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California Wildfires

Started by wesdor, November 13, 2018, 06:15:31 PM

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wesdor

I hope this does not belong in restricted topics. I mean nothing political. 

My question is how many fires have ravaged private forestry land in California. If I understand correctly, private forestry firms clean trees on a regular basis and keep brush down. 

Is the crisis compounded by poor forest management or is this not preventable?

Wudman

I'm an East Coast guy but I have spent time in California either fighting fire or running from it.  There are a couple of different scenarios in play here.  In Southern California, many of these fires are in the chaparral forest type (desert scrub brush).  Houses are stacked in like cordwood on 100% slope.  Fire has been suppressed through the years and fuel has accumulated.  They are currently in an extended drought (but then again it is a desert type community)  The Santa Anna winds kick up.  Picture 7% humidity and 70 mile per hour winds.  Nothing will stop that fire.  Once the hills are denuded, you get a rain and then the landslides occur.  Many of these soils are highly erodible sands.  Digging fireline was a breeze.  It was like working in a sandbox full of pea gravel.  Long story short......people are building houses in places that houses should not be.

Progressing to the north, there are some grasslands.  Fires here are quick and hot.  Just stay out of the way.

Northern California is a different animal.....at least the forested areas.  Very little forest management (ie - timber harvesting) has occurred in the last 30 years on Federal lands.  Fuel has accumulated; Ladder fuels have encroached into the mid-story.  Add in drought and insect damage and fires become very intense.  Instead of being a ground fire, they crown and consume everything in their path.  Private lands have also suffered damage in recent years.  Active forest management certainly reduces the intensity of fire, but there has still been loses on the private side as well.  Smokey Bear has been the most successful add campaign in the last 100 years.  Total fire suppression has aggravated the fire situation.  Reversing that trend and educating the public to fire management is a major hurdle.  Overcoming the political climate even more so.

Wudman
"You may tear down statues and burn buildings but you can't kill the spirit of patriots and when they've had enough this madness will end."
Charlie Daniels
July 4, 2020 (2 days before his death)

BaldBob

Wudman's points are right on, but in response to your last sentence - when you have drought conditions, very low humidity,  and 50 mph+ winds, past forest management will generally only have marginal impact on the outcome once a fire starts. 

RPF2509

I agree with Wudman too.  I had a chance to see portions of the Carr fire outside Redding yesterday.  Pictures would not even begin to describe the vastness of the burned area.  Some of it is moonscape, some just burnt skeletons, some underburned and a few small green islands.  The ridgetops were scorched the worst.  The biggest landowner in CA - Sierra Pacific Industries has lost over 60K acres of timberland and in excess of 400 million board feet to fire.  Other smaller industrial landowners have lost significant acreages and volumes.  One of the big bugaboos in defending private land is the legacy of alternate sections owned by the federal government, dating back to the land grants issued to the railroads to  encourage development of the west.  This had led to a literal patchwork management of the forest, and bizarre road networks leading to an indefensible landscape.  But when it comes down to it  -it is the weather that drives fire.  The Carr happened in July with 100 degree temps, the Hirz in August with 90 degree temps, the Delta in September with wind and 90 degrees.  Now we have the Camp fire the grew 70K acres in one day in November due to high winds.  Since June we have had maybe an inch of rain - some areas have had less.  Since the winds have died down the Camp fire has really slowed but it would not take much to get it going again.  Sierra Pacific's Sterling tract (100K+acres) is at the Camp fires doorstep and if the high winds had not been blowing from the east, would have been completely burned too.  It is still at enormous risk if the winds shift.  No significant rain is forecast until December so there are a few weeks still of high danger.  I looked at a map of burned structures in Paradise - 90% of the town (6000+ homes) is burned to the ground.  What was once Paradise is now Hiroshima.  The suburban ideal of dead end cul de sacs and tree lined streets imported from elsewhere is a death trap in California.  Even though we have had many instances of dangerous fire in CA in the last 20 years, people still have fire prone landscape directly adjacent to their houses and have not cleared defensible space.  Paradise only had one major road leading out, many people killed were in their cars trying to evacuate on jammed roads.  With 40 mph winds you cannot out run a fire as it will spot ahead.  From the fire's start miles away to engulfing the town was less than three hours.

Wudman

To expand on the topic, the fire situation is not only a West Coast issue.  We have had devastating fires in the east as well.  There have been major fires around the Okefenokee Swamp (Georgia), Dismal Swamp (VA / NC), Myrtle Beach (SC), Gatlinburg (TN) and other areas within the last 10 years.  A combination of drought and high winds can be devastating.  We had a red flag day here in Virginia back in February 2008.  A system packing hurricane force winds with no rain traversed the state.  We had numerous fires across Central Virginia.

I was working at one of my neighbors homes that morning.  He was a dozer operator for the Virginia Department of Forestry.  He was called to a fire from an escaped prescribed burn conducted 3 days prior.  My Dad was with me.  I made the comment to my Dad, that I don't think I would have lit that fire looking at the weather forecast.  I hadn't gotten the words out of my mouth when my phone rang.  It was the County Forester informing me there was a fire on a tract that I manage.  I got in the truck and headed that way.  When I arrived on scene, I stopped on the highest vantage point on the tract.  The wind was blowing about 70 miles per hour.  The wind caught the door from my hand and slammed it against the front fender of my pickup.  Looking to the southwest, I could see flames crowning in a 60 year old shortleaf pine stand.  I would not haven given you 50 cents for the Town of Keysville at that point.  From that vantage point, I could see 7 separate smoke columns scattered across the county.  The one closest to me was in a clear-cut stand that we had site prepare burned six weeks prior.  Hot coals in a bone pile had rekindled and burned back across the black area.

The fire approaching from the southwest was sparked by a downed power line.  Your question about forest management applied in this situation.  We had conducted a site prep burn on a long narrow strip adjacent to our tract boundary.  This strip was about a mile long and burned black.  When the crown fire hit our boundary, that black (previously burned area) bought us enough time that the wind died and we were able to get a containment line around it.  There was a five year old pine plantation bordering that burned strip.  Had the adjoining area not been burned previously, we would have never stopped the head fire.  We would have lost the entire 5000 acre tract and possibly residential structures as well.  Now for the ironic part.....During the fall of 2007, our county was considering a burn ban as we were looking at drought conditions in November.  One of my contacts on the local Board of Supervisors called me one morning.  He had heard that one of his colleagues was going to introduce a motion for a burning ban at the meeting that night.  He knew I had a good bit of burning work yet to complete.  He asked me to attend.  I put together a presentation and spoke before the Board that night.  They voted on the burning ordinance and put an exemption in place for "Virginia Certified Prescribed Burn Managers".  That exemption allowed us to complete our work.  That exemption saved a lot of acres on that February day in 2008. I spoke with our County Administrator about that decision.  He said for me to "tell him what to do.  I don't know about that stuff." 

I recently attended a conference at Wintergreen Resort in the mountains of Virginia.  That is a ski resort with housing packed onto the mountain.  There is one way in and one way out.  I stepped out onto the deck of the unit I was staying in and paid attention to the landscape.  Steep slope, housing stacked like cordwood, hardwood leaves and mountain laurel right up under the deck.  It is just a matter of time before that place burns.  If a fire starts at the base of the mountain, there is no way to stop if before the crest. These are the issues we face with fire in this country.

Wudman 
"You may tear down statues and burn buildings but you can't kill the spirit of patriots and when they've had enough this madness will end."
Charlie Daniels
July 4, 2020 (2 days before his death)

Southside

Wudman -

We had a fire on our place during that same storm, tree fell onto a distribution line and started it, burned through maybe 5 acres of 40 year old pine, got lucky it wasn't much worse as there was plenty of fuel there.  

Ironic that Sierra Pacific would loose so much timber to fire.    
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Ljohnsaw

Update on the Camp Fire fire:  It is up to 141,000 acres and 40% contained.  Tomorrow has high winds (35-40mph) predicted in that area.  Death toll of 63 and well over 8,000 structures destroyed, 53,000 evacuated.  We have persistent smoke fanning out from due south several hundred miles (entire central valley) to southwest to San Fransisco.  Here in the Sacramento area (90 miles south), we had a large patch of "Hazardous" smoke sitting over it all day.  Most schools are shut down in this area.  Two of the evacuation centers near the fire have had an outbreak of Norovirus.
John Sawicky

Just North-East of Sacramento...

SkyTrak 9038, Ford 545D FEL, Davis Little Monster backhoe, Case 16+4 Trencher, Home Built 42" capacity/36" cut Bandmill up to 54' long - using it all to build a timber frame cabin.

wesdor

A Facebook "friend", just posted a comment about forest fires. Here is a summary (I removed political comments)

Does this make any sense?  I note he does not identify the study. 


"In the most comprehensive scientific analysis conducted on the issue of forest management and fire intensity -- which looked at more than 1,500 fires on tens of millions of acres across the Western United States over three decades -- we found that forests with the fewest environmental protections and the most logging actually tend to burn much more intensely, not less."

clearcut

Carbon sequestered upon request.

timberking

I am just glad to hear the term "forest management or lack of" used in the media with relation to the fire issues.  

BradMarks

That study is right on and contradicts the one by OSU grads 'thesis writers' that industrial lands have larger, more severe fires. My personal observation, even fires on USFS land across a wide landscape, plantations are often unscathed. The mentioned OSU study (without a consensus) is floated as the "gospel" in the enviro camp, and referenced in almost every news article concerning fire behavior.  I say hogwash leads to brainwash if you read it enough times.

RPF2509

So as of this week the Camp fire is officially contained and northern CA is getting rain finally.  However the rain brings its own misery to the tens of thousands burned out by the Paradise fire.  88 confirmed dead and hundreds still missing.  We are over 1.5 MILLION acres burned this year in CA - that's about 234 square miles - a block 48 miles square.  I saw the result of Octobers light rain (less than an inch) on the burn scar near Redding and it was not pretty.  We are forecast to get up to five inches out of this weeks storm - mud will move, stay tuned for that bad story.  Trump came and went with the advice to get raking.  In a sense he is right but so far off the mark when rubber hits the road.  There are so many factors at play here it can't be explained in a post or soundbite.  The best line from the report cited previously is "reconsider currently over simplistic assumptions between forest protection and fire severity".  That's right folks - its complicated.  What works one place will not work another.  There is an environmental gadfly named Chad Hanson who has been getting a lot of print lately selling the simplistic approach 'logging bad - mother nature knows best' and Zinke saying environmental protection laws are causing all the problems.  Neither of them are doing the west any favors.  I've said it before it will take decades to get out of the corner we are in but I do know it's way cheaper to work on prevention than to start over after it is all destroyed.  Right now the crisis is tens of thousands homeless in a state with a deep housing availability problem.  I'm not concerned about the Hollywood types losing homes in Malibu.  Paradise was a working man's town that was affordable and now those people are on the street.  My friend lost his house last year in the Mendocino fire and the only reason he's getting it rebuilt a year later is his wife's Dad is a contractor.  Only a hundred or so houses have been rebuilt in Santa Rosa of a thousand lost.  Building inspectors are swamped (six months to a year  to get plans approved even with supplemented staff), contractors are working for whoever will pay the highest wage and are having a hard time finding skilled labor, supplies are difficult to find locally and are sourced from hundreds of miles away.  Multiply that by 15K homes lost and this is a multi year if not a decade to get back to 'normal'.  In any case I've already ordered my 'Make America Rake Again' T shirt with Smokey holding a rake in place of a shovel.

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