This article talks about the three elements largely responsible. The weather, utilities( downed wires), and land management ( policies regarding brush management).
California has aging and growing electrical infrastructure, majority of fires started by downed wires. The State also has issues of handling the issue of clearing brush and undergrowth. This is fuel. This is what causes them to spread. You can’t control the weather. But the other two you can control.
What the president said today is correct. California needs to up its game on prevention. Or these fires will continue to destroy.
Please explain to me in detail how you propose to deal with brush/fuel managment issues across almost half the state, in the face of record drought, and massive tree dyoff due to various sources.
And you do realize a single year of heavy rain literally can reset the clock on the timebomb, or in the case of 2016, lead to this nightmare scenario.
I don’t deny this. And the problems California faces comes from decades of doing nothing. Here in the midwest we utilize managed deforestation. Taking out bits of forest in different locations. It helps control the dead undergrowth, and fuel. When you log portions of a forest; you also remove the dead trees. This helps maintain the forest in the long run. It’s how they handle things in the midwest forests.
But see, this just shows the utter lack of understanding of the problem and the disservice the president is doing. It honestly angers me, people are losing their lives and homes.
Mechanical methods are futile, it’s simply ludicrous to think that we are going to be managing half of the state’s landmass like someone’s backyard and/or perimeter of their house. Small areas and where it makes sense, yes, but the vast areas of state and federal land can not be tackled this way,
The reality is the only prevention is… fire. This really is a time you fight fire with fire. We have known this for decades, that setting prescribed fires and letting small fires burn out is the only solution to clearing large areas of brush and preventing these massive and devastating fires. The forest service knows this, the fire departments know this, ecologists know this… everyone has since the 70s-80s. It is a fundamental part of modern ecological sciences and forestry managment.
The problem is we have been in massive cycles of droughts that make this very difficult, we have not had a reprieve that really allows for the use of prescribed fires, or to let smaller fires go… they all have deadly potential now during a drought. And it will always be difficult from a political standpoint; who wants to see their town’s beautiful countryside blackened for a decade, before it regrows?
And that is the root cause, decades of fire prevention that got us here. We spent 50+ years putting every single fire in sight out… because that is what people want. But that just made it worse decades down the road when undergrowth builds up, a drought is active, and a fire hits those areas and can’t be controlled. But are we really going to sit here and blame past firefighters from doing their job to save lives and homes?
This is a very complicated problem, and the presidents gaslighting on this topic is shameful. But the most disheartening thing to see is it is working.
I would honestly be happier if Trump straight up blamed Smokey the Bear, because that actually represents the fundamental problem of fire managment born in the 40s.
I’m not saying that more can’t be done but it’s a little harder to do that when the forests are located in largely inaccessible mountain ranges with up to 6,000 ft. elevation gains
Want to compare maps of federal and state land between the midwest and the west? The midwest is almost entirely private relative to the west, there really IS no comparison in the scope of management, much less the actual differences in the land.
The President feels free to say whatever he wants about California because he knows that he has little support within that State and it works with his base outside of California.
Who cares if US citizens are losing everything?
Being angry at people you will never meet is easier.
You have not presented a solution that comes even close to the scope that California and other arid western states states face. “Midwest forestry practices”… give me break… what ■■■■■■■ forest, and it’s an entirely different climate/region that has little to no similarities…
It honestly sickens me, no joke, this little dude below sprung up in the 1940s, and represents the mindset that “every single fire needed to be stopped/prevented”… that mindset is the root cause of all of the terrible wildfires we see now.
So I’m currently in California for a wedding. The fires aren’t that close to us but smoke is filling the area. We’ll be fine.
But while waiting for my baggage at the airport, I talked to a guy. His name is Doug, and that’s all I know about him.
He was in shock because he may have lost his home and everything he owns to fires he didn’t know about until he landed. His wife and his cats and his stuff - he didn’t know - he was worried his bag got lost as it may literally have had all the clothes he had left.
All I could do is offer to pray with him. I don’t know how the story ends - I’ll likely never know.
Some more reading on the topic, not to linger on a cartoon character, but it really does sum up why we are here and stuck in this cycle after almost two decades of drought.:
