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The West is on fire [W:86]

countryboy said:
Maybe it's time to end the idiotic policies which don't allow the removal of dead wood from national forests.
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They're removing it as fast as they can right now, at least around here. Those 100 million dead trees generated a lot more dead wood than could be removed.

It's time to manage forests by policies based on science, not on politics, that's for sure.
 
apdst said:
I agree. Build firebreaks and let the fires burn.

I recall that after the Yellowstone fire in the 90's that it was discovered that the seed pod of a certain type of tree only opened up under high heat.
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It wasn't discovered then, it was already known. And the tree is a lodgepole pine.

We can build all the firebreaks we want, they're marginal at best and utterly useless when the wind picks up.

IMO what we need to do as a country to lessen the impact on people is quit subsidizing risky behavior. Build in a forest, you assume the risk. Build in a floodplain, you assume the risk. We're not going to fight the fires to save your structures and we're not going provide low cost flood insurance so you can rebuild in the same floodplain so act accordingly.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Fires and fire prevention must become more of a priority.

Do you agree? Why or why not?

read more here
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Disagree, past fire prevention is one of the causes of worse forest fires now as it caused the fuel to build up... see Yellowstone circa 1988.

Fighting fires is costly and IMO doesn't do a whole lot of good in the long run. Yes if towns are threatened something should be done, cabins out in the woods... not so much.

At any rate Mother Nature is planning on taking care of our fires starting tonight and will hopefully be able to mop up during the weekend.

mid_sept_setup_0912.jpg


This change is courtesy of a shift in the jet stream. Over the West, the jet stream will take a southward dip in the region, allowing colder conditions to infiltrate farther south. Conversely, the jet stream will be pushed northward over the East, with mild temperatures streaming northward into the Midwest and Northeast.

image
Upper-level setup for mid-September, with a southward dip in the jet stream over the West and a northward bulge over the East.

In addition, a significant low-pressure system will produce widespread showers and thunderstorms from Idaho and Montana into northern Arizona and New Mexico through Thursday. As the colder air flows in behind this system, the rain will change to snow in the mountains of southwestern Montana, western Wyoming and portions of Idaho Thursday night into Saturday.
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https://weather.com/forecast/national/news/mid-september-pattern-change-rockies-first-snow

Edit to add - We're having our one day of Fall today. Temp in high 70's yesterday, snow tomorrow morning. :lol:
 
The more rain we have the more shrubbery we have in our desert west.

The Wise Ones have made starting low intensity fires impractical because they let people build in brush filled forests so it gets complicated when it's time to burn, so in the typical government way, we ignore it until lightning or marijuana growers or that homeless dude, or something else starts it and away she goes - years of biomass overburden succumbing to natures way of "mowing the law"!

Fire renews the land. The best deer hunting is the second through tenth years after a fire. Game loves the fresh growth, and Bambi and her siblings get to frolic hither and yon, and coyotes, wolves, and mountain lions all line up for a meal on all the new critters who moved in for a new food supply like ground squirrels eating nuts, and owls eating ground squirrels as nature intended.

It's the "Wheel of Life"...

WE ARE IN NATURES WAY! Not the other way around.

So deal with it.
 
Winchester said:
Disagree, past fire prevention is one of the causes of worse forest fires now as it caused the fuel to build up... see Yellowstone circa 1988.

Fighting fires is costly and IMO doesn't do a whole lot of good in the long run. Yes if towns are threatened something should be done, cabins out in the woods... not so much.

At any rate Mother Nature is planning on taking care of our fires starting tonight and will hopefully be able to mop up during the weekend.

mid_sept_setup_0912.jpg




https://weather.com/forecast/national/news/mid-september-pattern-change-rockies-first-snow

Edit to add - We're having our one day of Fall today. Temp in high 70's yesterday, snow tomorrow morning. :lol:
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Sounds like a delightful climate.

Yes, mother nature brings us fall, perhaps some rain, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief as the fire season is over for the moment.

Then, the more it rains, the more brush and grass grows, and the hotter they burn next year.
 
chuckiechan said:
The more rain we have the more shrubbery we have in our desert west.

The Wise Ones have made starting low intensity fires impractical because they let people build in brush filled forests so it gets complicated when it's time to burn, so in the typical government way, we ignore it until lightning or marijuana growers or that homeless dude, or something else starts it and away she goes - years of biomass overburden succumbing to natures way of "mowing the law"!

Fire renews the land. The best deer hunting is the second through tenth years after a fire. Game loves the fresh growth, and Bambi and her siblings get to frolic hither and yon, and coyotes, wolves, and mountain lions all line up for a meal on all the new critters who moved in for a new food supply like ground squirrels eating nuts, and owls eating ground squirrels as nature intended.

It's the "Wheel of Life"...

WE ARE IN NATURES WAY! Not the other way around.

So deal with it.
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One of the biggest local fires in recent memory was called the "Rough Fire," not because it was rough, but because it started near a seasonal creek called "Rough Creek."

It burned an area measured in square miles, literally. It started in a very remote area, was initially attacked from the air, but got away and out of control.

Almost all of the area burned was chaparral, brush land, that regenerates from the roots the spring after the fire.

Wildflowers in the burned area were spectacular the following spring. Brush began growing new shoots, to the delight of the deer.

One building burned.

A small area of conifers burned, and won't regenerate for several decades. The rest of the area is better than ever, and less prone to wildfires than areas that weren't burned.

Fires can only be suppressed for so long, then the fuel load gets so big that a tiny spark, a lightning strike, an idiot tossing a cigarette butt, anything can set off an uncontrollable fire.
 
Dittohead not! said:
You're probably right about the insurance companies.
The problem with letting wildfires burn and just protecting the houses is that the chaparral has been allowed to grow due to fire suppression, and is now so high and thick that there is no controlling wild fires. First, the brush would have to be cleared and controlled burns set during the damper months.
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Chaparral has a natural burn cycle of around 40-50 years. People who do not provide a defensible space around the house, do not use fire resistant material, do not screen in opening and build in the urban interface are asking for trouble. In many cases it is the "ember wash" from the fire that causes the house to ignite. Then in many cases, it becomes a house to house fire.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-fighting-wildfires-often-fails-and-what-to-do-about-it/
 
mike2810 said:
Chaparral has a natural burn cycle of around 40-50 years. People who do not provide a defensible space around the house, do not use fire resistant material, do not screen in opening and build in the urban interface are asking for trouble. In many cases it is the "ember wash" from the fire that causes the house to ignite. Then in many cases, it becomes a house to house fire.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-fighting-wildfires-often-fails-and-what-to-do-about-it/
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I thought the cycle was more like 20 years. I suppose it depends on the location and how fast the brush grows.
Once the area becomes overgrown, protecting buildings gets very difficult.
 
Our nephew is a smokejumper based in Boise. He's been deployed to Oregon for some time now. Interestingly, he and his team have had a lot of down time because the fires are too big. Smokejumpers and their aircraft are held back for quick deployment to new, small fires. He's been doing a lot of drills and equipment checks.
 
mike2810 said:
That be Lodepole pine. It needs fire to open up the cones to release the seeds. The Yellowstone fire(s) in the 90's was also the result of beetle kill on thousands of acres years before the fire occurred.

I remember visiting the park before the fires and seeing the bug kill lodepole pine. Told the NPS person I will be back someday when it burns. Guess what, I got to go back and work the fires.
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According to scientists, warmer forests from climate change are causing the pine beetle to flourish. Couple that with a longer, hotter arid season in the Mountain West, and the result is more extreme wildfires. Notice that I didn't say more wildfires. Due to education, publicity, and awareness, the number of wildfires is not on the rise. However, the extremity of wildfires is getting worse and worse. Here is a link to the pine beetle and climate change:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2012/03/climate-change-sends-beetles-overdrive

Call it the beetle baby boom. Climate change could be throwing common tree killers called mountain pine beetles into a reproductive frenzy. A new study suggests that some beetles living in Colorado, which normally reproduce just once annually, now churn out an extra generation of new bugs each year. And that could further devastate the region's forests.
 
Media_Truth said:
According to scientists, warmer forests from climate change are causing the pine beetle to flourish. Couple that with a longer, hotter arid season in the Mountain West, and the result is more extreme wildfires. Notice that I didn't say more wildfires. Due to education, publicity, and awareness, the number of wildfires is not on the rise. However, the extremity of wildfires is getting worse and worse. Here is a link to the pine beetle and climate change:

Climate Change Sends Beetles Into Overdrive | Science | AAAS

Call it the beetle baby boom. Climate change could be throwing common tree killers called mountain pine beetles into a reproductive frenzy. A new study suggests that some beetles living in Colorado, which normally reproduce just once annually, now churn out an extra generation of new bugs each year. And that could further devastate the region's forests.
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[h=3]Suppression of naturally occurring blazes may increase wildfire risk ...[/h]news.psu.edu/.../suppression-naturally-occurring-blazes-may-increase-wildfire-risk



Mar 26, 2013 - A wildfire in Lassen National Forest in northern California, where ... "We lost more of the forest in the valley bottom because of the changes caused by fire ... more leaf litter and branches—the components of forest fuel—can ...
 
I live in a moderate risk zone with a great deal of community engagement, and the situation is complicated. Yes forest fires are natural but their rate of increase is directly tied to climate change. We are seeing more fires, longer burns, and fires in areas that normally are not affected. The prolonged fires destroy air quality, pose conservation problems, and they are a major disruption to human communities.

Formerly, our forest fire problem was due to the forestry industry. The policy was to put out all fires, causing densification of the forests, which made eventual fires 10x worse. Then we switched to a controlled burn policy which had much better results.

Now, due to climate change, there are much hotter, dryer conditions in ecosystems that have not experienced such heat in any of the recorded years. The arctic cold front that travels down the west coast every year to provide moisture is traveling shorter and shorter distances, and is dumping less and less moisture. In my locality, we had the worst annual rainfall record in 60 years this year, and this region is shared by a coastal temperate rainforest. The risk level for fire was set to extreme this whole dry sason, the highest level. The ground is so dry that a single spark can start a blaze.

This is a big, big problem. We are going to lose vast amounts of lands in the next 10-15 years if there is no increase in prevention. In my region, we lost 600 hectares this year of crown wilderness, the biggest loss in history. Anyone downplaying this problem simply does not understand the magnitude. We have flooding and water problems in the east and we have drought and fire in the west. The balance is totally disrupted. More and more money is going to have to be put into fighting the effects of climate change. This was predicted 25+ years ago but nobody listened for the usual political reasons, but now it's happening.
 
Wildfires
[h=1]Finally, some commonsense western fire policies[/h] New DOI and DOA policy to cut overgrown, diseased, dead and burned trees is long overdue Paul Driessen President Trump promised to bring fresh ideas and policies to Washington. Now Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue are doing exactly that in a critically important area: forest management and conflagration prevention. Their actions…
 
Jack Hays said:
Wildfires
[h=1]Finally, some commonsense western fire policies[/h] New DOI and DOA policy to cut overgrown, diseased, dead and burned trees is long overdue Paul Driessen President Trump promised to bring fresh ideas and policies to Washington. Now Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue are doing exactly that in a critically important area: forest management and conflagration prevention. Their actions…
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That's what needs to be done.

I'll believe it when I see it being done, not when I read it in a political blog.
 
In saving the Spotted Owl, we created a tinder box area.

Now where is the owl going to live?
 
Dittohead not! said:
DI-16hVV4AAoOU8.jpg



Colombia River Gorge, just one of 137 large wildfires currently raging across the West.



and it's burning up the Forest Service's budget as well:

usfs-budget.jpg





Fires and fire prevention must become more of a priority.

Do you agree? Why or why not?

read more here
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Get the timber industry rolling again and you'd see a lot less fires like this. We'd have healthier forests, road access to remote areas, trained professionals in felling trees available (instead of the brave, yet mostly amateur hour fire fighters they use now) and funding for fighting fires. But almost any attempts to do so get fought by tree-hugging eco-nuts who want to save the trees at the cost of the forest.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
Disagree

Fighting fires should in general be limited to protecting towns and larger communities

Fires are a natural and required way of renewal for the landscape. It will help prevent the spread of the pine beetle as well. Now in general during wet and normal years fires should be allowed to burn themselves out. That way the undergrowth is managed. That way during dry years (like this one) the fires will not be as strong or huge. Allowing for easier fighting during these types of years
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Easily replaced with good logging practices. Planting, thinning, jack-pots burns, harvesting can replace the role of wild fires if done correctly.
 
faithful_servant said:
Easily replaced with good logging practices. Planting, thinning, jack-pots burns, harvesting can replace the role of wild fires if done correctly.
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Yes, it can be done responsibly.

The logging industry in the Northwest has been under attack by environmentalists as link as I can remember. It used to be a thriving business, now we import most out wood. Environmentalism has done so much damage by improper consideration for balance. We needed to move into sensible regulations that continued to provide wood, and mitigated any natural damage.

Logging roads used to be used for firefighting. Now they are overgrown and useless.
 
Dittohead not! said:
There is something to be said for just letting wildfires burn, particularly in the chaparral where periodic fires have been a part of the ecosystem for thousands of years. There is a problem with that idea, though:



500 billion is a lot of homes in the way of wildfires.
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There are places where fires should be allowed to burn and burn regularly. In Cent. Oregon, we now have forests of juniper trees that shouldn't be here. This is due to the policy of stopping fires, instead of letting them burn. What was once the "Bunchgrass Prairie" is now the juniper forest. Junipers en masse are a blight on the eco-system, sucking up water like no one's business, creating dead zones beneath them. Several years ago, they cleared about 1500 acres east of Bend and saw water tables in that area immediately rise, springs got restarted and wildlife increased. Yes, fire can be a good thing, but it has to be managed and used where it should be used and not used where it shouldn't be used.
 
faithful_servant said:
Easily replaced with good logging practices. Planting, thinning, jack-pots burns, harvesting can replace the role of wild fires if done correctly.
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But in many cases the fires were and still are part of the ecosystem. From replacing nutrients in the soil to a temporary change in the plants and animals that will use the area until the forest regrows.

Logging can do some of that, but it will remove the nutrients from the forest, provide by the decaying tree. Overall I am not against logging but not every square mile needs to be open for logging. Keep some land natural, and let nature take its course which will include wild fires
 
faithful_servant said:
There are places where fires should be allowed to burn and burn regularly. In Cent. Oregon, we now have forests of juniper trees that shouldn't be here. This is due to the policy of stopping fires, instead of letting them burn. What was once the "Bunchgrass Prairie" is now the juniper forest. Junipers en masse are a blight on the eco-system, sucking up water like no one's business, creating dead zones beneath them. Several years ago, they cleared about 1500 acres east of Bend and saw water tables in that area immediately rise, springs got restarted and wildlife increased. Yes, fire can be a good thing, but it has to be managed and used where it should be used and not used where it shouldn't be used.
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We have a similar situation here in the chaparral, or brush land. The problem with letting fires burn there is that people have built homes in the chaparral. It really looks pretty in the spring, after all, lots of green grass and wildflowers. The problem is, it dries out and becomes a tinderbox in late summer, and the home owners expect the Forest Service to put out any fires that might start. Sooner or later, the fuel load is such that there is no stopping wildfires, and they start to look like the picture in the OP.
 
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