Anyone here impacted by the Mendocino fire?
- Thread starter Chris
- Start date
I keep brush cut back and always keep the field and grass around my place cut short. When the ash was falling around our place, I put sprinklers on top of our house...keep your gutters cleaned out.
I gotta admit that wildfires are a hard natural catastrophe for me to wrap my head around. Whenever I hear about fires, part of me just thinks about them in terms of the things you can extinguish with a spray of water, but of course these are just so large that you can't simply just extinguish them in one fell swoop. The size of these fires are just so hard to comprehend, but considering that I'm way over here in Minnesota and can see the effect of the smoke in the sky, it's just really incredible.
OP
So what’s changed in that time that’s led to all these constant fires? That’s what I don’t understand.
They use to do control burns in the spring or fall to prevent major fires like these. But for some reason they stopped doing them.
OP
I thought it might have had something to do with that.
I wonder if they stopped doing them because of something to do with environmental laws down there in California.
That's true!
Climate change is really the biggest driver since California has been getting hotter and dryer. I know that mentioning anything about climate change can go a bit into political territory, but it's getting pretty hard to dispute that at this point. (sources backing this up linked below)
It seems like most of the partisan debate in recent years has shifted from whether climate change exists or not to whether climate change is primarily a result of human activity, but regardless, the result is the same.
Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests - http://www.pnas.org/content/113/42/11770.full
Anthropogenic warming has increased drought risk in California - http://www.pnas.org/content/112/13/3931
How climate change is increasing forest fires (this is a news article, rather than a scientific journal, such as those above) - https://www.dw.com/en/how-climate-change-is-increasing-forest-fires-around-the-world/a-19465490
Trump made a tweet last Sunday claiming that environmental laws are at least somewhat to blame:
"California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren't allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!"
However, I haven't seen any evidence to back this up and the fact checks I've found seem to deem this as false:
https://www.politifact.com/californ...rnia-wildfires-made-worse-hot-dry-conditions/
(P.s. sorry if this drags too much politics into a non-political section of the forum, but hopefully it answers the question)
*Edit* I also found a couple sources citing the reason for there not being as many controlled burns as needed. The answer seems to be funding.
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-Cali...urn-policy-to-minimize-forest-and-brush-fires
https://massivesci.com/articles/wildfire-prevention-california-controlled-burn/
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Here is the podcast I was talking about for battling wildfires by design if anyone interested, there’s an article that goes along with it if podcasts aren’t your thing. I believe part two comes out today: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to-burn/
“Cohen’s experiments also showed that when those changes were made, a house was much less likely to burn. In fact, he showed that was the main factor in whether a house was going to burn. It wasn’t about the intensity of the wildfire or its size — it was really about what was happening within 100 feet of your home”
“Cohen’s experiments also showed that when those changes were made, a house was much less likely to burn. In fact, he showed that was the main factor in whether a house was going to burn. It wasn’t about the intensity of the wildfire or its size — it was really about what was happening within 100 feet of your home”
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One of the reasons for the increased severity of wildfires can be traced to the sea change in forest and wild land management philosophies over the past 45 years. The "environmentalists" who entered the USFS, BLM and National Park Service after college in the 1970's have moved up the management ladder and now control these agencies. What was once a philosophy to act as stewards and conservationists has evolved into the current philosophy that wild lands should be untouched by human influence and thinning of the forests must be prohibited. Draconian Obama-era executive orders have exacerbated the situation. The result has been forests and wild lands choked by overgrowth and an exponential increase in burnable fuels. Add drought to this and you have a recipe for disaster. "Global warming" may be one factor, but blaming the fires on global warming diverts attention away from the human mismanagement by so-called environmentalists who refuse to accept any responsibility for their misguided policies.
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OP
I think climate change is certainly a part of it, but what @Mr. Bills is saying makes a lot of sense. It seems there's a lot of mismanagement going on in that area. I've read a lot of opinions from forestry experts, and the majority of them agree that thinning out some of the forests would indeed help with the problem.
Of course that draught in California certainly doesn't help at all.
Of course that draught in California certainly doesn't help at all.
pretty much right on mr bills im down here off of 36 n west of red bluff I was releaved that they stopped the fire at cottonwood creek I was about a half mile from the baker rd fire I live off of baker rd over looking hwy 36 that was to close for comfort when logging was going good they would select cut trees when skidding logs out of the woods that would get rid of a lot of the under brush then the spotted owl and the environmentalist got a foot in the door we had to clear cut areas then you have erosion with rains and snow melt in the spring and 3 to 4 ft grass or scrub growing under the trees then with the heat of over 100 deg. days for weeks on end you can see what we have