Posted on 06/11/2006 6:46:57 AM PDT by george76
Wildfire triage helps districts decide which properties to protect...
Increasingly wary of powerful forest fires..mountain fire districts are mapping out which vulnerable homes might be sacrificed to avoid putting firefighters in harm's way and make best use of limited resources...
Since [ the ] disastrous fire season of 2002, fire districts and departments...are rapidly assembling data to assist in hard decisions about what neighborhoods are defensible and which ones may be left to burn.
But should a fast-rising fire force districts with too few resources to make deployment decisions fast, new maps and software give firefighters instant access to the barriers and hazards some homes pose, be it long driveways, propane tanks in the trees or shrubbery surrounding the foundation.
Some of those homes...would end up as fast food for forest fires...
Only about 30 percent of homeowners have put a fire buffer around their homes by clearing trees and brush...
Even openly marking homes as defensible and burnable ahead of time is [ not enough ] of a motivator.
What is, he said, is the wrath of insurance companies.
Slowly, a small number of companies are considering the risk of living in a high-fire hazard zone when setting rates, or even whether to write a policy.
Just recently, Egizi said he received a panicked call from a real estate agent whose sale was falling through because the buyer couldn't get insurance as the house was in what Egizi called "a high-hazard zone."
• Thin trees, brush to create a "defensible space" around home.
• Stack firewood away from house.
• Clear vegetation around fire hydrants, cisterns and propane tanks.
• Make sure driveway is wide enough for firefighting vehicles.
(Excerpt) Read more at rockymountainnews.com ...
You said it.
But the insurance companies are starting to notice the science.
They can't make communities put together fuel reduction plans, but they can refuse to issue insurance polices, which does tend to motivate people.
That will help a bit.
This year, there have been 2.7 million acres burned year to date. The Southwest is just about halfway through their normal fire season, and the northern tier hasn't begun to burn.
The 10 year average year to date is about .89 mil acres.
What to see what it's looking like? Check out this chart:
http://www.fs.fed.us/news/fire/acres.shtml
PS Same with NO. Want to live in a flood plain? Fine. Just don't hold the rest of us that decide that's not wise, to dig you out of your shortsightedness.
Our new neighbor is taking out all native plants and grasses and "landscaping" the entire property to make it look lik a home in downtown Denver. LOL
Part of the beauty of living in the wilderness is learning to live with that which Mother Nature has provided and leaving it natural.
Yesterday she called to tell me she was having EVERGREENS planted around her foundation because it looks "too bare"...while everybody else around here is scambling to REMOVE evergreens within 75 feet of their house:-)
After a big blown down, the pile of firewood can be over 30 feet high and miles wide.
If the politicians and the Sierra Club lawyers would allow the trees to be harvested promptly, then there would be enough economic value in the harvested dead fall to pay for the forest clean up.
Of course, the Sierra Club lawyers make their big fees by blocking common sense actions.
The other benefit would be local, rural jobs for working families harvesting these trees and helping to make the forest healthy.
What has been happening is sad and preventable.
As you know, the insects invade the dead trees, then invade the near by healthy trees, and then we have another massive and expensive forest fire.
The homeowners and the cities are playing the federal taxpayers as fools.
We federal taxpayers thru FEMA rebuild their houses for free.
There is no incentive to pay insurance premiums if FEMA gives you a new house every few years.
Another example is the Katerina hotels. As long as FEMA pays the hotel bills, why leave ?
More than that, there has been a worldwide epidemic of bark beetles, and they aren't sure why, but the greens won't let the forest managers do what they need to do to keep the forests healthy.
For instance, in the Cibola NF, they have close to 1/3 dead trees.
As of yesterday, the 1000 hour dead fuel moisture index was 2%. Kiln dried lumber is 12% moisture. This means that once those sticks get cooking, the fires spread FAST!
And this is made worse cause there is sooooo much deadwood.
And so much money has to go to lawyers, and so much has to be done on EISs (sometimes for things that ought not need them), and so much wasted paperwork that could go into good stuff like managing habitat, and taking care of trails, and other things people fault them for.
Planting Kentucky blue grass is fine in Kentucky.
But these "city" people who live in arid, semi- desert areas waste alot of water trying to keep non native plants, trees, etc. alive.
No common sense.
I agree. If I owned a house in such a place I would provide exterior sprinklers.
I agree. If I owned a house in such a place I would provide exterior sprinklers.
The Sierra Club lawyers are very skilled.
They file lawsuits and require EIS's until the dead trees lose their economic value.
The only local jobs will then be as a fire fighter when the forest explodes...at taxpayer expense.
There are many interface areas that are not prepared. Driving Interstate highways shows that many communities and small cities are major risk.
Not if, but when.
We federal taxpayers thru FEMA rebuild their houses for free.
There is no incentive to pay insurance premiums if FEMA gives you a new house every few years.
Another example is the Katerina hotels. As long as FEMA pays the hotel bills, why leave ?
Yeah, I know. The irony is that if an isolated case of only one or a few disastrous results, FEMA rarely does anything. Why is it that hundreds or thousands of homes that get wiped out by a hurricane get paid for but those that say get hit as only one of a few in some other nature event never get squat.
Not that I'm in favor of this nonsense, but if it's taxpayer funded, shouldn't it apply to all Americans regardless of whether or not they're "one-sy" situations or big disasters.
There has to be a declaration of a disaster area first...They aren't set up to do "onesies." If you want to expand FEMA into an agency with more full time employees (most of them work full time for other agencies, and only do FEMA work when there is a big disaster, (like most of the management for Wildland Fire don't do that all year long either - mostly work for the FS or the BLM or one of the other land management agencies)) then you might be able to get small cases covered. But it will cost.
Many small towns next to rivers that often flood have created city parks with ball fields and picnic areas in the flood planes.
The old mills that were built in the 1800's for water power were bought out and torn down. The homes in these flood planes were bought ( once ), torn down, and the families moved to higher ground.
I remember even whole towns were moved to higher ground.
Building and/or rebuilding with federal tax money below sea level or in a flood plane makes no common sense.
We should only bail them out once...not after every storm.
Wouldn't be surprised if we end up with an assigned risk pool like like the way flood insurance is run for wildland fire.
Catastrophic flooding can hit almost anywhere based on too much rain coming down too fast, but building in an area that is in the 100 year flood plain starts to ask for trouble...and if you are even lower down, you will have trouble.
Some problems happen because cities allow development in at risk areas. I've seen places you KNOW will get landslides, or be at risk for fire, or flood, and they still let developers develop.
Those people (the government people who approve the development) ought to be personally liable when the disaster happens.
I've been in 3 100 year floods and two freak heavy rain floods. Personally haven't been flooded out in any of them, but came close once.
I've seen people building in areas they think are safe because there are damns upstream, but my gut instinct said "this is dangerous!".
But some years, to keep the dams from damage, they have to slip water out of the dam that will make the river be above flood stage. They had to do that in Boise this year.
If you want to live in those areas, you really need to be required to self-insure.
Yes, but perhaps I didn't articulate it well enough. Just b/c something's "declared a disaster" only makes it a disaster politically. I can see FEMA assisting with municipal rebuilding, etc. But they pay homeowners too. A tornado wiping out a single house is no federal or state "disaster," but what's the difference practically between a homeowner losing his home to that or one that loses his in a hurricane among many others? There is none. Both people lost a home due to a natural disaster. Just labeling one something doesn't matter practically speaking.
We should only bail them out once...not after every storm.
I wouldn't even bail them out once if they built knowing that is was a flood plain. NO is many feet below sea level. Of course it's going to flood at some point. Could have been later rather than sooner, but we knew that it was going to happen.
If I were one of those people, I'd move from NO and never go back.
I know what you mean, but this has to do with economies of scale and cost, rather than fairness.
It would require even larger bureaucracy.
I'm not at all saying it should even be done though. Just challenging the wisdom/fairness as you say. I think everyone should take out their own insurance. FEMA is in essence just another entitlement program and one that perhaps overlays private insurance efforts. It also doesn't do much to discourage irresponsibility in that way.
On a related side note, I wonder when the federal government will collapse economically under its own weight. (rhetorical)
Real problem with the Federal government is not the total number of employees. It's the fact that there are too many agencies that do overlapping work, and many, if not all of them are short staffed right now to keep costs down.
But what we need is to have agencies merged. All the agencies that manage land functions and related, for instance, need to be under one roof. There is an awful lot of duplication of effort, and a huge amount of friction between related agencies (sort of like the Army vs. Airforce vs. Navy type thing).
There are huge diseconomies of scale because of this. Everybody's running around with staffs that are downsized past the point of efficency, and it still costs too much money. And there's still too much paperwork.
And there aren't even that many people left with the old civil service retirement. In less than 5 years, they will probably all be gone.
It's terribly klugy because of this.
FEMA is a great example of yet another extra level. There are agencies that have developed excellent disaster/emergency techniques (like the agencies that handle wildland fire) that get the jobs done with efficiency, minimal costs, lots of prepositioning and carefully designed contracts. People from all over the world come to study how they do it so well and so efficiently with minimal waste, while involving both private sector and state, local and federal authorities.
So instead of building on that infrastructure, FEMA is yet another agency recreating the wheel poorly, wasting lots and lots of money with bad last minute contracting and poor oversight.
If you want more efficient government, it means looking at things from the cabinet level down, and eliminating a lot of duplication, but barring some major catastrophe that forces the government to really reorganize, and not just cut costs, it's not going to happen.
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