[spectr17]

if fire gets into Lake Arrowhead, this is where all the beetle damage is. I hunt there and the forest is all dead. The Jeffrey pines there will go up like Roman Candles. If the fire gets into those huge stands of dead trees the whole mtn will burn down.

THis is the place where the news reported was the worst fire dange in the nation this summer. USFS has been logging the trees to head off disaster but it thje usual case of last-minititus

[lainie]

it sounded earlier like a foregone conclusion that the fire will get there. Is that your take too?

[meyer]

If fire gets into Lake Arrowhead, this is where all the beetle damage is. I hunt there and the forest is all dead. The Jeffrey pines there will go up like Roman Candles. If the fire gets into those huge stands of dead trees the whole mtn will burn down.

THis is the place where the news reported was the worst fire dange in the nation this summer. USFS has been logging the trees to head off disaster but it thje usual case of last-minititus.

As far as the woods is concerned, the fire is probably the best way to get rid of the beetles now. But, there's so much to lose up there that thinning and clearing would have been the best path to removing them in the first place. They could have cleared a bunch of bad wood and burned it in the middle of the desert somewhere where it couldn't harm anything else.

[TrappedInLiberalHell]

The Jeffrey pines there will go up like Roman Candles.

Are those the ones with the bark that smells vaguely of butterscotch? I remember when hiking in the San Jacintos near Idyllwild, I saw large stands of dead conifers up on the ridges. Are these the ones that have succumbed to bark beetles? And is it just the Jeffrey Pines? When I hiked through that area I remember someone mentioning a pest killing trees. Until that point I just thought the trees were dying as part of a natural cycle.

Having hiked through the burn zone south of Mount Laguna, which lasted at least 15 hiking miles, I have a profound respect for the damage wildfire can do.