We've had hundreds and hundreds of such slash piles here in North Idaho burned like this the past few years. It is really amazing that you can burn the slash in the thinned forest and not catch the entire forest on fire.
Posted on 09/12/2020 7:16:15 PM PDT by AggregateThreat
wow, what is Governor going to do now? The Oregon National Guard only 5,600 members.
Just looked it up. 500,000 have been evacuated total in Oregon.
So he’s only off by 500,000.
He’s a loon. Reminds me of a smooth version of that nutcase that does the hurricane warnings.
Don’t underestimate Trump country in Oregon.
Basically we’re attacked while we were sleeping by enemy combatants who have been protected by the current government.
It's actually pretty complicated regarding the extent of the blame - state vs. feds. Yes the feds are responsible for national forest management, but they are often constrained by state laws such as those regarding emissions (for controlled burns, for example) and the amount of timber harvesting allowed, etc. At least that's how it is in California - I assume it's similar in Oregon.
Should have written “shot at.” I wouldn’t call that suicide by cop though.
I think Kate has some latitude. A number of our large fires could have been dealt with ehen they were small, but it doesn’t happen. There seems to be an anti-timber agenda being served.
My Brother just got back from ORE. One of his friends lost their business.
They were told to evac the house, except the looters are following right behind and are actually watching people leave and then move in. His grand son, who is a deputy, went in and stood watch until the last straw. If anyone would have tried to get into the place to loot, he was ready to shoot to kill.
He did not know if the place made it or not as of today. No cell service..etc.
“Delusions of grandeur.”
He just did another video. He is claiming armies starting in Eastern Washington and one starting in the deep south. He has a make-believe friend name Scott now that has met with leaders.
We've had hundreds and hundreds of such slash piles here in North Idaho burned like this the past few years. It is really amazing that you can burn the slash in the thinned forest and not catch the entire forest on fire.
This guy could be an antifa himself in a false flag operation. I’m skeptical
US forestry policy began to go south in the early 1990s, during the Clinton administration.
Sound management practices that had been successfully followed for many decades were replaced with deranged “environmentalist” gibberish.
It has only gotten worse ever since.
National parks and national forests are not the same, at all. What big city are you from?
Suicide? He was ambushed and died protecting those with him in his vehicle.
You know who was President in 1990? - George W Bush.
The feds have been a disaster.
https://www.fs.fed.us/forestmanagement/products/cut-sold/index.shtml
The arsonist should be burned at the stake but the size of the loss is due to three things:
1. The (un)holy grail of absolute fire suppression
2. Total lack of proper forest management by all parties
3. Human encroachment into the resulting hazardous overgrowth and deadwood environments.
In other words, “Stupid hurts”.
>> You need to properly stack all the cut slash and burn it in winter or spring. It is hugely labor intensive.
Hugely labor intensive, huh? It’s not hard work - just tedious. (We’ve done it on our Colorado property for decades.) I wonder where we could get a force of workers? How about those locked in a cage 24/7 - many of them would rather be out in the fresh air. Escape risk? Ever heard of a chain gang?
Oh, yeah - and what about the leisure class that we so often see sporting $500 sneakers, manicured nails and expensive hairdos? Flip-flop shod, sleepily wandering to the fast food take-out line in their jogging pants. Faced with the immediate loss of benefits a trip to the forest might seem a viable alternative...
“Much of the mismanagement of Oregon’s forests falls on the Feds.”
Explain that to those of us who may be ignorant about the forests in Oregon. Are you see most of the forests experiencing the wild fires are in National forests, or at least lands under federal control? That somehow state owned open/forested lands are not involved?
Remember the huge wild fire up near Dollywood last year? Several died, sister and BIL barely made it out, Juveniles set it, NOT A DAMN THING DONE TO THEM OR PARENTS.
The Feds have had “let it burn” policies for some time. They apply to fires that originate from natural causes that don’t appear to pose a threat to life or property. Other policies regarding thinning of trees and control of understory fuel are pretty much controlled by environmental policies. It’s not unheard of for fires to start on land managed by the Feds, with logging crews close enough to contain it when it’s small, to be allowed to burn, and get out of control. Southwest Oregon has been very hard-hit in the last two decades by huge fires. State and privately managed forests have different policies. Sometimes they can be ugly patchworks of trees of various ages. They’re heavily managed, and they look like it. But they have access for fire-fighters, and the profit-motive argues for putting fires out.
Not all federal management is the same. This area is BLM and maybe some privately managed land. It is heavily logged, and is the ugly patchwork(when viewed from altitude) that I referenced. Fire is a logging tool for cleaning slash, and this one got out of control. But the area is heavily roaded, and it was contained. The US Forest Service has different policies.
There is a variety of opinion on management. The first time I looked out over this area from Bone Mountain, we were joined by another guy that looked at it and said he wished all of the National Forest looked that way. I think that’s crazy. Some think that all of the forests should be left in a pristine condition, to the point of tearing out roads that have been put in. Also crazy, from a fire-fighting and economic standpoint. The area I’m in is pretty much a patchwork of management areas. At ground level, it looks pretty good. I’ll drive past recent clear cuts a little later. They’re ugly, cut along straight lines. They border monotonous, but prettier stands of trees that will be cut later. Another area is being logged selectively. It’ll look better once the logs are removed, and trees will remain. All around will be piles of slash, waiting to be burned when the rains make it safe. A couple of weeks ago, when the fires up by Mapleton were set by a homeless(?)guy, a fire started a little bit south of me. I thought that might be the beginning of a concerted effort to burn for political reasons. Apparently not. Maybe. Who knows? But there are piles of flammable material easily accessed all around, and the weather events of last week were ideal for mischief.
This is all pretty disorganized...trying to get caffeinated and down the road. FRegards.
“I thought that might be the beginning of a concerted effort to burn for political reasons.”
I worked for the California Department of Forestry, assigned at a fire station near Cloverdale, California, starting right after my high school graduation. The contract required agreeing to work till whenever the state declared the fire season over.
At my level, a rookie fire fighter, it was just seasonal work, but that is true for most of the upper ranks at a fire station as well. A slow fire season is a threat to the fire station officers that the season will end early and some of them will be laid off.
I have to say that as our season ran into late September and October, and most of the major fires we worked were over with, my fellow fire fighters and I thought our captain was a little shady.
One evening after dinner he got us all in the fire trucks and we drove into town. He made a couple stops before we parked near a lumber yard. He went in and talked to someone. We then went back to the fire station. Then, at 2:am the alarm went off. Where did we have to go? The lumber yard. All its acres of long high mounds of leavings were ablaze or smoldering.
A couple weeks later he again got us all in the trucks and we just drove out into the hillsides around us. At 5:am the next morning the alarm went off. Where did we go? An abandoned farm house and barn we passed the night before on the road was ablaze.
I think our last two fires were buying some job security for our fire station officers.
For me, unfortunately, the fire season that year did not end until early November. I made it home by Thanksgiving but I did not enter college until February the following year.
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