Problem 1: Long distance power lines running thru forests.
Problem 2: People building in and near forests.
Solution: Have the power lines and the people coincide. Have these people who like to live out in the tullies live under the power lines. Give them the land for cheap but require them to keep the trees down.
I’m sure no one will have a problem with this. 
Is there not a dry but non-windy period during the year? That would better for controlled burns.
What about using far-field wireless power transfer technology in some of these areas? Is it feasible?
I’m not sure how serious you are, but that technology does not exist yet, at least not at the scales needed to power thousands of homes and businesses (or really even one home - it’s a major accomplishment to power remote drones at the moment).
Also, if you are worried about a fire risk, then the idea of shooting beams of energy should be a huge red flag until major safety protocols are established.
CA does have contained burns and has had for decades. We also have rules for things like clear-cutting, which does tremendous damage and generally only benefits the logging companies. Blithely stating that clear cutting half the state would help also tremendously understates the issues involved in land management in a state the size of France. It would be interesting to look at the climate change issues involved in that sort of strategy as well.
Things that would actually help:
-Less reliance on federal aid to conduct the land management. Every time Washington is mad at us, we get funding cut and can’t do what needs to be done.
-Less reliance on politics to specify forest policy. Science should determine what needs to be done.
-Utilities that maintained specified clear zones (including substantial firebreaks around major lines). Yes, PG&E actually can get this done, if they’re not more concerned about stock prices and executive bonuses. I lived in the Santa Cruz mountains for years, and they would come through there on the the regular and inspect and clear the lines.
-A cohesive water management policy that maximized ecological sustainability
-Fire prevention regulations that were inspected and enforced. I would say in higher risk areas only, but outside of a strictly urban setting - like New York or central LA - I think that all cities are at much higher risk than people realize.
[QUOTE=Sunny Daze;21946383…
-Utilities that maintained specified clear zones (including substantial firebreaks around major lines). Yes, PG&E actually can get this done, if they’re not more concerned about stock prices and executive bonuses. …[/QUOTE]
Yeah, that’s one of the big things. See, fires caused by downed powerlines are usually NOT in the National Forests. So most of the suggestions on this page, while good, wont help much with the PG&G issue.
One more thing is to help the Homeless and get them out of camps in the brush, where they start lots of fires.
Perhaps the answer is to get away from the grid mentality. Distributed generation from solar panels, wind turbines, and tidal generators can reduce the load on the grid substantially. What about making every roof a solar collector? Roofing would last a lot longer.
P.G.&E. is guilty of being a typical American corporation, focused on profits to the exclusion of everything else. Management is the biggest problem American companies face.
As stated already, it would help if PG&E did all of the maintenance they should be doing. And it would be nice if our regulators did not allow millions in executive bonuses when the utility gets fined or sued for the results of insufficient maintenance.
The main issue is high wind and dry conditions. I don’t mean dry as in no rain, I mean no rain since February and the humidity is 5 - 13%. Last week’s fire at the Carquinez Bridge may have been the result of a cigarette tossed from a car window. Embers from the resulting far apparently made it to the other side of the Carquinez Strait and started a fire in Crockett. Climate change can be argued, but the past five years have seen drier and more windy conditions here, and when we do get good rain the grass grow even more.
Except we are having just as many fires this year. And consumers are losing refrigerated food and getting water damage from defrosting freezers.
It isn’t trees catching on fire. It’s grass. Which sets the brush, trees, and houses on fire.
I recently spoke to someone who lives in California and has faced wildfire evacuation in the past (and is ready for one this year). She, too, said the problem was more grass/brush than forests, at least as far as the fires starting, once they get underway everything in their path burns.
That actually makes sense, once she brought it to my attention - dry grass in dry, low humidity condition catches fire easily. It almost seems like if you think “fire” at it hard it enough it will start burning.
We have some issues with that around here where they use controlled burns on the prairie/grassland areas. Even here, near the Great Lakes, controlled burns can get out of control, and we do have a few unrequested fires from time to time. The big difference is that we never get as dry as California does (we DO get the hurricane-force winds).
My very limited understanding is that there are several issues that play into these disasters, some within human control and some not. Well, we can’t control everything but if we don’t control what we can control then that part of it is on us.
I was going to touch on this yesterday. We’ve got a lot of agricultural land burning around Santa Rosa right now, including vineyards. If you look at the footage around Simi, it’s mixed use, but again, you’ll see livestock. Blanketing these fires as a “forestry” issue is incorrect.
[Moderating]
This was just brought to my attention, but calling for executions in GQ (or anywhere else other than the Pit) is way out of line. Do not do this again.
Also, now that I’ve read it, it looks like this thread has drifted significantly from factual questions, into the realm of brainstorming and suggestions, which is a better fit for IMHO. Moving.
This again?
I’ll respond the same way I did when Mr. Trump blamed Californian’s for mismanaging their forests about a year ago:
But I digress.
Look at those scenes and dozens of others from your old favorite Western movies and TV shows and tell me again where you find an abundance of trees worth logging. I was watching Pale Rider the other day, Hang ‘em High a week earlier, Unforgiven weeks before that. There just ain’t no thick forests to be seen. Yeah, sometimes there’s trees – even a tree worth hangin’ someone from – but that’s not the kind of stuff any logging company is going to be pining for. A logging company would find nothing worth cutting even for the pulp; they wouldn’t take the ‘management’ job even if we paid them!
Sure, in Northern California maybe there’s forests that Boise Cascade would just love to have the rights and license to “manage” half of – except their version of clear-cutting “management” is the kind of stuff that’s turning the Amazon basin into a desertified strip.
When James Watt said that kind of thing in the early 1980s, he knew exactly what he was saying – but then he is (was?) a dispensationalist. When President Rump said it last year, I’m not sure if he was just schilling for the corporations with a vested interest in that kind of stuff, or clueless about his accusation.
TLDR: It’s a poorly researched argument, Sam.
–G!
*A lot of the open land around the Bay area looked pretty similar when I was visiting my brother in San Mateo; Diablo Mountain and the Half-Moon bay. That, of course, is actually more along the central coast of California but, since it’s north of The GrapeVine it seems to be lumped together with the Northern California region. And the really nicely-forested regions around Humboldt where my ex-girlfriend used to live would be a treasure trove for the logging companies [Oops, our clear-cut was wider than expected; well, you don’t mind if we just gather and sell this detritus, do you?] It’s just that the marijuana growers would get homicidally pissed-off if someone clear-cut away their obfuscating canopy.
Hard to predict wind. Blows when it wants to.