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Two months ago I toured the embattled Butte Lightning Complex fire area and spoke to a homeowner the day after she had lost everything. She was wandering down a dirt road near Paradise looking for her lost horse, stunned, and asking, "Why did this happen?" Why did this happen? The devastation caused by wildfires this year and in past years is heart-wrenching and horrible for the rural communities of California. This year we are suffering from the worst fire season the North State has experienced in the last 30 years. I watched the lightning bolts light up the skies last...

Our view:It’s criminally negligent when politicians can’t set aside differences long enough to talk for a morning about an urgent public safety hazard The organizers of a wildfire forum in Sacramento on Wednesday brought together three members of the U.S. Congress and half a dozen state lawmakers. They drew the California fire marshal, the head of the state Fire Safe Council, Forest Service researchers and officials, and county supervisors from around the region. STORY TOOLS E-mail story Comments iPod friendly Printer friendly News alerts Subscribe to the paper Submit a news tip More Editorials Delta overhaul can't undercut northern rights...

High-Tech Firefighting Tools Headed for the Front Lines 1. ATV-Mounted Power TorchSometimes, the best way to stop fires is to start them. Since the 1970s, fire managers have used so-called prescribed fires to burn up dry, flammable fuel before it accumulates into something that could start a much more dangerous conflagration. Determining when and how to set a prescribed fire is a complicated science. "A lot of the grassland areas have lots of acreage that's got to be burned by a certain deadline. You can't just do it any old day," says smoke jumper Brandyn Harvey, who worked for...

JUNCTION CITY, Calif. (CBS) ― Nine people are missing and feared dead in a helicopter crash in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said Wednesday. The crash happened Tuesday night as the helicopter was transporting firefighters battling a wildfire north of Junction City. FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said the helicopter was carrying 11 firefighters and two crew members when it went down. Four people have been taken to the hospital with severe burns. Two of the survivors were in critical condition at the University of California Medical Center in Sacramento, Forest Service spokesman Mike Odle said Wednesday,...

A patch of land in Ventura County's Los Padres Forest where the ground heated up to 812 degrees Friday continues to puzzle firefighters and geologists after a month and a half of monitoring. "It's a thermal anomaly," said Ron Oatman, spokesman for the Ventura County Fire Department. Firefighters first responded to the hot spot a month and a half ago, Oatman said. There were no visible flames, but they created a containment line about 2 feet wide and monitored the two-acre plot. Because the smoke was not going away, the containment line was widened to about 30 feet Friday, he...

It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but Ventura County fire officials say it's actually a naturally occurring thermal anomaly known as a "heat sink." They are worried about the phenomenon which is located 3 miles north of Fillmore on federal land owned by the BLM. Fire officials say the "heat sink" is very hot gases escaping from the ground, like hydrogen sulfide. They say the gas is so hot, it can ignite the brush around it, starting wildfires. In fact, the fire department has been up there several times during the past couple of decades dealing...

Members of the honor society for the Boy Scouts of America who had to change their service project plans in Wyoming when the U.S. Forest Service instead allowed the Rainbow Family hippie group to use a location the Scouts had sought now are helping the federal agency fight a forest fire in the state. According to a report in the Casper Star-Tribune the Scouts, some of an estimated 1,000 members of the Order of the Arrow in the state, have "stepped in" to help firefighters in the Bridger-Teton National Forest fight the New Fork Lakes fire, about 19 miles north...

Some in our community have written letters to the News-Sentinel suggesting that the wildfires in California are a result of God's judgment on our state for the state Supreme Court's legalization of gay marriage. As a pastor, I would caution all of us against making such claims. Jesus directly addressed the issue of whether disasters mean that God is judging in Luke 13:1-5: "Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. "Jesus answered, 'Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other...

Enlarge ImageModest blaze. Firefighters may be contributing to global warming by fighting small fires.Credit: Katrina Tepper/AP Scientists have long believed that preventing or dousing forest fires helps combat global warming by saving trees and thus allowing forests to take up more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But surprising new data on hundreds of California forest sites suggest the opposite. The work could help quantify the role of forests in the global carbon cycle and shape U.S. federal fire policy. Lightning-caused fires serve a natural mechanism within forests. They destroy small trees and underbrush while often allowing large trees to...

Today the President and First Lady attended Tony Snow's funeral, the President made a wonderful speech about how special Tony was and I have chosen these words to be the quote of the day as the content does much in putting things into perspective. We may get tied up on the minutiae of life but Tony Snow showed where our priorities should be never compromising his beliefs but always bearing in mind what was important and treating the rest with good humour and a smile. After attending the funeral the President travelled to California to view some of the damaged...

A crew of 44 Australian and New Zealand firefighters will leave for the United States today, to supervise teams battling fires there. Most, including firefighters from Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia, will leave from Melbourne airport just before 8:00am (AEST). The nine Victorians come from the Country Fire Authority, the Department of Sustainability and Environment, Parks Victoria and Melbourne Water. DSE state duty officer John Lloyd says the American fire season, which normally runs from mid August to mid September, has come early. "California in particular has had a large number of fire starts, and their current weather...

Sprinklers ran on rooftops while the Camp Fire blazed only a half mile away from some Ridge residents who packed their vehicles preparing to leave at a moment's notice. Rex Boylan lives on Lunar Lane on the east side of Pentz Road. His home was one of the first to be put under immediate threat evacuation notice. "I'm packed and it's just one of those things we'll wait and see," he said. "We'll leave when we have to or when we're told to." Immediate threat is the strongest word firefighters can say, CAL FIRE public information officers say. And in...

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Exhausted firefighters raced to contain hundreds of wildfires raging across California as forecasters warned on Sunday that a looming heatwave was set to deliver drier, hotter conditions. More than 330 wildfires blazed across the state, as firefighters focused their efforts near the tourist haven of Big Sur and the town of Goleta, near Santa Barbara, 103 miles (165 kilometers) north of Los Angeles. The blazes have burned around 559,000 acres (239,000 hectares) across California since igniting on June 20, when lightning from dry thunderstorms triggered a series of forest infernos. Firefighters reported some progress in their...

SACRAMENTO – From a base camp at Fort Hunter Liggett where he plots maps for strike teams battling infernos in the Big Sur wilderness, Cal Fire Capt. Allan Lippe struggles with the fatigue of nonstop 15-hour shifts and the knowledge that firefighters are staring at a 2008 fire year that threatens to grow into one of the most drawn-out and dangerous ever. “When it starts this early, you talk to the wife and warn her that it will be a long summer,” said Lippe, one of more than 300 firefighters from the San Diego region now on fire lines from...

Weary firefighters got no Independence Day reprieve from a pair of out-of-control wildfires that roared along California's central coast, chewing through opposite ends of an arid forest in the Los Padres National Forest. Despite cooler temperatures and light winds, flames from the stubborn fire that forced the evacuation of Big Sur inched closer to historic vacation retreats. Meanwhile, firefighters farther south dealt with winds with speeds up to 40 mph that fanned a wildfire in Santa Barbara County. About 5,000 homes there were under evacuation orders, while residents in 1,400 homes were warned to pack up and be ready to...

BIG SUR,CA Weary firefighters got no Independence Day reprieve from a pair of out-of-control wildfires that roared along California's central coast, chewing through opposite ends of an arid forest in the Los Padres National Forest. Despite cooler temperatures and light winds, flames from the stubborn fire that forced the evacuation of Big Sur inched closer to historic vacation retreats. Meanwhile, firefighters farther south dealt with winds with speeds up to 40 mph that fanned a wildfire in Santa Barbara County. About 5,000 homes there were under evacuation orders, while residents in 1,400 homes were warned to pack up and be...

BIG SUR -- The fires that bedevil California took another ominous turn Thursday as a blaze near Goleta triggered more evacuations and authorities shut another 10 miles of Highway 1 along the flaming Big Sur coast. Mushrooming in size, the Goleta fire was declared a local emergency by Santa Barbara County officials. Because of its proximity to populated areas, it was also designated the top firefighting priority in a state currently plagued with a multitude of fires, some of them burning without intervention in remote areas. In Goleta, residents of more than 1,600 homes had been ordered to evacuate by...

WASHINGTON, July 2, 2008 – California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered about 200 National Guard members yesterday to provide direct ground support to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection as it tries to put out wildfires in the northern part of the state. A helicopter crew from the Army National Guard works with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection to put out fires that have burned more than 400,000 acres. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Stuart Brown, California National Guard  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. "I can't say enough about the brave men and women...

This is the complete list of 2008 major incidents that have been posted to this site. Please use the dropdown to select the number of incidents you would like to see per page. If you have an RSS News Feed Reader or RSS enabled browser, you can subscribe to the CAL FIRE Incidents RSS News Feed (RSS Help)

Firefighters cleared space around houses and nervously hoped the weather would hold out as they struggled today to contain a 700-acre wildfire in the Santa Cruz Mountains that has chased 1,500 people from their homes. The Martin Fire has destroyed several structures since it broke out Wednesday afternoon near the community of Bonny Doon, about 12 miles north of Santa Cruz, and is threatening 1,000 to 1,200 homes. Fire officials said they did not know exactly how many houses had already burned. "We have a lot of homes in the area that have been impacted either directly or indirectly,"...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A second day of hot weather and dry wind stoked new wildfires across Northern California on Wednesday, as firefighters battled blazes that have damaged at least 50 homes and threaten hundreds more. About 1,500 residents in the heavily forested hills north of Santa Cruz were told Wednesday afternoon to leave their homes as a quick-moving wildfire spread through the area. The 300-acre blaze broke out in the Bonny Doon area of Santa Cruz County just before 3 p.m. Wednesday, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. Battalion Chief Paul Van Gerwen said the fire threatened...

Dead lodgepole pines turned into products from pellet fuel to pens. millions of beetle- kill pines in the nearby hills and mountains could explode into a fire ... But locals also realize that using the wood for beetle-kill products is just a start - and not a silver bullet. "There's little stuff going on, but not near what we need," ... But, still, he's grateful. "Small steps lead to big trips," ... Dead and dying lodgepole acreage in Colorado has grown to 1.5 million since the first signs of the mountain pine beetle outbreak in 1996... homes, property and lives...

California wildfire continues to grow despite effort, calmer winds Amanda Fehd, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS May 24, 2008 09:07 GILROY, Calif. - Firefighters took advantage of cooler temperatures and calmer winds Saturday as they continued to fight a persistent wildfire in the Santa Cruz Mountains that has chewed through several hectares of centuries-old redwoods. So far, the fire has destroyed at least 17 homes and displaced hundreds of people. Efforts were also helped by the higher humidity, but a possible storm could bring lightning and stronger winds that could spread the fire, officials said. The fire was about 25 per cent...

Crews will cut trees on more than 200 acres around Vail this summer in their continuing efforts to battle the pine beetle epidemic. This summer’s work will continue to create a ribbon of “defensible space” around the town that seeks to prevent the spread of fire... “It’s to protect lives, homes and property from the effects of catastrophic wildfire,” ... The work is part of the Vail Valley Forest Health Project, a multi-year effort coordinated by the Forest Service that seeks to combat the pine beetle infestation from East Vail to Edwards. The mountain pine beetle epidemic has killed up...

Firefighters are starting to have some problems this afternoon with area brushfires, especially in Brevard County. Two Palm Bay schools have been evacuated, and a fire near Malabar is drawing a lot of concern. Follow the updates on our Breaking News blog.

Albany, N.Y.- New York environmental officials have proposed a statewide ban on open burning, to reduce pollution and the risk of wildfires. Current rules exempt the state's 850 towns with fewer than 20,000 people. The Department of Environmental Conservation says burn barrels release 17 times more dioxin and 40 times more ash than permitted incinerators. The proposed ban would make some exceptions, including small campfires and cooking fires, ceremonial fires and certain types of agricultural waste burning. The DEC has scheduled seven public hearings across the state between June 23 and July 2.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is instructing state fire officials to begin fining rural homeowners who fail to clear their properties of brush, trees and dry grass. Schwarzenegger says clearing around homes is particularly important because of this year's dry conditions throughout the state. A 2005 law required that homeowners who live near forests or grasslands increase the so-called "defensible space" around their houses from 30 feet to 100 feet. State Fire Marshal Kate Dargan says inspectors have issued few citations to homeowners who ignore the law. Instead, firefighters have focused on educating them about the dangers of overgrown properties. During a...

A wildfire in the Sierra Madre foothills swelled to 230 to 270 acres early this morning, forcing the evacuation of at least 100 homes and drawing hundreds of firefighters from around the region. The fire was moving southwest in remote brush at 1 a.m. today, and containment was not expected for two to three days, said Elisa Weaver, spokeswoman for the city of Sierra Madre. Warm, dry weather is predicted for the fire area this morning, with winds gusting to 15 miles to 20 miles an hour before slowing this evening, the National Weather Service reported.

'It was the most destructive thing I've ever seen' . A day later, the sickly sweet smell of fire hung in the air. Tendrils of smoke rose from smoldering piles as the people of this small town got their first clear picture of the fury wrought by a leapfrogging blaze that consumed or heavily damaged two dozen buildings and left two firefighters dead. Greg Korinek stood in silence Wednesday at the corner of Arkansas Avenue and Second Street, staring at a pile of ash and metal - the remnants of the mobile home where he had lived. He had rushed...

SAN DIEGO — The American Red Cross acknowledged that it lacks safeguards against paying for unused hotel rooms during natural disasters, a gap that may have cost it tens of thousands of dollars during Southern California's wildfires last year. The acknowledgment Friday came a day after the charity disclosed that blocks of rooms booked to accommodate volunteers in San Diego County went empty. "Our job was to be reviewing who we had in hotels every night and making sure the reservations matched who was coming and who was going," said Joe Becker, who oversees disaster services. "We had instances where...

ARLINGTON, Va., Feb. 11, 2008 – Fighting wildfires in Virginia became the newest mission for members of the National Guard, who were dealing with many domestic emergencies as the new week began. More than 500 members of the National Guard were on weather-related duty in the South and West, as well as in Virginia, because of call-ups from governors in nine states for emergency assistance to communities hit by tornadoes, heavy snow and floods. Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine declared a state of emergency yesterday when high winds fanned wildfires across the state. The Virginia Department of Forestry estimated that at...

U.S. officials monitoring terrorist web sites have discovered a call for using forest fires as weapons against “crusader” nations, in what may explain some recent wildfires in places like southern California and Greece. A terrorist website was discovered recently that carried a posting that called for “Forest Jihad.” The posting was listed on the Internet on Nov. 26 and reported in U.S. intelligence channels last week. The statement, in Arabic, said that “summer has begun so do not forget the Forest Jihad.” The writer called on all Muslims in the United States, Europe, Russia and Australia to “start forest fires.”...

Good morning. Disinclined as I am to wade into state politics, this one is teed up like a Titleist: The governor's proposed "surcharge" on property insurance premiums is more accurately described as a tax increase. That doesn't make it a bad thing. That makes it a tax increase. ...[snip]

A few months before the October wildfires barreled though Rancho Bernardo, San Diego firefighters left notices throughout the neighborhood urging people to trim brush from the canyon rims near their homes. But Fire-Rescue Department inspectors never followed up to make sure the job had been done. In fact, it had been years since the city of San Diego had sent fire marshals into the area to see that brush had been removed. As residents of the North County neighborhood slept through the early-morning darkness of Oct. 22, the Witch Creek and Guejito fires were gaining momentum. At 5 a.m., whipped...

Los Angeles County sheriff's arson investigators said today that they were making a series of arrests in connection with a wind-driven brush fire that destroyed dozens of homes Thanksgiving weekend as it swept through Corral Canyon in Malibu. The suspects range in age from 18 to 27, said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore. He said investigators would disclose the identities of the men at a news conference this afternoon at the Sheriff's Department bureau in Monterey Park. Authorities said the suspects were having an illegal late-night campfire near a cave when the blaze broke out. Investigators found evidence such as...

WASHINGTON -- A federal rule that allowed expedited logging on national forests saved thousands of homes during the recent wildfires in California, the Forest Service chief said Thursday.

MALIBU, Calif. A wind-driven brush fire that destroyed 49 homes and two out-buildings in the Malibu Bowl and Latigo Canyon areas was started by "human activity," but not necessarily set on purpose, fire officials said Saturday night. The so-called Corral Fire was 25 percent contained, but had blackened more than 4,650 acres and forced the evacuation of up to 20,000 residents. ... "Fire investigators from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the Los Angeles County Fire Department and Cal Fire investigated the area and determined the fire was caused by human activity," said Sgt. Ed Hummel of the county Office...

Celebrities flee, homes gutted as wildfire ravages Malibu Nov 24 05:47 PM US/Eastern Hollywood stars were among nearly 10,000 people forced to flee as wind-driven wildfires tore through the celebrity enclave of Malibu on Saturday, gutting at least 35 multi-million dollar homes and threatening hundreds more, officials and reports said. Fires erupted at around 3:30 am (1130 GMT) officials said, spreading rapidly through tinder-dry brush as winds packing gusts of up to 50 mph fanned the inferno, the second major blaze to hit Malibu in the space of a month. By 10:30 am (1830 GMT), around 2,200 acres had been...

MALIBU, Calif. — Residents were ordered to evacuate their homes early today ahead of a wildfire that scorched about 100 acres in the hills above Malibu as the dry Santa Ana wind returned to Southern California. The blaze began shortly before 3:30 a.m. PST near Malibu Lake on state park land, said Los Angeles County fire Capt. Mike Brown. Some residents who live in the canyons above Malibu were ordered to leave, Brown said, but it wasn't immediately clear how many. No injuries were reported. About 160 firefighters were on scene and the cause of the fire was being investigated....

MALIBU, Nov. 24, 2007 - Residents were ordered to evacuate their homes early Saturday ahead of a wildfire that scorched about 250 acres in the hills above Malibu as the dry Santa Ana wind returned to Southern California.

New mill to turn dead trees into pellet fuel. Colorado's first wood-pellet mill owes its birth to pine beetles that are killing millions of trees near the town of Kremmling and across northwest Colorado. The diseased trees will be the new Kremmling mill's chief input - a new twist for the pellet-fuel industry. The 18,000-square-foot plant is billed as the largest west of the Mississippi. It's slated in February to start grinding trees into environmentally friendly pellets for wood-pellet stoves and industrial and commercial pellet boilers. Many of the trees are too skinny or too cracked and old to be...

Local foresters predict that up to 90 percent of lodgepole pines will die in some areas near West Vail. Local firefighters say that creates a veritable tenderbox that could easily ignite and spread. Sackbauer was pleased to see lots of work being done near his home this summer to reduce the risk of fire spreading, either from the forest into the neighborhood, or vice versa. workers created a 200- to 300-foot barrier of “defensible space,” a clear-cut area that aims to help stop the spread of fire. The town also hired a six-man “hand crew” to cut trees on town-owned...

When the U.S. Forest Service received no bids on two small timber sales in Eagle County earlier this year, the agency's local rangers encountered what is becoming a problem throughout the intermountain West. The federal agency got a lesson in market economics and the three-way tug of war over lumber in national forests. There were no bidders for the timber "salvage" sales designed to remove trees killed by infesting pine beetles. The Forest Service also wants to sell the dead trees so they won't add extra fuel to wildfires. The glut of dead trees is occurring at a time when...

About 20 piles of downed pine and aspen trees will be burned Wednesday and Thursday ... The trees were cut down this fall by crews building a buffer between the forest and neighborhoods to prevent the spread of wildfires. Once more snow falls, some of the 250 piles of timber remaining on the upper bench of Donovan Park will be burned.

But the underlying causes of these monster fires aren't as well understood. Why do they keep happening at such intensity? One reason is that for years, groups that literally make a living by obstructing government efforts to manage forests have filed myriad lawsuits intended to delay, stall or stop anything resembling science. They seek to prevent the federal government from implementing balanced efforts to manage the land, including efforts to thin forests and brushland to help prevent catastrophic wildfire. Just last year in Southern California, an environmental advocacy organization filed a lawsuit against reasonable forest management impacting more than 3.5...

Getting military helicopters into the air during a firestorm became a top priority for San Diego County leaders after the 2003 Cedar and Paradise fires. But when winds and flames blew into Southern California last week, the plan the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection had devised fell apart. As two fires raged out of control Oct. 21, at least six military helicopters waited on the ground in San Diego County. Several state and local aircraft were flying, but the military helicopters weren't because of a requirement that “spotters” be on board. It wasn't until the afternoon of Oct....

District Ranger Rick Newton shared his recent experience in Southern California ... The wildfires in Southern California demonstrated how effective defensible space, building restrictions that require less flammable materials...said U.S. Forest Service Dillon District Ranger Rick Newton. Currently, the Forest Service has hired contractors who are working to create defensible space by removing trees ... The same is planned for other areas throughout the county, projects which will happen next year. However, the work is costly because of the lack of bulk diesel fuel in the area, the poor market for the trees, hauling and other challenges ... As another...

Did you see any looters on television last week? Neither did I. When New Orleans was flooded two years ago, there were looters all over my TV screen. Men with assault rifles waded through the streets menacingly. At first, I thought I was looking at footage from Somalia, but I looked at the crawl underneath the images - it wasn’t Somalia; it was Louisiana. What about the rapists? There were rapists at the refugee camp formerly known as the Superdome, but did you see any reports about rapists at Qualcomm Stadium last week? I didn’t. Did the mayor of San...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is providing immediate emergency aid to victims of the California firestorms. Six semi-trucks have ....