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Today one of our local firemen told me that the condition of the forests a hundred years ago was healthy - big trees didn't burn, and there were many many fewer trees per acre - fire thinned out the underbrush but didn't incinerate the total forest as it is doing today, and will probably do for weeks to come. The fires are burning so hot that they are burning everything, so hot that they are turning the ground to a glaze, through which water cannot penetrate - setting the stage for massive floods when we finally get rain.

If anyone has any doubts as to why the idiotic watermelon policies of the Federal Government are so destructive, reread this.

Here is some more reading for deep background (click pic):

The wildfires that have ravaged the West in recent years have focused national attention on the condition of our forests. Why are they so susceptible to severe fires? And how can we prevent catastrophe? In Forests on the Sierra Nevada, George Gruell examines these treasured woodlands through repeat photography: rephotographing sites depicted in historical photographs to compare past vegetation--its distribution and condition--to present. The paired black-and-white photographs document natural and human-wrought changes in the Sierran ecosystem during the past 150 years--from the varied and generally open-canopy habitats of early European-American settlement days to the dense, declining forests of today.

Gruell's comparisons show just how much damage that the misguided policies the ecoterrorists have wrought in the past few decades. The 'roadless initiatives' will create more conflagrations that they will use to keep human activities out of the forests and stuff us all into 'sustainable communities'.