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Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot | WYDave - 8/10/2018 07:28
California is getting into the end-game for how they've managed their forests and rangelands, as well as their real estate development practices.
The state ignored years and years of advice from people who foresaw these issues in wildland fire management - and here we are. The forests are stacked with fuel, there's huge swathes of beetle-killed trees in forests that should have been removed years and years ago, rural houses are often set in indefensible positions, and in cities they have little to no setback from each other, so fires spread rapidly when the fire comes into the urbanized areas.
The firefighting costs when you get those heavy slurry bombers involved run into the 10's of thousands per hour - and their operations are not low-risk. The heavies are what you see on TV news, because they make for impressive footage on the evening news, but you often don't see the small tactical air drop aircraft - the single-rotor helo's and the SEATs (Single Engine Air Tanker) - which all farmers here would recognize immediately as Air Tractor crop-dusters. SEATs and their pilots can really get in crazy close when the FF's are dealing with smaller fires and things are moving quickly.
Right now, if we had a new fire here in Wyoming, it might be 10+ days before we could get resources - many of our resources from Wyoming are tied up in California.
Well put. Now What isn't entirely correct, there's a good amount of State Forests, mostly in the north state.
It doesn't matter though, a lot of what we are seeing is a result of any of the above's management, or lack thereof, like you said. There's a large chunk of completely uninhabited land that starts just a mile east of me, and it's about 60 miles to the next paved road. I can drive through there and it scares the hell out of me, with basically no logging, limited grazing, and no prescribed burnes it has all grown up in brush, thickets of small worthless pines, and gobs of juniper trees. Just a tinderbox.
Log it, graze it, or watch it burn...
As far as the more urban areas go, until people learn the meaning of the term "defensible space" houses are going to burn. Some will burn anyway if there is enough fuel located in the adjacent areas. | |
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California fires
