Wildfire(s) in California

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Just came back from a week in Yosemite. I was in shock looking at mile after mile of standing dead timber from the multiple megafires.
The good news is that the log trucks are rolling again on the National Forests in California. Yesterday we were on the Stanislaus and Eldorado NFs. The Plumas, Lassen and Tahoe have been busy for the last couple of years. Good news for CA forests.
 
In spite of continued warm dry weather and high winds I was hoping we would make it through the end of the year but looks like we can't catch a break. Another bad wildfire is happening in Butte County, California. It is called the Camp Fire. Current reports say18,000 acres. Zero containment. One report said multiple deaths but I’m not seeing any follow up so I can only hope this is in error. Saying 1,000 homes lost. 50,000 evauated from small towns around the fire. Apparently a lot of gridlock for folks trying to get out. Also read that high winds caused the fire to move so fast some folks were not able to leave town and sheltered in large parking lots at Kmart, Safeway, etc.

There is a lot of smoke in the air here and I am about 150 miles south of the fire.
 
Read on another BB I frequent, that the town of Paradise, CA., had been completely destroyed.

'Tis the season out there. Godspeed to you all.

Roger
 
From the reports I see the town of Paradise is pretty much razed. Residents say because of gridlock people had to abandon their cars and run for it (some carrying babies or pets) As far as containment Fire officials say that right now mother nature is fully in charge. Pretty bad and threatening Chico which is a larger college town of about 90K people. Mt. Diablo rises up 3,300 feet right in front of our house. Right now I can barely see the peaks because of the smoke from this fire which is 150 miles away.

Additionally, other fires are happening in Southern California I heard last night that Malibu (homes of the rich & famous) was under evacuation orders.

Personally, we are in zero danger from any of these fires. There were a couple of incidents earlier in the year that were threatening, but they were contained well before they got within 5 miles of us.
 
It is very troublesome to see the video of neighborhoods in Paradise, CA with dense vegetation right up to the buildings in steep topography and only one road out. Most people do not seem to realize how much they can do to make their property fire safe. Defensible space, thinning trees, pruining up. removing ladder fuels, removing trees near the house, etc.
 
ppine said:
It is very troublesome to see the video of neighborhoods in Paradise, CA with dense vegetation right up to the buildings in steep topography and only one road out. Most people do not seem to realize how much they can do to make their property fire safe. Defensible space, thinning trees, pruining up. removing ladder fuels, removing trees near the house, etc.
Click to expand...

Haven't you heard, higher severity is caused by climate change, so why worry about things like defensible space or fuel loads. :roll:

This fire has turned into really bad news in terms of lives lost and property damage. It is only about 35% contained though if what I heard on the news is correct, it is moving in a direction away from populated areas. Atmosphere around my place 150 miles away is thick. You can actually taste the smoke. I can't imagine the air quality nearer the fires.
 
A lot of folks who lost their homes are living in small tents or under tarps in a Walmart parking lot. FEMA says help with housing is still a few days out. A lot of private donations are being transported in by volunteers to provide clothing & etc for these folks. In the meantime, our state has a $9 billion surplus (expected to grow to $15B). Seems we could divert a little of that to help these poor folks.
 
LDUBS said:
FEMA says help with housing is still a few days out.
Click to expand...
************************************************************************

HMMPH! Federal Emergency MISmanagement Agency. It's a pretty sad state of affairs when an agency with that kind of a budget can't seem to grasp the definition of the word "emergency".

Roger
 
Fire in the western states has now become a matter of life and death.
Fire agencies can no longer keep people safe due to 110 years of fire suppression and reduced logging.
They want you to believe it is a warming climate and there is nothing we can do. They keep asking for more money.
Two thirds of the USFS budget goes to fire suppression, around 2.25 billion dollars a year.
CalFire has a budget around $420 million.

Fortunately loaded logs trucks are running all over California now. Take a drive up Rte 88 out of Jackson. There is mile after mile of thinnning and slash removal going on that is visible from the road.

Do your part to clean up your property.
Stop praying and start your tractor and a chainsaw.
 
We have rain storms stacked up for the next 10 days or so. Camp Fire is 80% contained. Hopefully this rain will help and clear the atmosphere in Northern California of smoke. It won't be good for any of those poor people who are still living in tents in a Walmart parking lot.

81 deaths and people still missing. 153,000 acres burned. Over 14,000 structures destroyed. Of those about 13K residential, 500 commercial and the remainder being "other" types of buildings.

People walking around in masks is a very common sight now. I have lived in Northern California all my life and have never seen this before. Of course, the poor air quality is nothing to complain about compared to what the fire victims have lost.

Edit : Removed the "political" content. <sigh>
 
Hi LDubs,
People need to get busy and make their properties and communities fire safe. The Foothill areas are some of the worst. Half the towns on Rte 49 are fire traps. People live at the end of a road with only one way in and out. There is some serious denial going on in California. Start your chainsaw.
 
Better management practices of the the forest would have helped. But ultimately I question how much better the outcome would have been, it's just a perfect storm for fires years of bad drought have brought on. Yes better forest management might have kept the fires from being as bad had some logging and dead wood thinning been practiced. But how much better would it have been?

The problem I see with the forest management seems to be both sides of the house can't seem to agree on how to manage the forest. One side once to do lots of logging and doesn't have much care for how it will affect the forest environment, the other side wants absolutely nothing touched in them. Seems we need to find a balanced medium of sensible logging, and thinning practices. On the other hand it would be really hard to keep all the millions of acres of forest thinned of all dead trees, undergrowth, and other easy fuel sources. I won't get into how I feel about our federal government being rather unwilling to have sent emergency aid sooner.
 
It is not just the fuel loading issue. The urban/wildfire interface/intermix has grown dramatically which increases these catastrophic life safety and property loss issues. In addition to better managing fuel loads, which by the way has been a point of discussion for almost as many years as I have lived, we need more support for firewise and defensible space actions on the part of property owners. I sure agree we don't have the "balance" needed to actually address the problem.

We are going through a series of rain storms. Some fire victims are still living in tents in a Walmart parking lot. A lot of donations and volunteer assistance is happening to help these folks. I just don't understand why the state can't spend a small part of the $9 billion surplus to put these folks in temporary housing.
 
People have lived in and around the Foothills of CA since the Gold Rush days. It is not new at all.

People do not seem to understand how regulated logging practices are. Foresters decide when and where to log and which trees to take. Riparian areas are protected. There is environmental review before a site can be logged. Loggers don't get to do what they want. Sustained yield has been in place since 1964. The problem is too many trees, overstocking, dense stands of dead trees.

Those forests need to be thinned so they can be prescribed burned safely. Now fires always crown out and take the whole forest. We want to reduce the fuel load to keep them on the ground.
 
ppine said:
People have lived in and around the Foothills of CA since the Gold Rush days. It is not new at all.
Click to expand...


I can't even begin to agree. The catastrophic consequences for property and life safety losses in the gold rush days was basically zero. In the gold rush days there was essentially zero density compared to what we have today. The exposure has changed drastically. Urban intermix/interface is now forever going to be part of any management plan.
 
Hi LDubs,
The main difference between the Gold Rush days and now is that in the old days people logged the countryside with no regulations. It took a lot of wood to build houses, timber frame the mines, run railroads, and keep houses warm and run all of that steam powered equipment. Areas around settlements were denuded of vegetation. Now the same places are overgrown with vegetation that have turned into fire traps.

The railroads and the mining era photographs did a good job of documenting what vegetative conditions looked like a long time ago. There are thousands of photo pairs taken then and now from the same location. There are books full of them. Fire suppression and radically different amounts of logging have had more to do with it than the amount of people living there.
 
Oh, in that respect I do agree. I spent many years trying to manage property loss risk in wildfire and brush areas, so kind of naturally focus on life safety and property loss exposures.
 

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