I am confused - not judging but confused none the less

I think its hard for someone that has not seen a wind driven fire storm to comprehend it. Its hard for me to believe it and I have seen it. The first time I was on a ridge several miles away looking at a fire run up the side of a steep canyon . Not only was it moving at 40 mph but the heat is so great that the trees several hundred yards ahead of the fire are exploding from the sap boiling inside. Its scary to watch and know that if the wind switches you are only 2 mike or 40 second from being next. In some of these fires you can see that the surrounding trees are not destroyed but the homes are all gone. The fire does not have to get to your home just the embers in the wind. And I believe that many homes could be saved if owners were not forced to evacuate against their will.

As friends son, hes about 30 now, Lives in Oregon and was evacuated from his new home. From the video he shot from several miles away he thought his home was gone. The whole neighborhood was on fire. Again not in the woods really just on the edge of town if not in the city limits. They were allowed to go back in the next day. His house is the only one not burned in the area. everything else for a mile is a complete loss but not his. Fire is weird.
 
I confess I'm no expert in forest management or probably anything else. Still, in my 85th year, I am saddened by the length some will go to to deny global warming. Good luck, I fear you're gonna need it.
 
Fires can move extremely fast with some weather conditions combined with ground topography, but all fires must have fuel to continue burning & that’s where good forest management or the types of things Bob is suggesting to provide others help can make a difference on whether ones home burns or not. There have now been many years of restrictions on reducing the fuel load & a huge increase in the population with people living in areas where the fires are burning homes not just brush & trees. I remember vividly my old Uncle telling me that people were building homes in areas where fires would not be stoppable & it sure has come to pass.

Marty, where I grew up in Mendocino County, California the summers were just as hot & dry as they are now. Timber harvesting was the leading industry with farming & ranching not far behind. Very few homes were located in the mountain areas. The logging was stopped & nothing else done to prevent fuel build up for future fires with houses springing up even in the most remote areas. This wasn’t happening just In Mendocino County as the same was occurring through out the US. I’m drawing retirement pay from fire fighting with schooling & practical experience on this subject. The climate is forever changing & with that we must adapt or go the way of the Anasazi. These fires have much to do with human malfeasance, but very little to actual present day climate change. Climate change ranks very low on my concern list especially in comparison to new more deadly diseases & world war or just the present social upheaval.
 
dotnmarty":2kz2jq55 said:
I confess I'm no expert in forest management or probably anything else. Still, in my 85th year, I am saddened by the length some will go to to deny global warming. Good luck, I fear you're gonna need it.
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I guess most people would call me an expert in forest management, multiple degrees, hundreds of books and papers read and written and classes taught, 32 years as a professor of forestry at UW, and >50 years working in forestry if you count work on my grandfather's WVa farm as a boy. With respect, and I do respect everyone's opinion, I'm not sure why one would think the earlier messages attributing current catastrophic wildfires in the PNW to buildup of fuel due to poor management also deny climate change exists. Climate change is happening, it is driven by human activities, and it certainly is a factor. That is my professional opinion. The deniers are those that attribute the intensity of current fires only to climate change only. I've seen our governor, for instance, only talk about climate change when he talks about fire. The "fire triangle" is 1) oxygen, 2) heat, and 3) fuel. Fuel available for wildfires, as well as people building valuable structures and living among that fuel has increased over the last few decades much more than heat through climate change. The problem is complex, but the buildup of fuel did happen, and that abundant fuel is what allows these fires to burn at the level they do. Until the State of Washington and the Federal Government decide to do something with the fuel that accumulates annually in our forests by removal or controlled burns, unfortunately, nature will continue to reduce it in the destructive way as we are now seeing.
 
I have been taking a three day class to get my motorcycle license here in Nevada, figure at 73 I need a new way to hurt myself. Just a bit of reply to "shovels and buckets will not get the job done". The Chinese built giant engineering works with manual labor. If we reduce the fuel load to 10% of what we see in many urban and sub-urban areas. we will see a benefit in reduction of pyroclastic flows and ember blow over. If you bulldoze a 20-30 fire break before you have a fire, better yet. I did not say that handwork is the only solution but if you study what the team on the ground uses it is 90% hand tools. The fire hoe, USFS round point shovel, the Stihl, and the Pulaski are what all the men and women carry on the front lines. How about lots of hard work and effort before the fires? I do not buy into letting wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters take us down the dark road without a good fight. As to letting others bully me into not clearing "sacred weeds" on my property, they can suck air and kick rocks. I carry, I hunt, I eat what I shoot, and I shoot what threatens me and mine with deadly force. Time for common sense. I cannot change climate change nor the politics of the moment but I can change what is in my reach. So that is my rant but don't take it personally if it rubs you the wrong way, I am a BRAT, a C-BRAT but a brat none the less. Bob Jarrard
 
I remember my fathers story of his time in a fire storm. It was February 1945, he as a 17 year soldier on his way to the Russian front. His orders were to spend one night in Dresden and then carry on to Budapest on the train. That night and the following day the RAF and the USAF dropped one of the heaviest bomb loads of the war. My father was billeted with 10,000 soldiers in the sports hall which was not hit by a single bomb. When the raid was over, his orders were cancelled and he spent the next few few weeks recovering survivors, which there were very few, but mostly dead bodies. Mostly women and children, many reduced to ashes. It was not the intense heat that killed most people, but the lack of oxygen.

Here on Canada we too have experienced many terrible forest fires have burned millions of acres of forest in recent years. Once in a while a town is burned in the fires. This year we have been lucky with plentiful rain, so few fires. A few problems have contributed to these fires. Climate change being one of the major ones. Suppression of fires is also important as fire was seen as bad and all fires were suppressed. In the western forest, fire is an important natural process, so there is an overabundance of fuel. The third problem is that we have built homes, towns and businesses in these forests. It may take many years of huge fires to bring our forests back into balance with nature.

I am currently on the Sunshine Coast trying to kayak in the smoke. Somedays we have to stay indoors due to the heavy smoke. I hope that we will not have to many more years where we have to deal smoke and fire. But I think this is wishful thinking.
 
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