern San Diego County. An irony is that many of the very folks who decry government “handouts” will be receiving that very thing–in a big way. If you have an issue with land-management in these areas, you should talk to these folks, not some environmental bogeyman.
6.) Most of these fires are the result of arson. There’s simply not much that can be done if folks decide to set fires during the hot, dry Santana winds (it’s “Santana,” not “Santa Ana”–but that’s another story) which blow from the northeast out of the Mojave Desert at this time of year. There’s a good possibility the arsonist(s) will never be caught.
Oh, yeah. Another tidbit of info: judging from dendrochronological records, the fire pattern in the southwest has been changing over the last few hundred years from one of low-intensity ground fires to less frequent but hotter fires that are more likely to wipe out a whole forest. It isn’t clear exactly why this is, but climate change probably has a lot to do with it.
We know that fire is a necessary part of many ecosystems, but even so, the intensity of events in the last few years is not typical of the fire record as we know it. So there is some reason to be concerned. Of course, this is also evidence for climate change, and as such, must be part of the “hoax” I was hearing about this morning on NPR :rolleyes:.
Well hello there, howyadoin?
I’m doing fine, thanks.
Listen. The argument is that protected wilderness in and around certain parts of California, now under fire, presumably, and near homes, businesses and the like, are burning more out-of-control (If that could be said about it all) with all the environmental concerns and legislation that has been passed lately than had they not been deemed it all ‘protected woodlands’, or whatever that designation is.
Make any sense?
Hmmm.
What I got out of it was the idea of that the environmentalist and their brethren passed all sorts of laws legislating the treatment of woodlands, and that because of these strict laws, the fires themselves, and the efforts to put them out, have been hampered. Then he went on and talked about specific cases where trucks weren’t allowed in certain protected woodlands and others who weren’t allowed to clear brush or the like.
He tied it together much better than I have, which might explain why he has a popular radio show (It’s on now, incidentally) and I’m stuck here writing to an online messageboard.
But it’s not like I didn’t agree with what he was saying yesterday, and probably today.
Let me listen a bit and see if what I’ve relayed, and believed at the time, were what I’ve written here, now.
Or we can just keep yelling at each other. That’s always fun.
You can make that claim all you want, but Santa Ana and Santana have pretty much the same historical evidence for that being the original usage and pretty much go back about to the same time. Both are acceptable.
sorry - the difference 20 vs. 30 feet isn’t what was important (IMHO), You said people were “Allowed” to remove the brush from (#) feet from around their home. This implies that:
A: One can choose not to remove the brush from around their home and
B: one is not permitted (ie ‘not allowed’) to remove brush from a larger area than the one specified.
Vs. the other person who stated that people were “required” to remove the brush from (#) feet from around their home. this, otoh, implies:
A. one MUST remove at least that amount of brush and
B. It’s possible to extend that zone.
So, your stance was that at best x # of feet of brush might be removed, vs. at worst that number of feet of brush would be removed.
Joe can be a real ass. He lives in my neighborhood, so any local things he squeaks about usually get attended to pretty quick, so at least I have that going for me. But he has never really struck me as an informed type, even though he is willing to rant. I didn’t hear the broadcast you are talking about, but it seems from what you’ve said that he is suffering from a bit of transference from issues arising around the BWCA blowdown, which I have heard Joe rant about before. He was a bit misinformed there, so I’m guessing it’s the same here.
A large difference between the BWCA and CA is the difference in responsibility of the logging companies. The BWCA is outside the realm of the logging companies, much to their displeasure. After the blowdown, the logging companies, admittadly self served, but also in a spirit of aid, asked to go in and log. They were summarily shot down by the environmentalists and the USFS. This will come back to haunt them if it turns out to be a big bonfire. But since the fire hasn’t happened up there (I was up there this year, some of the trees are to the point of rot now, but a large amount is just waiting for the fire, a not if, but when kind of deal) Joe is transfering the issues to CA. They don’t transfer equally. The logging companies have a hand in the situation in CA, which isn’t the case here. Development has a hand in CA, not here. Wealthy liberals have a hand in CA fires, I’ve met some of the loons involved in the BWCA tussle, and wealthy isn’t the best term for them.
I dunno, there’s just a whole host of things that Joe hasn’t considered, but he does have his own little cabal of yes men. Granted they are a little more thoughtful than the Ditto heads.
Yumanite: Increased fire intensity is due to fire suppression. More time between fires means more woody growth and more dead wood, leaves, etc (‘fuel load’). So instead of a litter fire (the least intense kind- doesn’t kill fire-tolerent trees [e.g., native oaks], just clears brush), you get a crown fire, commonly called a firestorm.
Our current ideas about preventing forest fires arose after the Great Peshtigo (WI) Forest Fire, which killed ~1,200 on the same day as the great Chicago fire. Since then, the watchword has been fire suppression. Ironically, the Peshtigo fire was caused mainly by sloppy logging. Now logging is being promoted to stop the disasterous fires resulting from fire suppression. Good luck!
This is actually a topic I am fairly knowledgable on. I’ve got to go fix the fence now, but I’ll do some bonus ignorance abatement on this thread later tonite.
Forestry Ph.D.-totin’ policy analyst checking in here.
Short answer: fires are nobody’s fault; they’re natural in the San Gabriel Mountains. A good book about the subject is The Control of Nature by John McPhee. If you get a wet winter, you’ll probably see a bunch of mudslides in the burned areas too. This year is worse than others, but that’s the natural cycle.
To reduce the impact, some responsible gummint agency might institute some prescribed burning at cooler, wetter times of the year, but given that this is a suburban sprawl associated problem too, I’d hate to be the guy whose prescribed fire got away from him.
Longer answer: we imported our view of ecosystem management from the Europeans. A singificant aspect of that view was that we should maximize timber output on every acre of forested land. As such, since the 1920s or so, the Forest Service and the state forestry agencies have worked to suppress fires whenever possible. Two reasons: (1) Fire wasn’t common in Europe where forestry developed, so it was percieved to unnatural here; and (2) the Forest Service was out to maximize the amount of timber growing on the National Forests. Only in the last 30 years or so have we come to understand the importance of fire in the natural function of ecosystems in the United States and we’ve come to realize that we don’t need to maximize the production of timber on every acre of forestland in this country due to the size of our land base (much much bigger than Europe).
In that time, stands of trees that supported 50 - 100 trees per acre and with grassy understories and saw frequent hot, fast, groundfires come through every two or three years from lightning and/or Native American ignition sources now have 500 - 1000 stems per acre and have had fire excluded for 10 - 80 years. When these things ignite, they burn hot and fast, but also ignite the canopy of the forest, killing trees, since they aren’t designed to survive the heat in the upper canopy.
That said, the person who pointed out that these are brush fires and not forest fires (for the most part) is exactly correct. There’s not much a forestry agency can do to manage brush in a neighborhood - - as such, this is much more of a municipal problem than a Federal gummint problem.
I personally wouldn’t be seeking out a scapegoat at this time, and would hate for some groups to demagogue this issue at this time. Let’s get the fires out, help those made homeless by this event, and present policies for rational landscape-scale brush and fuel management.
Oh… while I’m wishing, I’ll have a pony, too.
Good luck out there, and stay strong.
Um, since the fire department usually isn’t required (or motivated) to even attempt to save your house if you don’t have your brush cut back, I would say that it has a very large impact as to whether your house burns or not.
-lv
Hi NurseCarmen. I had no clue you lived in St. Paul.
Cool.
I’m beginning to wonder about what he was talking about yesterday, and maybe, just maybe, he’s as misinformed about all this as you suspect.
I’ve seen him get it all wrong before, but I’ve also seen him completely nail it.
Dunno. I’m waiting to hear what he says about it today.
Right now he’s complaining about environmentalists holding up the healthy forest initiative that would have allowed for thinning of deep woods trees and underbrush.
Interesting.
Listen. I got your–rather, his–argument the first time, and I responded to it. I refer you back to my post. Feel free to read it. Again: these fires are not occuring in designated wilderness, and they are not the result of a lack of tree-thinning, despite what your local demagogue tells you. Get it straight. I know Minnesota is a long way away and very different from Southern California, and I know imagination can only take a fella so far, but there is such a thing as “information.” Seek it. I’m pulling for you.
No more the second time than the first.
This is getting tiresome. Look! A big bird!
Or you can shut off your inane radio-show and read a fucking book. They say it’s fundamental.
This is The Pit. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the fire, Smokey.
Geez, I’m getting everything wrong in this thread. But I could have sworn an ecologist friend of mine said something Sunday about the “fire based ecology.” Maybe she was getting sloppy too?
And if I said “allowed” to remove brush, I meant “required.” Where “allowed” came from, I don’t know.
All I meant to say was that yes there are rules requiring you to remove brush, but fires are going to happen no matter what we do or not. A few lightning strikes could have started this just as easily as arson. We know a few people who are in the path of these things, including one couple who had to leave their cat behind. They’ve been told their house is probably still there, but nobody knows about the kitty. 
Last apology in this thread. I was trying to say that if there’s a big enough fire headed your way, even if you have the brush cleared, the fire department may not be able to do squat to save your house.
I live in a house that is on a mound and the bottom floor is still 6/10ths of a foot BELOW sea level. We have massive amounts of flood insurance. It’s the chance you take living here. What bothers me is when people live in high-risk areas for something – in this case, we’ll say fires – but get all pissy about it when it actually happens, as if it shouldn’t. If you’re going to live somewhere risky, you need to know about it and accept it and do what you can to minimize your risk.
But sometimes the house floods, or burns, or washes away in a mudslide. I feel really bad for the people this stuff happens to, honest I do. But it happens.
I have to admit, I pretty much ignored your post. It didn’t seem worth reading after the full of shit part.
You should come to expect that when you go off as you did. Not many people are going to stay around and await your amazing powers to enlighten when you start off attacking the shit out of them.
You know?
Oh well.
’possum – I know that buildup of brushy material due to fire suppression is an important factor in fire intensity. But it isn’t necessarily the whole story. On a small scale (a few to several hectares), that may well be the determining factor, but on much larger scales (the entire west, for example) it is being driven by climate as well, and it was this in particular I was talking about in that post.
RabbitNot to worry- its a common usage. Your ecologist pal was maybe talking about “fire ecology,” the study of fire as a disturbance within ecosystems.
Yumanite: Point taken. But both factors have occured over large scales, and they interact with each other and other human-introduced disturbances (e.g., grazing). (Note that I am not endorsing the foolish shibboleth that everything was stable and hunky-dory before the European Settlement. There is essentially no such thing as a stable ecosystem.)
**
Y’know I did too.
Ummm rmbnxs, having knowledge and being able to communicate it, aren’t the same.
:rolleyes: