Figures. Feds Didn't Clear Brush In LA Wildfire Areas Because Of Liberal Pressure

mererhetoric.com ^ | Sept. 3, 2009 | Omri Ceren

[Free ThinkerNY]

The wonderful thing here is that it's not just a story of glazed-eyed government incompetence breaking at the same time that the Obama administration is trying to nationalize 15% of the US economy. It's that the incompetence has its source in interest groups who issue diktats according to whatever the prevailing liberal pseudo-sophistication happens to be. 30 years ago it was preservation, then we decided that nature should always be allowed to take its course, then we decided we had to plant trees everywhere to enrich the atmosphere - opps! - and now we've got some kind of non-interventionist hodgepodge.

The upshot being that if you think this is bad, wait until panels of doctors and bureaucrats get to make calculations - and set premiums - based on which social groups they think are responsible for unreasonable costs. The public "blame the smokers no blame the drinkers no blame people who drive too much" populism is going to be exciting enough.

But when well-heeled Blue State bureaucrats start making decisions based on a combination of non-replicated studies, shrill urban hand-wringing, and a sensibility about healthy living derived mostly from the Barnes and Noble "Personal Enrichment" shelf - that's when things get really awesome. If someone in San Francisco has made a serious effort to ban or regulate something you enjoy consuming, bummer.

Anyway, yeah:

Federal authorities failed to follow through on plans earlier this year to burn away highly flammable brush in a forest on the edge of Los Angeles to avoid the very kind of wildfire now raging there... Months before the huge blaze erupted, the U.S. Forest Service obtained permits to burn away the undergrowth and brush on more than 1,700 acres of the Angeles National Forest.

[cranked]

Memo this to those liberal proponents that espouse that the Cali fires are due to Global Warming, kkthx.

[Made In The USA]

Liberals are a danger to a free and safe society.

[scory]

It seems like in the last 10 years or so just about every time there is a major forest fire somewhere a story virtually identical to this one surfaces. And nothing changes.

[halo66]

Well, the news I have heard on the radio in SoCal is that the NFS/Fire Dept. had permits for prescribed burning in these areas but had only performed very few of them. Anyone else hear this?

[Hodar]

Here in Utah, we have our own wildfire that has consumed 10,000 plus acres.

The fire started in a Federal area, from a lightning strike back on July 25th (yup, over a month ago). Gov't officials in Washington know how to manage land here in Utah better than we do - obviously.

We can no longer lease the wild lands to sheep herders, where the brush is grazed and kept under control - no, it's been allowed to grow as fuel for the fire.

Now, over a month later the fire is so wildly out of control (it's 5% contained after weeks of 700+ firemen working); homes have been lost, property has been lost.

Managed burns are conducted to eradicate the overgrowth, possibly preventing future fires. Complicating matters are what forest officials are allowed to do when fires do ignite in wilderness issues like the ones in the Pine Valley surrounding New Harmony.
Link

Much of Utah is controlled by the Federal Bureau of Land Managment. One would think that a state would have soverign control over how a bulk of the land within the state is used; this is obviously not true here.

[Right_in_Virginia]

BTTT

[presently no screen name]

Federal authorities failed to follow through on plans earlier this year to burn away highly flammable brush in a forest on the edge of Los Angeles to avoid the very kind of wildfire now raging there... Months before the huge blaze erupted, the U.S. Forest Service obtained permits to burn away the undergrowth and brush on more than 1,700 acres of the Angeles National Forest.

[SES1066]

This mindset is not limited to here. The devastating February 2009 brush fires in Australia had people complaining about laws and regulations that prevented brush clearing around residential areas. When you have death tolls of 170+, just saying that brush fires are part of a natural cycle doesn't cut it.

[halo66]

Thanks!

[Jvette]

when there were fires near Lake Tahoe last year, those home owners who rejected the law that said they could not clear around their home and did it anyway did not lose those homes.

Liberals are idiots, where’s the news in that?

[PittsburghAfterDark]

Oh so I wasn’t wrong in assuming that controlled burns were prohibited by lib environazis when firefighters said many areas were filled with fuel of 50 years of undergrowth?

Shocked I tell you, shocked I am!

People have died, homes destroyed, every over the air method of communications threatened because some nuts don’t want you to clear brush.

God I can’t stand these people.

[Lancey Howard]

Without any evidence whatsoever, everybody assumed that the latest wildfire was the result of liberal Democrat eco-fascism.
Everybody, it turns out, was right.
Congratulations are due yet again to the liberal Democrats. Congratulations.

Bump.

[Maine Mariner]

On a very quick read I thought the title of post read

Feds Didn’t Clear Bush In LA Wildfire Areas Because Of Liberal Pressure.

After all he has been blamed for everything else bad that has happened in the world since 2001.

[Lancey Howard]

Much of Utah is controlled by the Federal Bureau of Land Managment.

Didn't the scumbag Clinton orchestrate that in order to protect the interests of his coal tycoon buddy from Indonesia? Name began with an 'R'? I forget the details, but it's something like that. Google knows.

[Man from Oz]

Things never change

[TrueKnightGalahad]

Biologist Ileene Anderson with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental organization, said burn permits should be difficult to get because of the potential damage to air quality. Clearing chaparral by hand or machine must be closely scrutinized because it can hurt native species. "Our air quality, for a variety of factors, doesn't need to be further reduced by these controlled burns," she said.

How's that air quality working out for you, Ileene? What's better - a controlled burn that slightly reduces air quality locally for a day or two, or 140,000 acres raging out of control for weeks, with devastating effects on the forest, lives lost, homes burned...and, oh, yeah, a really huge impact on air quality?

These so-called "environmentalists" must have found the curriculum for gym-teachers too hard.

[SZonian]

The blame does not lay at the USFS’s feet. Although prior Dem. administrations helped make it next to impossible for the USFS to do their jobs.

http://missoulian.com/news/national/article_5f23099a-9843-11de-a9ca-001cc4c002e0.html

This one is a bit older, but shows that it’s the first one in 16 years allowed by local govt’s.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-83857297.html

The simple fact that the USFS is required to obtain burn permits to keep the forests from becoming tinderboxes is sheer lunacy.

I lay the blame squarely at the feet of the AQMD, LA County, Jerry Moonbeam Brown and the ecowhackos. This is liberal made disaster and they are in full damage control mode blaming the USFS when they (libs) are to blame.

SZ

[Stand Watch Listen]

Well, the news I have heard on the radio in SoCal is that the NFS/Fire Dept. had permits for prescribed burning in these areas but had only performed very few of them. Anyone else hear this?

FYI...

Efforts to clear brush before L.A. fire fell short
Forest Service wasn't able to do as many pre-emptive burns as planned

AP
6:42 p.m. ET, Wed., Sept . 2, 2009

LOS ANGELES - Federal authorities failed to follow through on plans earlier this year to burn away highly flammable brush in a forest on the edge of Los Angeles to avoid the very kind of wildfire now raging there, The Associated Press has learned.

The U.S. Forest Service said that months before the huge blaze erupted, it obtained permits to burn away the undergrowth on more than 1,700 acres of the Angeles National Forest. But just 193 acres had been cleared by the time the fire broke out, the agency said.

The agency defended its efforts, saying weather, wind and environmental rules tightly limit how often these "prescribed burns" can be conducted.

Also, Forest Service resource officer Steve Bear said crews using machinery and hand tools managed to trim 5,000 acres in the forest this year before the money ran out.

Could more have been done to clear tinder-dry hillsides and canyons?

"We don't necessarily disagree with that," Bear said. "We weren't able to complete what we wanted to do."

Lawmaker blasts environmentalists
Some critics suggested that protests from environmentalists contributed to the disaster, which came after the brush was allowed to build up for as much as 40 years.

"This brush was ready to explode," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, whose district overlaps the forest. "The environmentalists have gone to the extreme to prevent controlled burns, and as a result we have this catastrophe today."

Prescribed burns are intended to protect homes and lives by eliminating fuel that can cause explosive wildfires. The wildfire that has blackened 140,000 acres — or nearly 219 square miles — in the forest over the past week has been fed by the kind of tinder-dry vegetation that prescribed burns are designed to safely devour……………….”

[papasmurf]

Thought you all might be interested in this story...