Isn’t it interesting that yearly fires are only a problem within California. With the millions of acres throughout the country of national forests, its California that seems to consistently have the problems. Why is that?
Way too many people building in areas that burn every few years. Plenty of other places have forest fires, but when half million dollar homes burn it seems to generate a lot more news. A fire that burns a few shacks in Montana doesn’t generate the drama that a wiped out town, if it bleeds, it leads.
And the feds have let the state do forest ‘management’, talk about letting the inmates run the asylum, federal lands, fed’s fault regardless of what our nutters in Sacramento screech.
“Isn’t it interesting that yearly fires are only a problem within California. With the millions of acres throughout the country of national forests, its California that seems to consistently have the problems. Why is that?”
Most of California is normally very dry.
When the fall Santa Ana winds come they bring hot dry air from the desert and can blow to 70 mph. The Santa Ana winds make fires much harder to fight.
High California property prices mean people tend to live wherever they can, such as in inflammable brush country.
It’s a common problem throughout the west from BC down to all the western states. The US has really bungled forest management with the craze for “roadless” areas starting in the early 1980s; putting out all fires starting in the early 1900s; lack of thinning leading to sick and diseased forests susceptible to insects and thick underbrush rather than natural sparse trees with high canopies that never caught on fire; and many other mismanagement issues.
It isn’t just California. It’s bungling at a federal level.