Historic Fires out West

[SwampDonkey]

Yep, around here the old homesteads never had but maybe one tree around the buildings. They remembered the Miramachi fire that burnt down half the province, one of the biggest of 3 fires in recorded history (1825).

Meanwhile, we are also getting the smoke off the western fires all the way out here on the Atlantic coast. Coming in on the wind. Can't smell it, but it is smoggy on an otherwise clear blue sunny day.

[gspren]

  Here in south eastern PA we can see the smoke as a haze, I can't smell it but the wife says she can, she smells better than me in at least two ways. :D

[trapper]

sun was bright red again as it set tonight from the smoke 

[curdog]

Flying in to Oregon today, things were really smoked in starting about Idaho and getting into Oregon I couldn't see the cascades or the ground below me in most spots. The pilot mentioned that the plane would start smelling like smoke and not to worry  :D

[RPF2509]

Just got back from the Holiday Hills fire.  Left last Monday and drove through solid smoke from norcal to Salem.  By Tuesday the fire had really slowed due to calm weather.  Spent 5 days building line and mopping up.  Thunderstorms Thursday night really put the kabosh on flame advancement.  For all the years I spent in Oregon I never saw thunderstorms like that.  Heavy rain bursts with lots of broken, uprooted trees, plenty of snapouts in the woods.  Saturday was the first day it cleared enough to see anything.  I was on the NE edge of the fire and all I could see to the south was burnt.  Some creek drainages looked OK but huge swaths of timber are burnt.  All plantations in the burn are smoked flat.  Logger I talked to said over 6 logging sides were burnt up.  Skyline towers, loaders, processors, cats and skidders - a huge hit to logging capacity.  I've seen sub drainages burnt out before but this fire burnt out several complete river systems.  I only saw about 1/1000th of the burnt area and it was devastated.  The hardest part was on the way home driving past Phoenix/Talent; entire neighborhoods burnt to ash.  These towns are the low income suburb of Medford.  People just surviving lost everything.  The fire moved up a riparian area adjacent to I-5, burnt to the waters edge.  Gas attendant I talked to said the wind was like a hair dryer - hot and strong pushing the fire ahead.  It will be a huge job recovering.  Right now the fire in the Mendocino national forest is set to top one million acres and has joined the burn scar from last year's half million acre fire to the south and is close to joining the Carr fire scar just outside of Redding.  In the last 3 years a strip over 150 miles by 30 has burnt on the west edge of the Sacramento valley.

[sawguy21]

 :( That is brutal! It will regenerate but not in my lifetime. It is actually clear and sunny this morning, a welcome break from the heavy smoke coming in from your fires.  :(

[SwampDonkey]

That certainly is one huge burn scar.

[BradMarks]

Just talked with a friend who works for the ODF and was assigned to the Holiday Farm fire, mapping/gis.  He said that Weyerhauser has lost at least 70,000 acres.  At 300 TPA for replanting (when the time comes) it amounts to 21 million seedlings. Other companies who lost lots of acres are Giustina, Rosboro.  There is not that much capacity in their nurseries for a number of years to come. And then there is the Beachie, the Riverside, both huge fires also. It will be a long time until our hills are green again with viable trees.  

[ST Ranch]

Pretty difficult to get a sense of the destruction and hardship these fires have caused these past few years. 

I came across the following that I think is a good read regarding the fire situation.

www.workingforest.com/why-firefighting-alone-wont-stop-western-mega-fires/

Tom

[Roxie]

RPF2509, thank you for responding to this crisis and reporting back to us. It's heartbreaking to hear about the devastation and it must be even harder to see with your own eyes.

Could you please explain the definition of the word snapout?  Google was not my friend on that one.

[RPF2509]

Snapout - top of the tree breaks out usually due to wind.   There is plenty of blame to spread around but basically the weather has driven all the fires to catastrophic proportions.  When its hot and blowing all you need is a spark, natural, accidental or malicious and no amount of people and equipment are going to stop it.  We are set to have 90+ temps again here in CA next week.  Rain is still a dream for CA and its the only thing that will stop the fires. OR and WA are getting rain so that may free up people and equipment for CA.  SPI looks like it lost 40K acres of timberland and plantations in the Feather river.  This is like their 5th year of getting slammed.  It would not surprise me if they pulled out of CA.  Their mills may just cut the burned wood and then close due to lack of supply.  Nursery capacity is inadequate for the private lands let alone when the fed lands are considered.  Most of the feds will be left to recover on their own meaning forest land will revert to brushfields and scrub for the next century or more.

[sawguy21]

 :'( That is sad but the harsh reality. I once chased an S-61 fighting fires in northern CA with a fuel truck. There was a big fight in Sacramento over whether to put them out or let Ma Nature take her course and rejuvenate the forest. It was finally decided if the fire was man made we would fight it, otherwise let it burn. :

[RPF2509]

Certainly prescribed fire has taken a back seat in CA for over 2 decades.  Why? Because people want bright blue skies all the time.  Back when I was in charge of burning, getting a burn day from the air quality office was once in a blue moon.  In 2018 we had 4 months of smoke every day from July to October.  Now the bay area and Sac too is getting it and they are crying after a month of bad air.  Last February we had a month with zero precipitation - it was a perfect burn window but I never saw any smoke in the air.  Maybe now people will be a little more tolerant of hazy winter days.  Forest conditions are overgrown such that it is very difficult to control a burn.  Most forests need a pretreatment before a burn to reduce fuel load to reasonable levels.  Even with 3 million acres burned there still is a lot of forest out there needing treatment.  Something like 1/2 a million acres needs to be treated a year to get back to the historical burn cycle.  If you look at old pictures of CA, most show hazy skies from burning.

[clearcut]

SPI is the largest private landowner in California, and in contention for largest in the US. I doubt that they will be leaving soon. Their business model through the 80s and 90s was to buy and rehabilitate high–graded and burned–over timber lands. 

CARB certainly has a great deal to do with insufficient acreage managed via prescribed burn. Directly by preventing ignitions during perfect burn windows and further, discouraging interest in prescribed burning. You only need to get shut down after spending hours and thousands preparing for a burn a few times, before you are unwilling to be "burned" again.

As important, possibly more so at least with the smaller landowners, is that California is a strict liability state. You light it, you are responsible for all damage and suppression costs. Ask my neighbor who bought 1/2 acres of char for $18,000 when his tractor sparked a grass fire. Insurance won't even cover houses out here, "and you want to intentionally light a fire?". CALFire's Vegetation Management Program's major selling point was that they assumed liability.

Seems to be increasing interest in prescribed fire. More classes being offered, more friendly words from CAL Fire. Even CARB has made some "might be a good idea" noises. Can only hope.

[curdog]

I've got a few more days on the fires here in Oregon before heading home. Definitely some hard hit areas with loss of lives, property and timber, but I have met some great folks out here.  Ive had a chance to meet a lot of landowners while going around checking on my crews and the hospitality has been great. Unfortunately the news paints Oregon as being represented by the riots in a few cities, and it's definitely not the case.  This is my fourth dispatch here,  and hopefully I won't need to come back, but I do enjoy the state. 

[RPF2509]

One can only hope.  We have two new starts over the weekend in CA. One in Napa and the other near Redding, combined over 10K acres - temps rising to 100 this week in the valleys.  No rain in sight.

[DbltreeBelgians]

Flying over Nebraska right now. Just left Denver headed to Columbus Ohio. Visibility from Grand Jct to Denver was fair but leaving Denver the smoke haze was pretty thick to the north from the Cameron Peak Fire. 
The Pine Gulch Fire in the Bookcliffs north of Grand Jct. is finally 100% contained.  Awfully dry out west. Can't buy a good rain shower.

Brent

[DbltreeBelgians]

Small Wildfire outside Salt Lake City on 9/21



Sign in Park City Utah on 9/22

Brent

[sawguy21]

We had some rain late last week but dry and unusually warm now for so late in the year. 2020 sure has been a test!

[BradMarks]

Curdog:  Thanks for realizing Oregon is a decent state!, with good people. Unfortunately the Portland metro area dictates (by population/popular vote) the vast majority of policies of the state. The rest of us get fed the garbage that comes down I-5. 

[sawguy21]

I wish I could visit Oregon, it is a favorite. Portland is just another large city I try to avoid. We are still getting smoke but it is not bad although the temperature has dropped noticeably.

[curdog]

Curdog:  Thanks for realizing Oregon is a decent state!, with good people. Unfortunately the Portland metro area dictates (by population/popular vote) the vast majority of policies of the state. The rest of us get fed the garbage that comes down I-5.

Many of the people I talked to described "garbage " that comes from the state government out there,  and I was probably only 20-30 minutes from Portland,  but in a still rural but growing area. 
I did meet ya'lls governor when I gave her a briefing on my fire. I don't much about her,  but she was friendly as well. The news cameras were on, but they might needed a translator for a southerner with a mask on,  so I dodged being on TV this time  8) :D

[charles mann]

We just moved to what is said to, cali's worst fire in history. We started out in ukiah, but smoke prevented us from flying much. So cal-fire moved us to a heli-base just north of garberville, ca. Day 1 up here and flew an 8.0hrs and dropped 1 million, 54,000 lbs of retardant. Smoke got us today. Hopefully another full 8 tomorrow. 

[RPF2509]

On Monday CA passed a couple of milestones.  One fire, the August Complex is now over 1 million acres - largest fire in Ca's history.  It is double the size of last years record fire at a half million that occurred just to the south of the August complex.  Combined they have burned 80% of the Mendocino National Forest.  For the other record 4 million acres have burned in CA this year.  Some rain is forecast this weekend so fire spread will really slow .  No rain for Socal though so fire can still rage there.  The only good record not set is number of structures burned - less than 10,000 which is small compared to 18K lost in the Paradise fire and 6K in the Tubbs.

[RPF2509]

Mr. Mann - How does the burn severity look out of Garberville? The Mendocino National  Forest is a mosaic of grass, shrubs and hardwood/ conifer trees. Some of the burning probably did a lot of good in places if it did not get too hot.  Its been awhile since I drove across it.  Its kind of the national forest no one visits.  No spectacular geology like the Sierra's, not much timber production, lots of inaccessible areas.  A favorite place for dopers though with the recent changes to laws everybody grows in their backyards now.  Plenty of 40' greenhouses out of Garberville.