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Thread: 2020 Wildfire Season
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09-23-2020, 04:49 PM #876
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09-23-2020, 05:14 PM #877
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09-23-2020, 05:15 PM #878
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09-23-2020, 06:47 PM #879
Pretty good article about looking at the entire picture.
https://www.adventure-journal.com/20...gic-wildfires/
Addressing just part of this problem will produce incomplete solutions. Rather, I believe a multipronged strategy is what’s needed. One element is improving forest management to make these lands less primed to burn. The other is reducing carbon emissions and reining in global temperatures – the only way to moderate climate conditions that make fires larger and more likely.
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09-23-2020, 07:21 PM #880
2020 Wildfire Season
Thx for posting the adventure journal article.
When I attended an early planning-level site walk for one of the landscape level Tahoe fuels project, the planning folks (eg fire ecologists/burn bosses) were told by the program managers to not include environmental compliance as a constraint in their broad scheming. This would include air quality regulations.
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09-23-2020, 07:25 PM #881
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09-23-2020, 08:13 PM #882
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09-23-2020, 08:30 PM #883
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09-23-2020, 08:33 PM #884
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09-24-2020, 12:23 AM #885
The 2019 projects are done.
I actually posted and then deleted a post last night noting that Cliff Mass has been posting kooky shit related to fires and climate since at least 2017. And I'm pretty sure the guys (like Swain, and others) who actually do the research think he's a bit of a kook these days too.
Meanwhile, the issues addressed here are not just confined to CA (though the paper doesn't explicitly address Oregon).
https://weatherwest.com/archives/7550
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09-24-2020, 01:57 PM #886
Here’s a good article that starts out discussing funding to increase prescribed fire capability, and it also discusses the limitations of Rx fire.
There’s also some really good info and links on how homes come to ignite, well worth reading for those that live near burnable country.
https://wildfiretoday.com/2020/09/24...uce-fire-risk/
Anyone that reads this thread regularly might be interested in a lot of stuff on wildfiretoday.com. Some of it is not universally interesting, but...
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09-24-2020, 03:29 PM #887
Interesting...
In our slice of Paradise the local fire department advises and assists homeowners with defensible perimeters. Not a big concern for me personally as we are surrounded on three sides by 50 yards of sprinkled greenspace.
Seems to me that insurance companies would be the right group to provide incentives to harden a property against fire, not the government.
Question for others in wildfire country - do your building codes require use of non-flammable materials? For instance, our house is stick-built, but with "fire resistant" asphalt shingles, and siding in Hardiplank.
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09-24-2020, 09:43 PM #888
I once participated in a kickoff meeting for a defensible space grant where the local agency’s fire marshal, who was not a participant in preparing the grant application, pointed out that the grant’s annual local match $$ was greater than the annual salary of a new staff who could solely focus on enforcement of the existing defensible space ordinance. With that info, the local agency withdrew their grant application and moved forward with that hiring.
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09-24-2020, 09:46 PM #889
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09-24-2020, 11:22 PM #890“When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something. To do something." Rep. John Lewis
Kindness is a bridge between all people
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09-25-2020, 01:21 AM #891click here
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Is it though? Can't do a control burn because air quality may suffer. But go ahead and set pollution records with a wildfire. I hear the air pollution constraint as a common barrier to control burns. Also - can't do a control burn because it might hurt the endangered animal/pant/whatever. But go ahead and bbq them in a wildfire, flood the creeks with ash and debris, and overheat the stream with no forest. Methinks some of the environmental constraints work against the environmental objectives and that should be evaluated and changed as necessary.
I'd say broad scheming while ignoring environmental compliance is a fair start. See what we could do. Then weigh the environmental compliance benefits against the likely wildfire outcomes when deciding which compliance measures are useful. It could be that control burning produces greater environment hazard than wildfire. If so we're stuck. If not, maybe we get a workable plan.
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09-25-2020, 07:24 AM #892Banned
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That's an interesting take. Not saying I disagree with it, but I feel the exact opposite: the compulsion for protecting your property from fire should come through the building code and planning/zoning regulations in the community.
You want to put a new roof on your house? The building department won't give you a permit unless you upgrade it to a class A assembly. New siding? Same deal, no permit unless it meets fire resistance standards. New windows? Same thing with tempered glass.
Want to build a new house? You need to submit a landscaping and irrigation plan at the time of building permit submittal to be reviewed for defensible space, and you and your architect better familiarize yourselves with unvented roof assemblies.
Are you planning to make substantial improvements (>50% assessed value of the structure) to an existing home? Well open up that checkbook, because if you want to do that, you will need to bring the entire property into compliance with the latest wildfire regulations.
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09-25-2020, 01:20 PM #893
Environmental challenges to controlled burns and thinning aren't brought by environmental groups that know science, they're brought by NIMBYs who don't like the smoke and think the more trees the better. Of course the right likes to use big fires to blame environmentalists.
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09-25-2020, 01:41 PM #894
^ Right on. Fires have always been a social and political magnet.
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09-25-2020, 02:15 PM #895
People Have Caused Most Of NE Washington's Wildfires This Year, Not Lightning
New fire statistics from the Washington Department of Natural Resources show lightning has played a much smaller role in causing fires this year than in the past.
The agency has just released its latest data that covers the January through August period for northeast Washington counties.
DNR spokesman Guy Gifford says 494 fires were reported in that period, slightly above the five-year average of 480.
“One of the things that is different this year is 96 percent of our fires were human caused, with only four percent lightning. Normally 21 percent are lightning caused and 79 percent caused by people," Gifford said.
He says many of those fires were caused by people burning debris. “One thing this spring with the stay-at-home order there were a lot more people outside cleaning up their property, and so we had a lot more people doing debris burning than in prior years.”
There were also 19 arsons reported in the period that ended August 31.
The fires of September have added significantly to the acreage burned in Washington. Around 300,000 acres began burning on Labor Day alone. But up until the end of August, Gifford says 2020 was shaping up to be a relatively light year with only 26,000 acres.
The data from the fires that started during the Labor Day windstorm are not in the database yet. Many of those are believed to have started from downed power lines. 34 fires were attributed to downed power lines in the period of January through August.“When you see something that is not right, not just, not fair, you have a moral obligation to say something. To do something." Rep. John Lewis
Kindness is a bridge between all people
Dunkin’ Donuts Worker Dances With Customer Who Has Autism
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09-25-2020, 03:11 PM #896
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09-25-2020, 03:53 PM #897
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09-25-2020, 06:40 PM #898
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09-25-2020, 06:47 PM #899
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09-25-2020, 07:23 PM #900
Yup there’s only a handful of Rx days available here. Only done in April and May, and maybe eight days with acceptable weather. So USFS only burns 3500 acres per year on the 1.6 million acre Deschutes NF.
IOW it will take approx. 400 years to treat the whole NF. (Cue Bob Marley)
In the meantime, 60% of our local ranger district has burned by wildfire in the last 20 years. In the last two years we’ve had weeks of AQI = 500.
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