Norcal fires.

[Logan94605]

Haha.... Just watching the ash collect on my new Mojave

Sponsored

 

[smlobx]

That ash can be pretty corrosive. Be sure to wash it off ASAP.

 

[PabstBleuRibbon]

That ash can be pretty corrosive. Be sure to wash it off ASAP.

Yeah, don't let it sit overnight where it gets wet from dew/condensation! Pretty sure my hood needs a clay bar cleaning/polish with less than 500 miles on it, from the ash. Also Oakland Mojave!

 

[Rckjeep]

Many of my friends, family have been evacuated including my parents. It’s crazy times for sure

 

[brianinca]

This disastrous fire and the impact it had on fire suppression policy have a lot more to do with the current situation than AGW.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1910

Forests managed with better policies have NOT had the conflagrations we've seen in USFS areas:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...-prove-good-management-trumps-climate-change/

I'm in Norcal as well and woke up to the dark orange sky as well. I've been digging into fires world wide to see trends: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wildfires. Seems like there are more extreme fires in the last 15-20 years. Anyone remember Australia a few months ago? More and more countries are facing warmer climates, which dry up forests and make fires much more likely.

If you like graphs and looking at data like me you might like this: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/global-maps/MOD14A1_M_FIRE/MOD_LSTAD_M

And to PDiddy's point, we all drive gladiators, we're not helping things. I guess we need to make up for it elsewhere... Or push jeep to also offer electric gladiators!

 

[brianinca]

I live near some of the lands referenced, and the bottom line is those dead trees were blocked from being removed because SOMEONE WILL PROFIT FROM DEAD TREES! This has been an issue for decades.

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-111hhrg50438/html/CHRG-111hhrg50438.htm

" In 2006, 175,000 acres burned in the Okanogan National
Forest on the north side of the Methow Valley. Lightning found
fertile ground in beetle-killed trees that could not be
harvested because conservation organizations assured the Forest
Service they would sue to block the sale."
+
"The progress being made in Colorado was one in a way no
other state, including my State of Utah, has to go through to
achieve. The gains being made in Colorado are being made
essentially because environmental groups have stopped
litigating on trees that have been killed by mountain pine
beetles. That same litigation drove 9 of the 10 timber mills in
the state out of business. Litigation has stopped in the face
of growing public concern over the amount of dead trees in the
state.
Of course, groups like Colorado Wild are still suing timber
sales in healthy forests like they did two weeks ago, but I am
confident they will stop once again. The beetle kill affects
the Rio Grande National Forest as well.
This is no different than what is happening on the Dixie
National Forest or the Fish Lake National Forest in my State of
Utah. It is no different than the lawsuits in California,
Wyoming, and Montana or any other state where forests need
management."
+
"Mr. McClintock. I don't recall the exact figures but we had
received testimony in another hearing that the commercial value
of thinning these forests is rather substantial. We own that
timber. We actually sell it to the timber companies. They buy
it from us and pay quite a bit for it. On top of that, I assume
that the beetle-killed timber also has considerable commercial
value and that if we could sell it immediately that it would
produce additional revenues which we could then use to better
manage our forests. Why aren't we?
Mr. Rehberg. Mr. McClintock, maybe I can put it into
perspective. You have used the word immediately and therein
lies the difficulty. If we don't get in and get it before there
is a period of time where it is destroyed and cannot be
commercially viable, then the agency has to make the decision
whether it is worth it or not. I might go back to the year
2001. There were fires in 2000.
Dale Bosworth was the head of the Forest Service. He had to
make a determination after a Court case said that he could in
fact go in, but he had to appeal a part of it. He had to make
the decision to settle the lawsuit rather than carry it forward
because time is of the essence.
Mr. McClintock. And they don't even need to win the
lawsuit. All they need to do is delay it substantially----
Mr. Rehberg. That is correct. He would have probably won
the lawsuit."

Gee, 13 years ago is plenty of time to thin dead trees, too bad the trees were economically valuable.

Notice the irony. On the left "restrictions on logging have allowed forests to accumulate an overload of vegetation" according to scientists (and the NYT) and it's ok when scientists say it - but it's bad if a certain other person suggests it.
That's my beef - good earlier, bad now. I see it over and over.
I was taught by conservationists in Alaska WHY quite often Alaska allows things to burn.
Scientists years ago warned of these fires in CA and if you care to dig, you can find that info.

Even Australia has problems because the Aboriginals BURNED to keep the large uncontrollable fires from happening.
The "only you can prevent forest fires" turned into "we are causing worse fires".

This is not political - it's science.
But some refuse to believe that sometimes you must allow burn to prevent being burned. There are articles out there about keeping the forest floors cleaned out.

 

[TrailHiker]

My take is all the doo gooders who blocked forest management, and the removal of dead trees should be liable for the resulting fire damaged, that could have been mitigated by the removal of the dead trees, which provided the fuel for runaway fires. Once these organizations are sued out of existence, then we can get back to proper management of our forest lands, and reasonable conservation measures where needed.
cheers

 

[j.o.y.ride]

Forests managed with better policies have NOT had the conflagrations we've seen in USFS areas:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michae...-prove-good-management-trumps-climate-change/

The older trees are much more fire resistant, particularly redwoods. The red in the bark is tannin, which is a natural flame retardant. When you go to an old growth redwood forest you will see lots of burn marks, and very little undergrowth. Just pine needles which when they burn won't be enough to light an old redwood up.

You can't really do an eye in the sky review of a fire after the fact. Anyone who follows fires in their area will tell you what matters tremendously is the weather... hot, dry, wind, fog, stagnant, etc. It all goes to help the fire accelerate or slow. Just because one plot of trees burned more than another nextdoor doesn't tell you much, could just have easily been weather change or how they chose to fight the fire.

Logging the mature trees and leaving behind younger ones, along with the logging debris left behind, can negate the benefit of thinned out trees. And logging does not activate some of the pine cones that need the heat, freeing the seeds from the resin to grow.

Logging really should be the last resort way to manage the forests. Logging doesn't address undergrowth bushes and saplings, which act as ladders for the fire to get to the canopy, particularly in forests that are younger shorter trees.

Prescribed burning is a better situation than logging, as it clears undergrowth, leaves mature trees, and activates cones to grow new trees. If the forests were mostly large trees and little undergrowth it would be the best situation.

Another MAJOR contributing factor in these fires is the fire crews are often merely doing evacuations the first few days when they could be fighting fires. There's simply too many people with too many houses in these fire prone areas. And they focus on saving the structures first, while it may lead to another 1,000 acres burned while they focus on 1 house, and that next 1,000 acres could mean it encroaches on other houses they now ignore the main fire to save. Don't get me wrong the firefighters are amazing people doing amazing work, but maybe we let a few houses in the immediate area burn so we can reduce the net size of the fire in the end by focusing on the fire itself, irrespective of a house or not.

 

[brianinca]

Redwoods are a tiny part of the Sierra ecosystem. The Red Fir line is where wildfires go to die, if you want to use fire resistant species.

A simple illustration of the managed vs unmanaged forest is in the Forbes article. SInce my sister's cabin didn't get torched due to being in the managed part of the forest, I have a boots-on-the-ground view of politically driven policies vs investment driven policies. A public utility that manages things better than the Feds? Yes.

Guess what areas Southern California Edison manages as part of the Northern Hydro complex?

No redwoods to be seen. That area has been heavily logged, responsibly, and you can't spin that.

The older trees are much more fire resistant, particularly redwoods. The red in the bark is tannin, which is a natural flame retardant. When you go to an old growth redwood forest you will see lots of burn marks, and very little undergrowth. Just pine needles which when they burn won't be enough to light an old redwood up.

You can't really do an eye in the sky review of a fire after the fact. Anyone who follows fires in their area will tell you what matters tremendously is the weather... hot, dry, wind, fog, stagnant, etc. It all goes to help the fire accelerate or slow. Just because one plot of trees burned more than another nextdoor doesn't tell you much, could just have easily been weather change or how they chose to fight the fire.

Logging the mature trees and leaving behind younger ones, along with the logging debris left behind, can negate the benefit of thinned out trees. And logging does not activate some of the pine cones that need the heat, freeing the seeds from the resin to grow.

Logging really should be the last resort way to manage the forests. Logging doesn't address undergrowth bushes and saplings, which act as ladders for the fire to get to the canopy, particularly in forests that are younger shorter trees.

Prescribed burning is a better situation than logging, as it clears undergrowth, leaves mature trees, and activates cones to grow new trees. If the forests were mostly large trees and little undergrowth it would be the best situation.

Another MAJOR contributing factor in these fires is the fire crews are often merely doing evacuations the first few days when they could be fighting fires. There's simply too many people with too many houses in these fire prone areas. And they focus on saving the structures first, while it may lead to another 1,000 acres burned while they focus on 1 house, and that next 1,000 acres could mean it encroaches on other houses they now ignore the main fire to save. Don't get me wrong the firefighters are amazing people doing amazing work, but maybe we let a few houses in the immediate area burn so we can reduce the net size of the fire in the end by focusing on the fire itself, irrespective of a house or not.

 

[j.o.y.ride]

Redwoods was just an example, because you can readily see their fire scars they live so long.

Shaver Creek has been having prescribed burns for decades, per Forbes. It isn't that they merely logged the place, they routinely burn the undergrowth, which is what I said. 'Selective cutting' is not logging.

And there's so much more to how the Creek fire, and most fires, evolve than merely who manages the land. It devoured dead trees, and when it got to live trees that itself slowed it on all fronts not just Shaver.

The winds and weather shifted, the smoke itself was providing shade and cooling, the humidity rose. It has slowed down everywhere, not just @ Shaver Creek. And Shaver may still burn. Forbes has a right leaning business tilt so not surprised they would find one plot of logged land to use as the example.

I know there's a gut reaction to point to logging as the savior, but there's far more to the issues than that. It's the weather at the time of the fire, it's the directions of the winds shifting. Shaver Creek itself had the fire approach around the lake, providing a buffer of it's own, who knows what would have happened if it was a direct hit with big winds blowing towards it. You can thank the lake just as much, pushing the fire around to be a flank hit vs direct hit.

Even the scientist they interviewed said prescribed burns changes the nature of the fires, did not say logging. While SoCalEd maybe logged, they also did prescribed burns all along.

"But whatever happens to Shaver Lake, says University of California, Berkeley forest scientist Rob York, “There are lots of cases in the scientific literature of prescribed burns having changed fire behavior.” "


Additionally...

Most fires do not grow into monsters, management or not, it usually takes severe weather to whip them up. Case in point, Oregon. Those fires had been growing extremely slowly for 2-3 weeks, like 400 acres or so, and then they had a severe wind storm that made them explode. You can see the wind whipped tips of all the fires. It wasn't that the forests were unlogged or even maintained at all, they had extreme weather. Before that they were very slow moving.

Same thing happened in CZU fire, it smoldered undetected for a week and then we had a huge wind storm and it blew over the hill. But it was not even detected for a week as it smoldered away. Not in a managed forest.

There's already been over 7,700 incidents in CA alone and only a few get to be massive like this. Yellowstone famously did an experiment of letting all fires just go, and none grew more than a few hundred acres. They just died out.

 

[TrailHiker]

I agree on not logging old trees, d in most Redwood logging in NorCal is restricted to new growth three between specific trunk diameters. The remaining old growth tress are not getting logged. Along with this change, the old mills that we’re built to mill the big redwoods are also closed, and in the process of being dismantle. All the Gregoria Pacific Redwood mills on the NorCal, area are closed.
Selective. responsible logging is the new norm here, the days of clear cutting in this area are gone, along with the companies that used to do the clear cutting.
cheers

 

[j.o.y.ride]

I agree on not logging old trees, d in most Redwood logging in NorCal is restricted to new growth three between specific trunk diameters. The remaining old growth tress are not getting logged. Along with this change, the old mills that we’re built to mill the big redwoods are also closed, and in the process of being dismantle. All the Gregoria Pacific Redwood mills on the NorCal, area are closed.
Selective. responsible logging is the new norm here, the days of clear cutting in this area are gone, along with the companies that used to do the clear cutting.
cheers

That's fine so long as they also clear the debris. The select logging run I was in a few weeks back looked like a woodshop floor.

My whole point is there's never any one reason why these things blow up other than extreme fire conditions, heat and wind mostly but also dryness.

There's other reasons are play why Shaver Lake wasnt hit hard other than logging. The lake itself. The houses on the west they saved, an easterly wind that kept the east branch heading away. Changed weather patterns. It's easy to look and say "it's logged so it works" but that's not how fires operate, there's so many things at play.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Redwoods are a tiny part of the Sierra ecosystem. The Red Fir line is where wildfires go to die, if you want to use fire resistant species.

A simple illustration of the managed vs unmanaged forest is in the Forbes article. SInce my sister's cabin didn't get torched due to being in the managed part of the forest, I have a boots-on-the-ground view of politically driven policies vs investment driven policies. A public utility that manages things better than the Feds? Yes.

Guess what areas Southern California Edison manages as part of the Northern Hydro complex?

No redwoods to be seen. That area has been heavily logged, responsibly, and you can't spin that.

Also doesn't help when we got on this kick to prevent ALL fires, never burn, never clean - ALL FIRE BAD. Well, no. Again, the Aborigines of Australia knew this. Even the North American Native Americans knew this.
In Iowa, the DNR went around setting fires...... to prevent badder fires and to do what nature did for centuries before we arrived.

Some people decided the only way to preserve forests was to totally ban any burning of any sort, put out all fires instantly, and prevent any cutting.
The battle cry of all logging bad, all burning bad - ended up in disaster.
Yes, clear-cutting is bad - you get mud slides, you destroy the forest floor, but total fire banning is also bad.
The answer is complex but Americans with our extremely short memories, short attention spans, fast news cycles, we demand instant answers and fixes.

 

[Logan94605]

That ash can be pretty corrosive. Be sure to wash it off ASAP.

Oh really? Thanks for that. The beast wont fit my little 1950s garage so it sits out in the elements. I've been hosing it off but the ash sticks like crazy. I was just going to do the ceramic coating too! Dang looks like I'm washing it in the morning.

 

[Logan94605]

Yeah, don't let it sit overnight where it gets wet from dew/condensation! Pretty sure my hood needs a clay bar cleaning/polish with less than 500 miles on it, from the ash. Also Oakland Mojave!

Thanks for the tip! I'm like 400 miles myself...Didn't even have time to get that first coat of ceramic on it before the heat and ash came down. Actually I bought it on one of the smokiest days right before labor day hoping to get a deal!

What color did you get?

Sponsored