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.
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.