Posted on 09/13/2020 11:00:32 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The U.S. Forest Service estimates that dead stands in the Creek fire contain 2,000 tons of fuel per acre.
As of Saturday, the fire had charred more than 196,000 acres, destroyed 365 structures and was threatening 14,000 more in the vicinity of Big Creek, Huntington Lake and Shaver Lake. Firefighters dont expect to contain it until mid-October.
For those who have studied the potential fire effects of the vast beetle kill, the Creek fire is a harbinger.
One of hundreds of major blazes to erupt in this record-breaking fire season in California, the Creek fire has underscored the urgency of reducing that monster fuel load.
The only way to do that on the broad, landscape level needed, many experts say, is with fire of a different sort.
All of us on the paper were suggesting that if you are going to try to reduce that mass fire problem in the future, you really need to start putting prescribed fire into these stands to start whittling away at those bigger fuels, said Forest Service research ecologist Malcolm North...
While thinning cutting down the dead timber and hauling it away can play a role, especially around mountain communities, North said a majority of the beetle-killed stands are in wilderness or in areas that are too remote and too steep to be logged.
Moreover, the dead trees have lost most of their commercial value and are of little interest to the remaining sawmills in California.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
In Rot Ve Trust
Just like Nuisance’s brain and his predecessors, rotting away while we watch..
Environmentalists worship the “pecker pole” forests, with 1,000 trees per acre. I remember the days when trees were harvested to make room for trees to mature and grow tall and strong. In Washington state the “pecker pole” forests are vast.
Pecker pole defintion, 4”-14” tree trunks over 20’ tall. When the people clear the land for housing, they take the good sized trees, and leave the pecker poles. These snap off in the wind, and steal the sun from each other.
I don’t believe most environmentalists live near forests, just as animal rights people don’t live near farms. It is a luxury position by those whose lives aren’t threatened by their prescriptions.
Fire is natures way
You cannot stop her
The best thing to do is hunker down for a bit the weather is starting to get better Storm coming in. and a good N 95 mask will do quite a good job
Im calling it dystopia , day 4 , down here in the Bay Area
Ive been riding with a gator in an old N 95 mask I have from 2017 that still works
This Kimberly Clark things are very sophisticated and work quite well
Beetle-killed trees are of no value to sawmills.
Not a chance they'll accept the blame. As always, they'll find a way to blame it on someone else, most likely Trump or some other Republican. That's the Democrat Way.
Perhaps you have visited California, but you don’t live there. The only parts of California you where there is spacing between the trees with huge rocks and sand in the ground is in the Bishop side of the Sierras. For you to get a total picture of the situation you would have to have visited the western side of the Sierra ie Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon NPs, not to mention huge swaths of National Forest managed areas of Mammouth Mountain on the western side. Did you see the pictures of the 200+ campers that were rescued by Army Guard Chinook helicopters from Mammouth Pools?
There has been VERY little management of the forests due to the policies of the Sierra Club and the Air Pollution Control Boards. I own property right outside of Yosemite and have for 40 years. So I have seen a lot of undergrowth and prevention of prescribed burns. The policies and politics of California are ruled by the Sierra Club and their hated of the logging industry.
I lived in Grass Valley and Nevada City, if you have been to the Yuba river then you should know where that is. Those areas have been decimated by the bad management of CA and once again the control of the politicians by the Sierra Club as well.
Did you even notice the title of the thread? 150 million dead trees. There are whole mountainside of dead trees just waiting for a spark. I have been predicting this for the past 5-7 summers even before the bark beetle infestation even got started.
In Washington, you have the timber industry actively involved in managing your forest. The National Forest areas of Washington are most likely the locations you are referring to.
You are armchair quarterbacking about something that you have never seen or experienced.
Here in TN it’s so different—you just do it. I moved here 32 years ago and bought a one acre wooded lot with a house. First thing I did was have an number of encroaching trees removed. About a year ago my next door neighbor had a very large one in his front yard removed without seeking approval from anybody. I live in an unincorporated area 22 miles west of downtown Knoxville.
Beetle-killed trees are of no value to sawmills.
While it sucks to run beetle infested board foot it is not unusable. Its dry and brittle and a pain to process.
But even assuming all was unusable for board foot, it is still valuable to a sawmill as chips. Chipping is waste wood to energy, you use them to feed the co-gen plant which provides power to the sawmill as well as excess to the grid in some cases.
No, the National Forest is run by the ....National Forest. And the Sierra Club rules both of them. Thank you, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, her nephew, Grewsome Newsome, and all of the liberal representatives that are bought and paid for by the Sierra Club.
I have no illusion that we can eradicate fire. I submit that we harvest the resources before they get consumed by nature. A use it or loose it theory.
[North said a majority of the beetle-killed stands are in wilderness or in areas that are too remote and too steep to be logged. ]
[Beetle-killed trees are of no value to sawmills.]
I’m not qb’ng anything. I’m just writing about what I’ve seen with my own two eyes, in places most people never get to.
2,000 tons per?
25 to 30 tons of wood chips per truckload. Thats around 80 or so truckloads. The paper mill I used to ship to would take 50 truckloads a day to supplement their boiler fuel since their new generation plant couldnt be supplied with the waste from their debarkers.
They produce enough electric power there to power a city of about 200,000 homes.
So do the math.
I have a wood burning stove and I burn virtually anything that is around my and my neighbors houses as far as wood, limbs, trees or anything else. Not that we are at threat of a forest fire where I live but there is much less undergrowth and material to burn.
JoMa
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