Posted on 11/17/2018 10:28:23 AM PST by bray
Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Galatians 5:1
Oregon is used to two to five hundred square mile forest fires with their blast furnace heat, but it has never had one race through a community like the Paradise CA fire. Oregon is the American Outback where there are only four million people living in over a hundred thousand square miles. Most of the state except the western one third is barely populated so forest fires only destroy forests not people and houses.
When the Paradise fire is fully revealed there is likely to be between 500-1000 or more people burned to death and nearly 9,000 homes destroyed. It has made over 35,000 people homeless as it burned an entire town full of people to the ground. The roads leaving the town were clogged as they were one lane windy roads leading out of the community with only a couple leading out.
Many of the people were elderly and either had no knowledge of the fire or if they did were to slow to escape. Some of the more rural areas of the town had no path out and there are going to be hundreds found in their cars incinerated. Emergency responders are preparing for the worst and hoping for the best which can go up to perhaps 2-3,000 killed making this one of the deadliest natural disaster in America and certainly the deadliest fire in modern times.
The entire town of 35,000 has been destroyed in a matter of hours as a small fire fed by strong winds turned it into a deadly fire storm creating fire tornadoes which swept through the forested canyons. These fires are no longer the cleansing fires you would find in the pre-spotted owl fires, these are fourteen hundred degree blast furnaces that melt metal and houses explode from the heat. These fires are hot enough to melt lead as they travel at speeds approaching a hundred miles per hour leapfrogging in front of itself looking for more abundant fuel these forests are filled with.
This town is devastated both physically and mentally. There is no place for them to live as tens of thousands who were living in their houses two weeks ago are now living in tents as the winter closes in around them. There is nowhere for them to live as the apartments have been taken in the surrounding hundred miles so people are camping out in any yard or garage they can find to take shelter. Unlike a hurricane, there is nothing to go back to, it is all burned.
This would have never happened thirty years ago when the forests were properly managed and cared for. Now the forests are churches to worship in and not to manage. The dirt worshipers have taken over the forests and now they are dead and dying as a result leaving nothing more than a devastating fire waiting to happen. The deer, elk and wildlife are all dead now thanks to the Sierra Club and their partner groups who have made the forests off limits to real forestry management.
Prior to 1965 and the Endangered Species Act which was passed to destroy the lumber industry and did, the forests were producing bountiful amounts of lumber and was the healthiest they ever had been. The forests were rotated and healthy as the new growth was thinned and trimmed to make for the healthiest trees possible while the wildlife thrived. The waters and soils were clean as the trees held the water and filtered it with a sustainable yield as the main goal of the forest service. Fire damage has grown every year since the Act was passed.
Forest fires were maintained as there were fire breaks as well as tree spacing so if a fire did go through it could be stopped or slowed while the trees were spaced to not give the fires a chance to slow and be fought. The undergrowth and down trees were removed to prevent what we have now which is downed logs creating fuel for the fire making a monstrous campfire. The forest service now has an oil field spilling on the ground waiting for a match.
When they took the forest industry out of the forests they eliminated the only entity with the power to properly manage such a large area. There is no way to thin and manage millions of square miles without the heavy machinery to remove dead and dying trees to keep the healthy ones growing. Now you cannot walk through the forest do to dense growth and fallen trees lying everywhere, becoming fuel for the next fire. At this rate the forests will be gone in twenty years.
The answer to this problem is to get rid of the Endangered Species Act which is nothing more than a political tool to promote a Marxist country and sell the land. There is no reason for the Federal Gummit to own over fifty percent of the West. This is just another example like the VA, Medicare, Obamacare and every other DC central planned boondoggle only worse. The gummit is the problem and private ownership is the solution.
If people could come in and take care of their corner of the forest the way it should be managed the forests would be healthier than ever within ten years. Selling large tracks to the forest industry would not only clean up these forests of the dead trees on the ground and begin rotating forests it would bring badly needed revenues to the schools and roads in the rural areas. These forests could provide building products for not only America but worldwide as these are the best construction woods in the world. The forests are an oil field which is not allowed to be drilled due to the worship of the forests. Not only is it an oil field it is an oil reserve that refills every twenty to thirty years. During the heaviest harvesting prior to the Spotted Owl fraud Oregon was on a 500 year sustainability cycle and now we have better forest science than we did then.
If America had proper forest management these fires would never happen. The fires would be the lower heat variety, which are not devastating and easier to extinguish. There would be fire blocks around cities and towns and would be fuel management inside those communities. Now the REOs require more trees not less and it takes an act of Congress to remove one thanks to the tree huggers which complicated the Paradise fire.
If the Fed was serious about the Western fires they would be turning these forests over to the states to be sold or given to people to manage them properly. The ownership would lend itself to immediate improvement and the forests would be on the path to better health. The states would begin receiving revenues on land they are forced to spend resources on with no return. This would turn the revenue streams from outgoing to incoming and giving hundreds of thousands of people jobs and lifestyles they only dreamed of.
America has to choose if they want to continue to worship the forests or do they want to manage them. Do they want to be good stewards of God’s creation or are they going to continue to worship it. America is now worshiping the forests since it is part of Mother Earth and people and wildlife are dying from their worship. Which is it America walking deeper into the darkness or turn back to the Light?
Pray for America
The Paradise fire was on private lands.
If someone screwed up the management of the forest it was the nice conservative folks who lived there.
People who advocate for mechanized deforestation are the ones who own the machines.
Only a child would not understand that there are millions of forest acres in the US and the cost to clear them is in the trillions of dollars each year.
The forests did just fine before man ever stepped foot in them.
I had in mind timber forests in the east where the land is flat and they grow pine trees in a grid. But out west I think fire is the way to go. First because of the terrain. And second because the dry season is so long. If we had six months without rain here in Virginia the entire state would be a tinderbox.
The Camp Fire started on Camp Creek in the national forest. It burned through that forest and onto private lands. The problem with Butte county regulations (per my link above) is that their de facto burn ban applies to all lands, private, public, state and federal.
You can blame the libs who believe that some smoke during a reasonable burn season is more deadly than being burned alive in your car. The fact that conservatives got burned up is a bonus for them.
We had one of our biggest fires in a managed forest just a few years ago; the Black Forest fire in Colorado.
The place was heavily populated and most of it Federally labeled as “Firewise”, yet, it burned fast and took out about 500 homes.
We’ve had several of these types of fires in the area. I watched one neighborhood about 5 miles wide on the foothills side of the mountains with VERY few trees burn in a matter of minutes. It was a typical suburb with no forest and only planted trees and landscape. The fire raced through the place. The homes were the fuel.
Being able to clear out 0.1% or even 1% of the fuel in any given area doesn't slow down a conflagration to any measurable degree.
“Do they want to be good stewards of God’s creation or are they going to continue to worship it.”
The forests were never ours to “steward”. To anyone that can do basic math, The costs would be prohibitive.
Why are there so many people that want to live in the forest but then want to kill all the animals and destroy the forest??
To demand we destroy the forests because of these fires is the same logic other liberals use to demand we ban guns.
Who was going to do these controlled burns on this private land?
CARB not CARD I missed the Otto Core Wrecked on that one.
But for people who want well-managed private forests, there need be only a small buffer between natural and managed forests. If a high intensity fire produces an ember storm in the natural forest, those embers will not light the well-managed forest because there will be no ladder fuels. The same embers could blow 1/2 mile and light up some poorly maintained or poorly constructed houses.
Here's a video of the latter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vh4cQdH26g That same ember storm might singe some trees in a well-managed forest but would probably not light it up.
...do to dense growth...
due to
Private owners would do the burning if they were allowed to. Problem 1 is they need permits and they have to compete for the 6,000 acres of burning allowed at any one time (out of more than a million acres). All fire requires permits, whether natural or manmade; private, state or federal. Problem 2 is they are only allowed to burn when it is somewhat dangerous with high mixing and some wind. When there is no mixing and no wind, burning is banned. Problem 3 is CalFire banned private burning in Butte county in early June, too early for the level of danger.
NO ONE!!!! The odds of getting a permit are essentially zero, and even GOD can’t help you if you do it without a permit!
You’ve never been to California have you?
I tried to teach my kids a little lesson in entrepreneurship. We lived a block from very expensive stadium parking, and had a big open back yard. Gave them some cardboard and had them make signs that offered $5 parking.
The police showed up literally within minutes to stop them.
The lesson turned out to be just how much fun it is to try to run a business in a fascist economy (Fascism means you can own the property/business, but the Almighty State controls what you can do with it. No economic activity is too petty.)
Agreed, but at this point allowing a naturally started fire to burn itself out is totally out of the question. Decades of malignant neglect have insured that the fuel load is insanely high.
After a major fire (are there any minor fires anymore?) removes the fuel load, that area could revert to allowing natural fires to burn every once in a while.
Hard sell to the locals who vividly remember the recent BIG fire.
The ultimate solution is not going to be pretty or simple.
The Spotted owl...they used to clear cut....They would build logging roads into an area and cut everything down...the timber was harvested and trucked out the..remains were burned ...the burning released the seeds in the cones..
They had been doing this for fifty years..The burn area looked like hell four ten years or so til the new growth got a few feet tall...
The envriomental wackos used the Spotted owl to limit timber harvest on National Forest Lands
There are very few wild fires on the private timber company forest..
The really big irony is dense underbrush makes it very difficult for owls to hunt...
The restrictions you posted make sense in Butte County because of the rice fields. If you’ve ever been there when the farmers are burning off the stubble on a calm day you would agree.
There are specific exemptions from the restrictions for burning for fire hazard reduction if done in accordance with local ordinance.
As neat and tidy as it sounds I’m not going to blame a fire with many causes on one air quality regulation that’s been in effect since the early 70s.
I’ll wait until I hear landowners in the area blame it on their inability to do burns on their land.
True in some cases. But in other cases it is just the result of a few years, mainly since the 2015-16 rainy season. 2016-17 was a plentiful rain season as well. A low intensity fire is still possible in many locations in the next month after the rains start, and next spring after the rains stop. The ultimate solution can be a combination of things, not just more fire, but clear cutting, grazing animals, and such to build some buffers.
Wrong, it started in state and federal forests.
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