Sign of the times.

[bellisarius]

Re. the Camp fire in CA.

At 6:15 a.m., a Pacific Gas & Electric Co. high-voltage line near the Poe Dam generating station six miles away malfunctioned. A report of fire came at 6:29.

Fifteen minutes later, McKenzie stood at the dam looking helplessly across the river canyon at a 10-acre fire on the rock slope above. He had no way to reach it. Its unpaved access route, Camp Creek Road, clung to the mountain so precariously that rock slides threatened to erase it.

The last time he put a heavy wildland engine on the crumbling grade, it took an hour to creep a mile, mirrors folded in, a man walking beside each wheel to watch for collapse. It would be a death sentence to send a crew out there in a fire.

Deadliest Fire.

Throughout our National and State forests this is occurring with greater frequency. Fire roads are being cut to restrict access and/or not maintained. Not so much as a result of any policy but as a result of lack of funds. Over 34% of the lands of the US are owned by the federal government in the form of National Parks, forests, monuments, BLM property, and even the Indian reservations. But they are no longer able to maintain the lands even though until this administration they continually tried to acquire more. In other words our public lands are going to hell in a hand basket while the hand wringers in the metropolitan areas stress out over inconsequential shit like gender neutral bathrooms, and rights for criminals.

These fires are going to be occurring more frequently and of increasing severity due to poor management of the lands. And I'm not accusing the people charged with maintaining the lands, they just don't have the resources to deal with the problem anymore.

Why wasn't the overburden cleared out in the area where this particular fire started? The answer is in the small portion of the article I quoted. The fire road wasn't maintained. And why not? Most likely because the funds weren't available to do so. A few years ago there was a severe fire in the Jemez mountains just North of here. The fire fighters had to go in on ATV's. They couldn't get heavy equipment to the area because the fire roads had been cut, purposely cut. These cuts were to save money. If no one used the fire roads no one had to maintain them. When the fire broke out their fiscal decision came back to bite them in the ass.

To the metropolitan dwellers that keep voting for more entitlements for themselves, the national lands are an abstraction. Something that they pay lip service to as a 'virtue signal' but in reality could give a rats ass about. At least until such time as a discussion begins about the government divesting itself of some of the land. Then they behave as if they're having their house sold out from underneath them.

You can have your public lands or you can have your entitlements, but you can't have both.

 

[mAnn_Tagonist]

It's all them damn city folks' fault for not raking their damn leaves!

 

[Oblimo]

I think you are presuming a lot of things not supported by the article you cite, but by your long standing political opinions.

 

[bellisarius]

I think you are presuming a lot of things not supported by the article you cite, but by your long standing political opinions.

I see no evidence of that.

Cut and non-maintained roads aren't a 'presumption.' The fact that the Forest Service budget has remained essentially static over a span of years while land responsibility has increased is not a 'presumption.'

 

[Libsam]

John Stossel did a great job presenting the Tragedy of the Commons concept.

There's always gonna be someone who has to learn the hard way, I've taken a few courses in hard knocks.

 

[BotanyBoy]

I see no evidence of that.

Cut and non-maintained roads aren't a 'presumption.' The fact that the Forest Service budget has remained essentially static over a span of years while land responsibility has increased is not a 'presumption.'

But the great God King Obama had everything perfect!!!

It's only after Trump showed up there was ever any problems in California.....don't you read the news or watch CNN?

Gawd.....


PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE PILES OF POOP ON THE STREETS!!!!!!

 

[IrezumiKiss]

I think you are presuming a lot of things not supported by the article you cite, but by your long standing political opinions.

I see no evidence of that.

Cut and non-maintained roads aren't a 'presumption.' The fact that the Forest Service budget has remained essentially static over a span of years while land responsibility has increased is not a 'presumption.'

So what was all that extra shit about "metropolitan dwellers" and gender neutral bathrooms? That's you squawking out your little personal pissy pixies, guy, it ain't got fuck to do with this subject.

You wanna move this along? Look to your boy Cheeto to do his job properly. It's coming up on the start of the third year of his toilet bowl reign, so any arboreal and property destruction bullshit you can't stand to bear witness to is under his jurisdiction. Write a letter to him and tell him to get steppin' instead of playing golf every weekend.

Or don't and just sit back and watch the same shit happen next year with you saying the same shit next year, like clockwork.

https://i.giphy.com/media/xT77Y8eeEhBA8NQwLK/giphy.webp

 

[about_average]

Funny how this administration, as part of it's overall defunding of science, is drastically reducing NPS and NFS (to name only two impacted) science funding, including Wildland Fire Science funding,

 

[toeskr]

Funny how this administration, as part of it's overall defunding of science, is drastically reducing NPS and NFS (to name only two impacted) science funding, including Wildland Fire Science funding,

But, but Donnie....

Educate us all on everything you know about this.

Or is this the cnbc or cnn talking points?

 

[CandiCame]

Funny how this administration, as part of it's overall defunding of science, is drastically reducing NPS and NFS (to name only two impacted) science funding, including Wildland Fire Science funding,

Defunded the forest system, too, in general. Just like, "Hey let's take all the money you'd need to prevent wildfires. Oh shit! Why are there forest fires?"

Smokey the bear looks into the camera like he's on the office.

 

[BoyNextDoor]

Let's cut taxes on billionaires again. That will fix he funding issues for the BLM.

 

[sharingfantasies]

Zinke is in charge of the Dept of the Interior and they are in charge of the federal lands According to him, “environmental terrorist groups” created the conditions that enabled California’s wildfires".

Now, it is true that if you threaten to log century old trees, people get upset. But clearing the downed trees, clearing around power lines, people clearing around their homes, stopping so many people from more developments in wilderness areas, and figuring out how to stop idiots from starting fires will help prevent some fires. Maintaining the fire roads and keeping them open would help. Or course, so would less drought.

The cycle is pretty consistent in the west. Rain causes plants to grow, then the plants dry out making them fire fodder, idiot starts fire, plants burn. The more rain, the more plants grow. The more the plants grow, the more fodder for fires.

The more buildings built in areas where fires are more likely to happen, the more buildings burn.

The more buildings in an area, the more people. The more people, the more idiots.

It is pretty basic.

 

[bellisarius]

Funny how this administration, as part of it's overall defunding of science, is drastically reducing NPS and NFS (to name only two impacted) science funding, including Wildland Fire Science funding,

Defunded the forest system, too, in general. Just like, "Hey let's take all the money you'd need to prevent wildfires. Oh shit! Why are there forest fires?"

Smokey the bear looks into the camera like he's on the office.

Yes, the USFS may see a funding drop for FY 2019 (congress makes that determination). The vast swath of US public lands are in the West and not the Western coastal states. Represented by maybe 40 congressmen out of what, 435? I addressed this in a general manner in my OP. The mid-western states, while not necessarily largely metropolitan, don't have a dog in this hunt and have priorities of their own so the States that do have huge swaths of public lands get to suck hind tit.

As far as the science funding goes I see little benefit to having a large dept. of pointy headed professor types "studying" forest fires. You don't "study" fires, you fight them. This whole "Fire Science" trip looks, and sounds, more like a welfare fund for the leather patches on the elbows crowd. We know how these fires start and when they are most likely to start. I don't need a PhD in rapid oxidation to tell me those things on an ongoing basis. The primary causes of forest fire are, Lightening (especially at the beginning of the Monsoon season), electrical transmission lines (the ongoing Camp fire), and human carelessness, sometimes on the part of the USFS itself (the Los Alamos fire). Prevailing winds determine the path of the fire and it's severity along with fuel availability and moisture content. No PhD required.

 

[DeluxAuto]

Zinke is in charge of the Dept of the Interior and they are in charge of the federal lands According to him, “environmental terrorist groups” created the conditions that enabled California’s wildfires".

Now, it is true that if you threaten to log century old trees, people get upset. But clearing the downed trees, clearing around power lines, people clearing around their homes, stopping so many people from more developments in wilderness areas, and figuring out how to stop idiots from starting fires will help prevent some fires. Maintaining the fire roads and keeping them open would help. Or course, so would less drought.

The cycle is pretty consistent in the west. Rain causes plants to grow, then the plants dry out making them fire fodder, idiot starts fire, plants burn. The more rain, the more plants grow. The more the plants grow, the more fodder for fires.

The more buildings built in areas where fires are more likely to happen, the more buildings burn.

The more buildings in an area, the more people. The more people, the more idiots.

It is pretty basic.

That's really not what happened in California. There was no idiot starting fires. The cycle isn't pretty consistent as California has seen record drought over the past few years. The more buildings in the area with more idiots also wasn't the reason for these fires.

 

[Kirkrapine]

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE PILES OF POOP ON THE STREETS!!!!!!

Don't you have plumbing and sewers out there?!

 

[Kirkrapine]

That's really not what happened in California. There was no idiot starting fires. The cycle isn't pretty consistent as California has seen record drought over the past few years. The more buildings in the area with more idiots also wasn't the reason for these fires.

Then what was?

 

[BotanyBoy]

Let's cut taxes on billionaires again. That will fix he funding issues for the BLM.

Or we could just stop giving the money to people who crash their companies and or don't work at all.

That's really not what happened in California. There was no idiot starting fires. The cycle isn't pretty consistent as California has seen record drought over the past few years. The more buildings in the area with more idiots also wasn't the reason for these fires.

Uhhh a large if not majority of the wild fires in CA are started by an idiot.

The cycle is quite consistent...so much so that many of our plant species need fire to germinate/reproduce.

You clearly don't know fuck about California or it's fire problems.

Please stay in your lane.

Don't you have plumbing and sewers out there?!

Yes, but you have to expensive and we don't enforce our laws because that's racist.

That's why we have the most homeless folks and poverty than any other state.

The middle class is leaving in droves, bay area alone lost 200,000 folks last year, almost all middle class..........California nothing but bums, junkies and billionaires by 2020. the Democrat paradise!!

 

[bellisarius]

That's really not what happened in California. There was no idiot starting fires. The cycle isn't pretty consistent as California has seen record drought over the past few years. The more buildings in the area with more idiots also wasn't the reason for these fires.

There are areas of California that consistently burn, the record goes back to the 1920's. The greater Los Angeles coastal area is one of those fire prone areas. While it is true that drought and the Santa Ana winds exasperate the fire dangers but droughts occur there with a fair amount of regularity and that record goes back to the 1840's.

 

[BotanyBoy]

There are areas of California that consistently burn, the record goes back to the 1920's. The greater Los Angeles coastal area is one of those fire prone areas. While it is true that drought and the Santa Ana winds exasperate the fire dangers but droughts occur there with a fair amount of regularity and that record goes back to the 1840's.

If you look at trees like the redwood and W. Redbud and their reproductive cycles that require fire that fire cycle goes back millions of years.

 

[bellisarius]

If you look at trees like the redwood and W. Redbud and their reproductive cycles that require fire that fire cycle goes back millions of years.

Exactly. Why would a specie evolve to rely on fire for it's reproductive mechanism if fire wasn't a regular occurrence?

 

[mAnn_Tagonist]

Or we could just stop giving the money to people who crash their companies and or don't work at all.

But he's your all knowing, great leader...

*chuckles*

 

[BotanyBoy]

But he's your all knowing, great leader...

*chuckles*

Only according to those desperate to pretend so.

Usually because they can't argue against what I'm saying.

 

[cowslinger64]

Or we could just stop giving the money to people who crash their companies and or don't work at all.

Posting stupid shit all fuckin day and all night on a message board doesn't constitute work, mr broken record.


You're the new query.. except about 300 lbs heavier.

 

[BotanyBoy]

Posting stupid shit all fuckin day and all night on a message board doesn't constitute work, mr broken record.

No...but holding paperwork worth about 18,000 bucks a month is.

I know you're desperate to give the government all your money and property in reverence to the great god state......

But the rest of us are still at least semi American comrade.

You're the new query.. except about 300 lbs heavier.

Says the soft footed chair force soy boy.

Put your pink pussy hat on and go call some (D)etroit thugs pussies for carrying guns....bet your scaredy ass wont.

 

[Saint_Ann]

Get something hot enough, it burns.