Soĺ Cal fires
I hear a lot of grumblings about forestry management in California its non-existent because of regulations and tree huggers.
I’m not trying to poke the bear here but after years of years of fires. I think it’s time for folks to try something different. Not deforestation but control burns and selective cuts of forestry management. Importantly clearing dead fall, under cut the brush, clear fire breaks. Plenty of states do this it’s nothing new.
It shouldn’t be a cataclysmic event every time the wind blows. They’re all about green energy, but I’ll be damn if the California gov just lets the state burn down for politics. It’s easier to ask for federal funding. It’s getting out of control vote everyone of those bastards out.
Prays for those affected.
It’s simple really forestry brings in engineers that map the problem areas. With the topographical data they design fire breaks and fire damns so that the forest is compartmentalized in segments. Then the commissioned forestry teams go in and control burn designated areas out side the dry season to burn out the dead fall and brush. This helps with germination of new growth and burns off all the mess that has a potential to catch up. It’s been done. Time to pull out the old play books.
Oh please, your only purpose with this post IS to poke the bear.
It's completely obvious you know absolutely nothing about wildland fire OR the ecology or topography of Southern California. Being ignorant of all of those things, you don't have enough information to jump on the political bandwagon on this. Your controlled burn observations have merit in some fuel model types, but make zero sense in SoCal. They're not applicable in any way, and anyone that understands fuel types, SoCal, or wildland fires should know that.
The areas that are currently burning in SoCal are 100% brush. There's no "forest" to speak of, it's chaparral. Chaparral goes from new growth to 50% dead material in about 7 years, and it's an oily type of brush to begin with. Chaparral has evolved to burn, and burn exactly like it is right now. The problem is that there are houses in the way. If you look at old burn scars, you'll see that areas of the Palisades fire burned less than 4 years ago. In order to keep that area "managed" as you say, you'd have to burn 100% of the unpopulated areas of Socal every 2 years. Anything short of that and with a wind event like is happening at the moment the fires that are happening now would be possible. It's not realistic on any level. Fire breaks? It jumped the PCH without any difficulty. There's video of lifeguard shacks on the beach burning. Think about that.
The other aspect of this is the weather. The winds in SoCal right now are sustained over 70 mph in most places, and are gusting over 100 mph. Even if there had been rain this winter, it wouldn't really matter. That brush will carry fire in 70 mph winds when it's' raining out.
I've fought fire for over 25 years now. I've fought wildfires in SoCal, and lived there for a handful of years as well. Unless you can stop the wind, you can't stop events like what are happening right now. You can't fight fire in the winds they were having yesterday and last night. Maybe some houses can be saved, but the main body of fire will do whatever the hell it wants in wind, humidity and fuel moisture levels the last few and next few days.
I could go on about this. The earth WILL burn itself if we don't. If the land is left unmanaged the natural fire regime will return and get on a natural cycle of burning every few years to decades. The reasons we should manage forests are dictated by urban sprawl, mountain communities, and wildland-urban interface. Also, if we are going to be putting these fires out when they are small to try to PROTECT these spaces we are actually doing the worst thing for them. Since the inception of public land management we have been setting ourselves up for mega fires that burn down complete towns. What I mean is we PREVENT the fuel loading from getting cleaned up, THEN, a spark and high winds will burn the rest eventually.
Prescribed Fire, Logging, Tribal land management allowed to be controlled BY the tribes, AND letting the fires burn while being managed for a dual purpose of medicinal fire and control. The 'Let Burn" policy need to stop being demonized. In this case it is too late. The fires they should have let burn last May but put out causes fires like the Palisades Fire.
You know better than this. You know those fuels are not anywhere near the type of fuels you can manage with prescribed fire. And you know that with the winds that are happening now it wouldn't matter what kind of fuel was on those hills, they'd burn. I know you can look at the old burn maps, parts of the Palisades fire were burned off just a few years ago. You're going to hold control burns over all the unincorporated areas of SoCal every spring? Get real.
I know you've literally seen it with your own eyes, a
neighborhood is a continuous fuel model with 70 mph winds. Some of those areas that burned are nothing but streets and houses. If stucco houses with tile roofs and green, watered landscaping is carrying fire there's nothing from a fuel management perspective that's going to solve the problem. 70+ mph winds, single digit humidity, and one spark will burn down neighborhoods without any brush or "forest" present.