Posted on 03/04/2021 5:19:41 AM PST by Kaslin
In 2020, California had a nightmare forest fire season, made worse by our total COVID shut-down. The fires were so extensive that, to escape them, one would have to have left the state entirely. No place was spared, coast, inland, north, or south. With COVID, no airline was flying and, if you did get somewhere far away, there were likely no places to stay without a two-week quarantine. We were trapped in a way that defied all logic. There's no evidence that the State of California is making serious efforts to prevent that nightmare from happening all over again.
Sitting for weeks on end in the one room in the house with an air-conditioning unit, with my air purifier and humidifier both cranking at maximum, I had a sinus headache that never quit, the energy level of a banana slug, and little clarity of mind. It got old really fast. But there was no way out. The smoke/air quality index remained in the red and purple, with the occasional foray into yellow when the wind blew in from the ocean. There were days when the light from the sun didn’t get through at all, and the world was purely red.
We’re experiencing another drought year in California. This means, most likely, another awful fire season unless the state has done work to mitigate the terrible conditions that caused the fires. These conditions include years of laissez-faire neglect of our huge wooded areas and grassland.
The green movement has meant that, for years now, the state has curtailed all forest management. Instead, things have been “natural,” so as not to disturb the various fauna. It started years ago with a push to end lumber extraction in the state.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Make the governor clean up the scrub and litter in those areas.
TRUMP’S FAULT! ;-)
Yep. We do controlled back burns here in Fla. Therefore we rarely have this problem. But noooo. Crazyfornia is too worried about the spotted snail darter owl butterfly.
We were fortunate that we had no wildfires in our area last year. But the smoke from fires out west plagued us for literally two months. With the drought we’re having I’m not looking forward to this fire season. The only bright spot is less weed eating. But I’m praying for a March “miracle”.
Yep. And thanks to the “greenies”, they’ll have them again...and again. Maybe they change their name to the “brownies”.
Lots of important Dem politicians DID leave the state to go to their second or third homes elsewhere.
What are “controlled back burns”? Crews gather the scrub, thin the trees etc and burn them in a seperate pile I assume?
Good...... America will do better if California is burned away
Pretty soon the fires will stop because there won’t be anything left to burn.
Build a pipeline from nc/sc to california. We are drowning here on the east coast.
Burn, Democrats, Burn!
A controlled burn is one that is set intentionally to burn a prescribed area to remove the fuel load.
A back burn is an emergency measure during an active wildfire to remove the fuel load in the direction the fire is advancing.
Good...... America will do better if California is burned away
You do know that many good Freepers, including Jim Robinson himself, live in California, right? No JimRob = No FR.
Large areas (acres) are control burned by local fire and state agencies.
With Florida being prone to lighting strikes it’s a necessity. More info at link:
The type of burning described in your example is known as a prescribed burn that is usually done between Feb. and Apr.
A back burn example:
Fire is burning on the backside of a mountain racing towards the ridgeline. On the other side, at the base lies a road, and beginning at the road going away from the mountain terrain, the ground is relatively flat and occupied by people and houses.
The firefighters might set the base of the nonburning side of the mountain on fire with the idea being that the fire will burn back uphill towards the ridgeline and meet the fire burning on the other side, thus preventing it from burning down the mountain and jumping the road.
Some of the firefighters might even go up the mountain and set the terrain on fire about a third of the way down from the ridgeline. The firefighters at the base would wait for a period of time before starting the fire at the base, giving the top firefighters time to move laterally so that any fire burning up the mountain would not reach their position.
Windless nights are the optimum timeframe for utilizing this technique, but circumstances may require it to be done at a moment’s notice due to the rapidly changing nature of fire and or weather conditions.
I just went through the single largest fire in California’s history- the Creek fire. Firefighters saved the resort that I work at in the summer months, by using the back burn technique.
Note: I made a mistake while riding an ATV on a fire road by going through an unlocked forest road gate, that took me into a designated wilderness area.
The road had not been maintained since the area had become a wilderness, so downed trees were littering and blocking the road impeding my travel. The further I went down the road, the thicker the floor debris grew until the passage was impossible. At times I would go off the road into the forest only to get hung up worse by the downed trees. Finally, realizing that every foot forward was leading me deeper into a timber fuel powder keg, I gave up trying to get to my destination which was a canyon where I hoped to be able to see down into and learn how far away the advancing fire was burning from my position.
It was when I stopped and really studied the situation, realizing at once that in my zeal to get to a particular spot I had literally ridden on top of three layers of downed trees that were intertwined like the yarn in a quilt or a can of dumped pick-up-sticks.
I told my riding companion that there was no way the firefighters are going to stop the fire when it gets to our location, nor would they want to stop the fire from burning.
The fuel load on the forest floor was estimated to be the equivalent of 80, 000 laundry baskets of wood per acre.
Regardless of terminology the point is, there is a way to mitigate wildfires that California apparently does not employ. One more example Florida is more advanced than California.
Tell me about it! FOOLS!
Just wear a mask. No wait. Wear two.
That is probably the dimrats goal. Let the fires destroy all the trees. While passing environmental laws to protect the trees. Lunacy.
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