Posted on 06/17/2013 5:54:01 AM PDT by Innovative
Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld of the New York-based American Center for Democracy's Economic Warfare Institute warns that last July "al-Qaeda's English-language online magazine, Inspire, published an article called 'It Is of Your Freedom to Ignite a Firebomb,' which featured instructions on how to build an incendiary bomb to light forests on fire.
"A few months later, Russia's security (FSB) chief, Aleksandr Bortnikov warned, 'al-Qaeda was complicit in recent forest fires in Europe' as part of the terrorists' 'strategy of a thousand cuts.' Bortnikov spoke of 'extremist sites [that] contained detailed instructions of waging the forest jihad and stressed that such a method had proved itself effective as it inflicted both physical and moral damage, needed little training or investment and it was extremely hard for police to find and apprehend the arsonists.'
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
I hope you and yours are well!
PING!
http://www.nationalterroralert.com/updates/2007/10/22/california-fire-battallion-chief-whoever-did-this-knew-what-they-were-doing/
California Fire Battalion Chief - Whoever Did This Knew What They Were Doing
October 22, 2007
Fire officials are now stating that the Orange County Santiago fire was purposely set and there is speculation that other fires may have also been deliberate. See Interactive Map
Fire officials found three separate “points of origin,” all near the intersection of Silverado Canyon Road and Santiago Canyon Road. Two were on one side of the road, and the third was on the other. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing,” said Kris Concepcion, a fire authority battalion chief. Also, the fire traveled 3 miles in its first 20 minutes when it was ignited about 6 p.m. Sunday, he said.
Read Article
We are NOT implying that the California fires are an act of terrorism however; the threat of pyro-terrorist attacks pose a significant risk to the U.S. and the fires in California and in Greece earlier this year should be a wake-up call.
In 2003 an FBI memo alerted law enforcement agencies that an al-Qaeda terrorist being held in detention had talked of masterminding a plot to set a series of devastating forest fires around the western United States.
It was reported that the detainee, who was not identified, said the plan involved three or four people setting wildfires using timed devices in Colorado, Montana, Utah and Wyoming that would detonate in forests and grasslands after the operatives had left the country.
“The detainee believed that significant damage to the U.S. economy would result and once it was realized that the fires were terrorist acts, U.S. citizens would put pressure on the U.S. government to change its policies,” the memo said.
How Can So Many Fires Be By Natural Causes ?
A Local News Radio talk show host in San Diego asked, “how can so many fires, in so many places, in such a short period of time, all be caused by natural causes”.
From USA Today in July of 2003
al-Qaeda Detainee Spoke of Fire Plot
The FBI alerted law enforcement agencies last month that an al-Qaeda terrorist now in detention had talked of masterminding a plot to set a series of devastating forest fires around the western United States.
Rose Davis, a spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, told The Associated Press that officials there took note of the warning but didn’t see a need to act further on it.
The contents of the June 25 memo from the FBI’s Denver office were reported Friday by The Arizona Republic. Davis declined to share a copy of the memo and an FBI spokeswoman in Denver didn’t immediately return a telephone call.
As we have stated before. If you see anything suspicious, report it to law enforcement immediately.
UPDATE: Video - Officials say arson now suspected in Orange County Fire
UPDATE: From Los Angeles Fox News
“I’m sad to report this is an arson fire,” OCFA Chief Chip Prather announced at an early morning briefing. “There were three separate starts: two on one side of the road and one on the other, and obviously we are actively investigating that.”
Links - A number of blogs and websites have sprung up to report on the fires. We will provide links to a couple we’ve found.
National Interagency Fire Center
Live Local News Coverage Channel 10 San Diego
Orange County Register
And Still I Persist
Sign On San Diego Fire Blog
Popularity: 52% [?]
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1875120/posts
Suspicious persons spotted at another fuel depot before Whitley Fuel fire (Must read!) ^
Posted by yorkie
On 08/02/2007 2:47:37 AM EDT ·
KXLY.com ^ | July 31, 2007 | Jeff Humphrey
SPOKANE — Could the person who started the Whitley Fuel fire last week have been looking for another target in the Inland Northwest? The FBI is now on the case after two suspicious individuals were spotted at a second Spokane area fuel depot before the Whitley Fuel depot caught fire. An employee at the Petro Card fuel facility in southeast Spokane spotted some suspicious activity at their property located near the intersection of Sprague and Haven. The man was in the company’s yard when he spotted two men in a vehicle checking out the Petro Card fuel distribution center. The...
Thanks for all this relevant additional info!!!
Excellent spank!
And it is burn proof? Really? Get real.
Not a spank. The idiot is claiming to have a burn proof house.
That one I remember, all too well. That sucker was very close to my home.
Placemark.
I never said the property was burn proof, I said my house wouldn't burn because of the way the property is managed. That you would try to put words into my mouth is strong indication that you know you've got your foot in yours.
The fire would come through here, but it would not be a big deal as long as I take down the bay trees across the gulley and then start the backfire, as I said. The fire perimeter is not perfect, but it gets better every year. As part of that forest rehab project, today I was loading and splitting some of the ten cords of oak. This fall I'll be completing a fuel break I started about fifteen years ago, as well as a firebreak (not the same thing) for a controlled burn planned for next year.
One reason veg management here is different than for you is that the conifers here are mostly redwood, not pine. Place and size the fuel breaks correctly and keep the root-crown sprouts under control and a fire in a thinned redwood stand won't support a crown fire. The same is true of pine, but the parameters are different.
As for the rest of the vegetation, the configuration of these hills is resistant to high winds, although because it's so steep fire updrafts can be impressive. That means keeping the brush in woodlands to more fire retardant species such as Heteromeles arbitufolia, and managing the chaparral in lateral bands across slopes to preclude development of said updraft. At that point, one can then burn the chaparral from the top down as a backfire, fog the column if necessary, and it won't take the house. The fire will die under the canopy at the bottom because the groudcovers are sedges and ferns. I've burned far more serious fuel accumulations on that slope and had no problem.
When I consulted the CDF Vegetation Management Specialist for a controlled burn planned for the next year or two, he came to the property and said that the trick would be to get it to burn, not because there is no vegetation but because it's so lush. I'll have to chop much of the vegetation and let it dry so that it will burn. The reason I'm planning to torch it is to then stay on top of the weed irruption for the next several years, thus cleaning out the weed seed bank. As I convert the canopy vegetation on that slope from Eriodictyon californica to Sambucus mexicana, the fuel load will become easier to deal with.
The big difference here is that so much of this land breeds PURELY native. That means the mycorrhizae work correctly and keep that low vegetation green all summer, because the exotics (particularly grasses) aren't screwing things up with their aggressive chemistry (interestingly, I have some "annual" plants that now survive through the summer, so the botanists may have some thinking to do). Most of my grasses here stay green all summer too, despite weeks of hundred degree heat, a month over 90, and no rain for over five months. I do mow the grasses twice a year to take out the thatch, remove the dry fruiting stems, and keep them short. Harvesting them also helps with summer dormancy.
The reason the grasses stay green over summer here is that there are no annual grasses to dry them out and plenty of small native annual forbs to provide the nitrogen that mitigates drought stress in grasses (the grasses provide phosphorus back to the legumes via the micorrhiza). There simply isn't another grassland in the entire Central Coastal mountains of California that has a full complement of native forbs as this place does. It's that rare, and I'm doing factorial array experiments to make it better. By contrast, the largest remnant untouched native grassland in the Bay Area is less than one acre, and it's infested with weeds between the grass bunches. As a result, science has very little idea of how a native system functions with a full cohort of annuals, especially because allelopathic and hormonal signals from exotics screw up native plant behavior. That's why those professors came here; they've never even seen such a place.
The three acres of thinning I did in the last year is getting pretty bold because of the weed response, but I'm using that biomass to make charcoal as a soil amendment for the grasslands. Looks like I'll have about six yards of finished product from last year. To that I'll add a mix of bone meal and trace minerals to replace what was lost when the place was terraced for an orchard some 90 years ago. The idea is tot get the charcoal to retain the minerals in such a sandy soil. The trick will be getting it incorporated without tilling. So there will be a heavy mulching treatment augmented with nitrogen to get the worms to start the infiltration. I may even add an actinomycete inoculation.
I'll bet you're wondering why I'm talking about soil management. The reason is that it is effectively part of fire management. Got it yet? Proper land management is a serious business. It's intellectually, physically, and financially demanding. This urban myth that pretending it will all be OK if we just leave it alone is to deny that it has been an anthropogenic landscape for the last 10,000 years. To remove that management and expect the system to "know" what to do or that whatever happens is "Natural" is just as destructive and wasteful as letting your house burn down every fifteen years. The land benefits from management an there is a lot of historic damage to undo. Nor can we ever return to how it once was managed, among other reasons because we don't eat what it produces.
I'm pinging two freepers who've been here. They don't post often so it may be a while before they get here to attest to what I've said. In the mean time I have this to say to you, It's quite apparently high time you got real with the land around you.
“The reason the grasses stay green over summer here is that there are no annual grasses to dry them out”
They won’t stay green with a mere 8 inches of rain that we get. What, are you really a moron that thinks we all plant annual grasses? Again, you are a moron if you think these people lost their homes because weren’t like you. We have nothing but natural grasses here. You talk like a pious idiot.
Three in Louisiana very recently.
I can show you grasslands in Utah that do.
Utah isn’t Colorado. The day of the fires it was 4% humidity at 7,000 feet and no rain for months.
If you live in the Western US and have annual grasses, they're probably exotic. You don't have to plant them; they were probably imported on cattle, in feed, or on machinery long before you got there. Exotic annuals are dominant over the natives and terribly destructive to the remaining native vegetation.
Again, you are a moron if you think these people lost their homes because weren’t like you. We have nothing but natural grasses here.
I never used the term, "natural grasses." I used the term, "native grasses." I have no doubt that the grasses in your area are naturalized. I do doubt that they are native, particularly if the people in your neighborhood have horses. I don't think you would know Oryzopsis hymenoides from Bromus tectorum.
You talk like a pious idiot.
Again you change the topic. You asserted that my place would burn so hot as to make my house indefensible. That's crap.
Now you say that my last post was about your place. That's crap too.
My original post suggested that vegetation management using native plants around your homes to help make them defensible is quite possible. If your cohorts insist on unprecedented stand densities typical of the American West today, no wonder it blows up. I refer you to Tom Bonnicksen in support of that argument:
Fires burned often enough in historic forests to clear dead wood and small trees from under the big trees, and they thinned some of the weak and diseased big trees as well. These were sunny forests that explorers described as open enough to gallop a horse through without hitting a tree. Open and patchy forests like this also were immune from monster fires like those that recently scorched Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, and California.
Our forests look different today. They are crowded with trees of all sizes and filled with logs and dead trees. You can barely walk through them, let alone ride a horse.
Oh, and by the way, there's another reason forests managed by Indians were different, they ate a lot of pine nuts, they coppiced the brush for berries, and they tended patches of vegetation for forbs. There I refer you another acquaintance of mine, Dr. M. Kat Anderson, another one of those professors who has driven hundreds of miles to see our place.
I'm done with your stupidity.
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