Soĺ Cal fires
Thank you for making my point! Santa Ana winds don't care and not even a 6 lane freeway for a fire break works in those kinds of conditions.
There are absolutely NO "fuel management" projects that are going to do a damn thing in the face of 70+ mph winds that are aligned with topography. None of the firefighters that have DIED on the Cleveland would have been saved by "fuels management". As I'm sure you know all of those incidents are part of yearly firefighter refresher training, I've read about them every year for over 25 years now. And yes, I've lived in San Diego and I've been in the Cleveland. There's nothing special about anything that's been done there compared to anywhere else in SoCal, which is why it was so ridiculous of you to say to begin with. And yeah, if they got 70+ mph winds in the same area that the Cedar fire burned in 22 years ago the same thing would happen today, it's down to wind and topography. Maybe some of the houses rebuilt in that area would have a better shot because of improved building codes and better awareness and mitigation, but realistically you'd still lose thousands of homes, just like before. They are not weather conditions that you can fight, it's like fighting a hurricane.
I don't need to study the Cedar fire. I was already a wildland firefighter then, and my father was on the ground fighting that fire, bumping from house to house on a USFS engine trying to save structures. At the time it was my engine and most of my crew that was there, I was off duty and out of the area or I'd have been there too. I'm well aware of what happened and why.
The area of the Palisades fire is full of fire roads, hiking trails, mountain bike trails, parks, and yes, fuels management areas. Not to mention roads and houses. I used to ride my mountain bike on those trails and drive those canyon roads for fun while I was in college. You can drive a Type 3 fire engine up and down all of those ridge tops, there are already fire roads there. It just doesn't mean dick with a 70 mph wind. You can look at Google Earth and see all the fire roads, they're very obvious. Tuna Canyon Road was one of my favorite drives in my '56 Austin Healey, I'd be out there weekly when my job and college schedule allowed. It's a super tight canyon with very steep topography and it lines right up with the Santa Ana's most times.
Those canyons are not something that lend themselves to controlled burns. They're filled with chaparral, they're surrounded by multi-million dollar homes and critical infrastructure. And yeah, you'd literally have to burn them off every 2 years to keep something like what's happening now from happening, and I'm not talking about a few hundred acres here and there, it would take burning off thousands of acres on that frequency. The areas in Malibu and Topanga that the Palisades fire has burned over already and is now approaching have been burned multiple times in just the last 5 years.
Again, you can look right at all the old fire lines, this is the map without the Palisades on it, you can see all of the roads and trails on the map, all of those houses are off the roads in the areas that haven't burned recently and are the reason why controlled burns aren't an option
This is the map with the Palisades on it. It's burned through multiple older burn scars, some as recent as 3 or 4 years ago
Yes, fuels management is an issue and it will continue to be. And yes, we need more controlled burns and we need to look at how and where we build and rebuild all of these houses, because some of these areas just shouldn't have homes. But the notion that these fires can be managed or mitigated in the conditions that they're having down there right now is ridiculous, and anyone that says they could prevent things like this from happening is a complete moron. Fuels management is a multi-billion dollar operation if it's going to make a difference, and it never ends because the best fuels project in the world doesn't mean anything if you don't revisit it within 5 years. It's like painting the Golden Gate, when you get to the end you just start over. Except you're talking about millions of acres of land, owned by private citizens, private companies, the state, and the federal government. And they all have to coordinate, instead of pointing fingers at who is to blame.
Thank you for making my point! Santa Ana winds don't care and not even a 6 lane freeway for a fire break works in those kinds of conditions.
There are absolutely NO "fuel management" projects that are going to do a damn thing in the face of 70+ mph winds that are aligned with topography. None of the firefighters that have DIED on the Cleveland would have been saved by "fuels management". As I'm sure you know all of those incidents are part of yearly firefighter refresher training, I've read about them every year for over 25 years now. And yes, I've lived in San Diego and I've been in the Cleveland. There's nothing special about anything that's been done there compared to anywhere else in SoCal, which is why it was so ridiculous of you to say to begin with. And yeah, if they got 70+ mph winds in the same area that the Cedar fire burned in 22 years ago the same thing would happen today, it's down to wind and topography. Maybe some of the houses rebuilt in that area would have a better shot because of improved building codes and better awareness and mitigation, but realistically you'd still lose thousands of homes, just like before. They are not weather conditions that you can fight, it's like fighting a hurricane.
I don't need to study the Cedar fire. I was already a wildland firefighter then, and my father was on the ground fighting that fire, bumping from house to house on a USFS engine trying to save structures. At the time it was my engine and most of my crew that was there, I was off duty and out of the area or I'd have been there too. I'm well aware of what happened and why.
The area of the Palisades fire is full of fire roads, hiking trails, mountain bike trails, parks, and yes, fuels management areas. Not to mention roads and houses. I used to ride my mountain bike on those trails and drive those canyon roads for fun while I was in college. You can drive a Type 3 fire engine up and down all of those ridge tops, there are already fire roads there. It just doesn't mean dick with a 70 mph wind. You can look at Google Earth and see all the fire roads, they're very obvious. Tuna Canyon Road was one of my favorite drives in my '56 Austin Healey, I'd be out there weekly when my job and college schedule allowed. It's a super tight canyon with very steep topography and it lines right up with the Santa Ana's most times.
Those canyons are not something that lend themselves to controlled burns. They're filled with chaparral, they're surrounded by multi-million dollar homes and critical infrastructure. And yeah, you'd literally have to burn them off every 2 years to keep something like what's happening now from happening, and I'm not talking about a few hundred acres here and there, it would take burning off thousands of acres on that frequency. The areas in Malibu and Topanga that the Palisades fire has burned over already and is now approaching have been burned multiple times in just the last 5 years.
Again, you can look right at all the old fire lines, this is the map without the Palisades on it, you can see all of the roads and trails on the map, all of those houses are off the roads in the areas that haven't burned recently and are the reason why controlled burns aren't an option
This is the map with the Palisades on it. It's burned through multiple older burn scars, some as recent as 3 or 4 years ago
Yes, fuels management is an issue and it will continue to be. And yes, we need more controlled burns and we need to look at how and where we build and rebuild all of these houses, because some of these areas just shouldn't have homes. But the notion that these fires can be managed or mitigated in the conditions that they're having down there right now is ridiculous, and anyone that says they could prevent things like this from happening is a complete moron. Fuels management is a multi-billion dollar operation if it's going to make a difference, and it never ends because the best fuels project in the world doesn't mean anything if you don't revisit it within 5 years. It's like painting the Golden Gate, when you get to the end you just start over. Except you're talking about millions of acres of land, owned by private citizens, private companies, the state, and the federal government. And they all have to coordinate, instead of pointing fingers at who is to blame.