[Grampa Dave]

I guess that the size of the acreage burning in Oregon can no longer be discounted or ignored by the Oregonian/Oregon Live Green Beanies.

[Grampa Dave]

For your info.

If you have any more up to date data, please post it.

[Grampa Dave]

The latest fire map that I can find:

Salvation and Cake Crumb please post what you have re the latest data on these fires. Thank you!

[Mr. Jeeves]

Looking at the causes, I'm wondering if the Sierra Club will be putting forth anti-lightning legislation in the near future?

[Young Werther]

I believe that it would be a prudent action if each Oregonian, Washingtonian, Arizonian, Californian, New Mexican, etc etc (you get my drift) would contact Senate Leader Duh-asshole. After all he is the expert when it comes to the ICC, Interstate Conflagation Committee. I'm sure he can explain to these crybabies why only South Dakota should be shielded from the envirowackos. The rest of the "madding crowd" must just grin and bear it as their homes and livliwoods go up in smoke!

SARCASM ALERT!!!!

[snopercod]

When Smoky Bear said "Only YOU can prevent forest fires", I guess he must have been addressing God. All of them seemed to have been started by lightning.

Or maybe he was addressing the Sierra Clubbers et.al., who are responsible for turning small managable fires into big uncontrollable ones.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

White River is a great place. Did alot of corss country skiing there, beautiful country. Sad to see it decimated.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Live webcam, Medford, OR. I think along the highway. Looks like at this time it is pretty smokey.

[arm958]

Don't worry, this is a good thing. Forest fires drive out humans, who, as we all know, cause damage to salmon habitat. Just ask the guv'ner.

[AAABEST]

Saddened bump.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

I do see now as the time when the Greenies will take a long vacation, somewhere away from the people in the Western US. Anywhere but there.

[r9etb]

I guess that the size of the acreage burning in Oregon can no longer be discounted or ignored by the Oregonian/Oregon Live Green Beanies.

I just spent the last week in Central Oregon, and actually watched them fighting the Cache Mountain fire. Lotsa smoke thereabouts, and was within a few miles of the Cache Mountain, Eyerle, and the one near Lake Billy Chinook.

They've been doing a lot of controlled thinning/burning in the area, though probably it's far less than 1% of the forest land thereabouts. I wouldn't be too surprised to see the folks living within the Sisters Ranger District, at any rate, to be clamoring for a lot more of it ASAP.

The results of that thinning have somewhat returned things to the way the forest looked in 1900. I seem to recall that it looked pretty much that way even into the 60s, when I can first remember it, though I suspect that balance was maintained by some pretty heavy selective logging in the area (it's almost imperceptible now).

I think that the greenies thereabouts may well begin to see the point -- though it's the idiots in Portland and Eugene that are the ones filing the lawsuits, and they seem impervious to anything other than a mystical reverence for unmolested trees.

OTOH, I would really hate to see this used as an excuse for clear-cutting in the area -- which IMHO is the real (mostly aesthetic) reason that many of these people file lawsuits in the first place.

My family knows a couple of old-time (pre-EPA) USFS hands are disgusted with the current forest-management methods, which seem to be governed by the dancing elephants of Big Timber and the Environmentalists -- neither of whom have any particular interest in doing the right thing.

[WaterDragon]

An acquaintence, very liberal, is bemoaning the fires because 'burned over forests are so ugly.' I told her that peoples' lives and property, their homes, are also threatened, some homes already destroyed. "Oh, yeah," she says. A transplant from out of state, and as self-absorbed as are all the liberals.

[eleni121]

Gee whiz...lots of lightning strikes most of all in Oregon. Is this just coincidence or what? Whatever is going on it is pretty sick stuff.

[Crispy]

I wish Daschle was our Senator so maybe we could prevent this in the future.[/sarcasm]