Posted on 10/23/2007 6:38:02 PM PDT by Hebrews 11:6
These kinds of fires have occurred here regularly for decades. They are exacerbated this year because Southern California has had only 3” of rain in a year. Obviously, present efforts at prevention and firefighting are ineffective. What else must be done to stop future blazes?
Television watchers in SoCal are treated to a steady diet of helicopters and fixed wing aircraft dropping water and fire retardant on the fires. While helpful, these efforts are like spitting on your fireplace fire. The amount of water is pitifully small, and much of what does get dropped vaporizes on its way down.
These fires are orders of magnitude greater than the firefighting measures. Indeed, the imagination of planners is exposed as woefully deficient.
If aircraft cannot deliver enough water, then others means of delivering it must be added. The obvious solution is to preposition the water with an effective delivery system.
By prepositioning the water, I am suggesting building water tanks on top of strategically selected ridges. The water would feed by gravity down through pipes to remote-controlled nozzles, which would deliver the water in abundance on-target as the fire approaches, and on any flareups that jump the pipes. Cost concerns prevent every ridge from having them, but those where the fires must be stopped should get them. They would prevent the fires’ spread, or at least slow it enough that other measures can control them more readily.
Those areas now burning will not need these tanks for many years, until the brush has regrown. Rather, it is those areas which have not burned recently which need them most urgently.
What other ideas do you have? Do not censor yourself--let your imagination roam.
Do what the Native Americans did for thousands of years in that area - clean up the dead wood, and do controlled burns.
Anything else is idiotic.
I'm amazed at the intensity of this one.
or move to NE Ct, we don't have any forest fires to speak of but we do have a lot of snow which is why I keep a Jeep equipped with a plow and chains solely to remove the snow form my 1/4 mile driveway.
ML/NJ
Let folks go into the forest and clear the dead wood and brush. While most fires today are started by humans, they do naturally occur. It is part of mother earths cycle, whether we like it or not.
A healthy forest does not burn as well as a forest with lots of aging dead wood on the ground. Also, clearing part of the densest and oldest part of forest creates large fire lanes while providing logging opportunities for those evil capitalists.
We as humans actually can control these thing with a little planning in a win win manner. Our biggest problem is that our government and the environmentalists will not allow us to go in and help protect those treasured forests by thinning them out and cleaning them up.
Mother nature has her own way of cleaning up old growth forests. SHE BURNS THEM DOWN TO MAKE ROOM FOR NEW GROWTH WHILE SIMULTANEIOUSLY PROVIDING NUTRIENTS TO THE NEXT GENERATION FOREST. We actually have the ability to controls some of this (not all).
....and that rare species of mosquito. Let’s not let them go extinct.
Correct. Fuel buildup is the single greatest factor in these fires.
Without the heavy fuel buildup, the low humidity, high temperatures, and heavy winds would have little to work with.
A good book on the subject:
Thomas C. Blackburn & Kat Anderson
1993 Before the Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Americans. Ballena Press.
I like your idea. I’ve always wondered why they continue to be reactive instead of proactive when we all know the fires come every year. Installing tanks on the ridges ahead of development would no doubt be cheaper than what is happening now. The tanks would have to be there anyway when subdivisions are built. Using them as a preventative measure first does make sense.
It’s another “forget history” thing - IIRC a couple thousand people died in northern or central california back in the 1890’s or 1920’s from a massive fire...but the local tribes never even saw so much as an ember flying by...
until there is an earthquake, and the tank busts open and washes a few hunderd homes and people away...
Any ideas on how to stop the wind?
I think we need to get Karl back on the weather machine. I’m not sure who Bush has running it now. I the mean time I’ll pray for rain. Here and there.
I’m not from California, but are you saying they don’t use water storage tanks in/for the subdivisions that are built?
Just saw it on a PBS show and it saved 20 homes during the Palm Coast fires in Florida in 1998. Amazing.
Then send in the FireCat and that German guy with his IFEX 3000
Unfortunately, you cannot control Mother Nature. That's what is so amusing about idiots like Al Gore, they think they can actually change the way the planet works.
Sometimes these problems are caused by man just being stupid and building in dumb places, like New Orleans. But most of the time it's just natures way.
God bless the firefighters, they bravely go where few of us would tread.
With that said I hope you prove me wrong and conjure up a way to fix the problem of these fires.
I’m going to remind myself to count my blessings with every shovelful of snow I heave off my driveway.
My house is still standing. Nobody burned to death. I still have my lawn and trees.
They absolutely do, but they are used for residential water. Why not add several more tanks dedicated to firefighting?
But of course! Put enormous fans on top of the water tanks to push against the wind!
Seriously, a couple decades ago an idea was seriously considered to use fans to pull the smog out of the LA Basin, through a mountain tunnel and out into the unpopulated desert. I am not kidding!
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