A view of the North Lake Arrowhead fire from Lake Arrowhead Village.
Posted on 10/22/2007 11:29:32 AM PDT by Smogger
Tracey Martinez, a spokeswoman with the San Bernardino County Fire Department, said officials believe the Rim Forest fire is related to a 1.5 acre blaze that firefighters dealt with Sunday.
Winds are soaring at 60-to-70 miles per hour late this morning.
"Resources are very strained," Martinez said. "We cannot use air attack right now. We have a lot of fires in California."
The county cannot bring its entire force to bear in the mountains because firefighters must be stationed around the county in case any more blazes ignite elsewhere, she said.
But the county did pull back its firefighters from the Malibu blaze, she said.
Kinda hard to take 25 hispanic looters on with a ten-round magazine.
Have them line up for lotto tickets.
It is true we don’t have the population outside Vegas/Washoe/Carson that you have there. That’s one of the excuses that the environmentalists use when they shrug off culpability for burning 100’s of thousands of acres. True, that might not have been people’s homes, but it was the economic base for ranchers and our tourism trade during hunting season. Once burned, the range won’t recover for a decade. You guys get more moisture, so your recovery is quicker - as you point out, you can have brush grow back in a few years.
Second, we actually have lower humidity than you do most of the time. This summer, during July, we had days when we had 40MPG winds and 3% relative humidity (no, I’m not exaggerating — 3%). If we’d had a firebug lighting off the range, it would have burned thousands of acres per hour. The winds aren’t as strong as what you’re seeing in SoCal right now, but we have week after week of 20 to 30MPG winds every day from the second week of June to the second week of August. That’s how these rangeland fires burn 100’s of thousands of acres in a week. It takes the BLM five days just to get their thumbs outta their posteriors on some of these larger fires.
Lastly, we don’t have your embers — true. I’ve seen those. What we do have are the flaming balls of gas that you see sometimes in your coastal fires in the groves of eucalyptus trees. When I’d see those in SoCal, they were *most* impressive.
You see the same sort of thing over the top of sagebrush and pinyon pine — just not quite as large and they don’t rise quite as high into the sky. They will leapfrog forward by a 1/4 mile or so when the fires really get hot and volatilize the oils in the brush.
The brush in those canyons can be controlled. It is possible to do it, and it would benefit Californians to rise up on their hind legs and *demand* that the brush be controlled within 1 mile of urban areas to prevent wildland fires from becoming urban property fires, as is happening now. The public in northeast Nevada is starting to make a public issue about environmentalists, and it is starting to have an effect when we call out environmentalists by name, not just an organization.
Substitute “MPH” for “MPG” — brain fart of the first order.
Oh, please. Get a grip.
Ignorant, disturbing comments such as the one you responded to, are difficult to deal with...
In just the past two days, I’ve seen many comments here hoping for death and destruction, or implying all these Americans deserve everything they get.
I find it very disturbing when Americans treat other Americans like an enemy that needs to be destroyed.
The bizarre behavior and thought process some are exhibiting here is down right alarming.
In any event, I appreciate reading your comments here.
I was thinking about that this afternoon, and how we seem to all be helping one another...and how PROUD I can be of my fellow Californian’s during a time like this.
The poops can be poops...they hate Hollywood (I hold NO love for it) but yet they go to the movies and buy music. They claim to be conservative, yet say that the wealthy (which I’m NOT!!) deserve this. Go feeger. Oh well.
That is my deep thought for the day. :)
Jumping up & down!
Can I help??
Can I help??
God bless California and be with all Californians tonight as they deal with this horrendous outbreak of fires.
My nephew and his family had to evacuate their beautiful home in Poway a few hours ago.
May God and St. Michael the Archangel be with the firefighters, police, National Guard, and the EMT’s and paramedics all through this night!
A view of the North Lake Arrowhead fire from Lake Arrowhead Village.
Bizarre is right...but hey. Some people just need others praying HARDER for them!
That is SO sad...
Gramps and I are talking about renting a cabin in Arrowbear for Christmas.
I heard earlier ??? that it’s been evacuated? If so...
Looks like they have the Flying Cranes working now at Arrowhead....
I don’t mean “contracting,” I mean “auctioning” so that a confirmed firebug could pay (say) thousands of dollars to be the one with the torch, who, under the direction of supervising forresters, actually starts the fires.
Just spoke with my SIL, and he says the winds there are not as stiff as they were earlier. He rode his bike home from MCRD-San Diego - figured he'd get home faster than driving.
UCLA
dragnet2 to me in Post #55: No...There are many hundreds of square miles of rugged terrain where controlled burns are just not practical due to the inaccessibility etc etc. That's why you always hear about an area that hasn't burned in *years*...Many are just too remote, and inaccessible, not to mention, if you did a controlled burn in these type of areas, and it gets out of control, you can't get the resources in to fight it.
Thus painting a picture of vast areas where controlled burns would be no big deal if it weren't for bureaucrats waving "clean air" regulations, never mind non-point TMDLs.
dragnet2 to you in Post #88:
There are homes and small towns scattered all over thousands of square miles, filled with brush, that when hit with fire, can travel at 50 miles per hour, throwing hot embers miles ahead of the actual fire,
The two cases supporting the same excuses are obviously very different. He says he wished it could be managed, but from what I can tell he knows little about actually doing it. You and I both know vegetation can be managed through combinations of grazing, vegetation modification (even among native plants), and controlled burning. Houses could be better (especially roof venting and heat-reflective glass with some form of fire shutters for impinging debris) but without doing something about the fuel there will still be unacceptable losses. What it takes to fix it is merely the will to do so. Both wildlife habitat and people would be better off for having a more intimate connection with the land by assuming responsibility for its health. Spreading people out to take care of the land may not be so good for corporate cookie-cutter housing and strip mall developers, but who cares about them? Basque shepherds make better stewards.
Please keep pinging me on this at for a while. I am convinced that there are too many who love their own opinion far more than caring for the environment, let alone giving two thoughts about threats to human life.
You’re probably right. I don’t think anything else could reach them.
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