How timely! Wednesday, I attended a presentation by Dr. Carl Skinner and others of the Pacific Southwest Research Station http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/topics/fire_science/ on firesheds and their new predictive software. The software "games" various fires on pre-characterized landscapes and can predict the fire behavior and damage. It was presented to our countywide fire safe council in hopes that we would collaborate with the National Forest on ground truthing the charactieristics (slope, aspect, veg types) of the land and integrating our community fire plans into the system.
The Klamath Forest just had a week long workshop on the fire plan and they showed us a glimpse of some of the maps. Problem is that the only area of this huge forest where fuel reduction projects can be designed to take enough commercial trees to offset most of the cost is a small area in the east called Goosenest.
Because of the repeated environmental suits on the western Klamath, the public must pay to have fuel reduction done and that is extremely expensive because of all the environmental documentation, appeals and challenges. However, I have 19 communities plunked smack dab in an area of summer lightning strikes where the fuel loading and risk of catestrophic fire is dangerously high and the environmental values (salmon and owl habitat) that would be lost are also high.
There must be more legislation to exempt these projects from this grid lock by the environmentalists before a tragedy occurs.
"They need a plan" -- understatement of the year.
There are a couple guys in CA -- who nearly lost their homes in separate wildfires -- that are starting something called the Wildfire Action Network. The idea is to spend the resources on anti-fire surveillance measures so that fires can be detected and fought while they are still small and easily contained. What happens now is it take state and federal resources forever to mobilize, and the fire becomes a forest-destroying, city-threatening monster while locals, feds and state fight jurisdictional battles.
In the present system, by the time they organize to fight the fire they are fighting a monster.
By the way -- almost all these wildfires are set, often by eco-terrorists.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F