Posted on 11/13/2018 1:41:17 AM PST by Morgana
A large part is the desire of homeowners to have pretty trees and shrubbery around their lovely homes, and it does not matter if they are Reps or Dems, they all do it. A lot of this damage was suburban burns and had nothing to do with federal lands and forests.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/13/us/paradise-california-before-after-photos-trnd/index.html
before and after photos...
“...many figured they’d be just fine and authorities were overstating the danger, or they’d be safe again.”
And this same thinking also killed people in New Orleans, Houston, Florida, North and South Carolina, and Puerto Rico. There are just too many SERIOUS DISASTER POTENTIAL DENIERS in this world. Maybe there really is some climate change going on. At age 80, it sure looks that way to me. I also don’t expect it to improve.
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I don’t think spotted owls were an issue around Paradise or Malibu. The problem is lack of water, too warm and too little snow in the mountains,and love of trees and shrubs for landscaping. I doubt that the logging industry was going to have much work in those areas.
“Sadly, I see people rebuilding the same way.” One thing people should consider doing is building with straw bales. Below is an article written in 2007 in response to similar California fires, with many interesting and useful comments.
No building with straw bales might seem crazy, but have you ever tried to burn a big telephone book or a stack of newspapers. They will burn around the edges, but the lack of oxygen in the center causes the fire to self extinguish after a while. There are many articles at Google on this type of construction. Once the bales are stacked and pinned, they should be covered with stucco or a layer of cement. The interior could also be stuccoed or covered with fire code drywall. The roofs should be tile or ceramic, or metal could be used if the roof has a layer of strawbale included between wide rafters as I have seen built. Under the eaves should be made with nonflamable material to prevent fire entry. Entry ways and window areas are usually framed with plywood or OSB, but a layer of tile board on top would probably reduce vulnerability to fire. Windows should be double layer as one comment mentioned interior curtains set on fire from the heat of grass burning nearby. Also metal framed, not wood. Obviously all the landscaping things you mention would need to be modified—stone patios not decks, gravel mulch instead of woodchip, minimal planting near the house. I have seen fences (landscaping walls and benches) built with straw bales that are then stuccoed. I even saw on such bench that had survived a major fire intact with disaster all around. Hope you can pass this information along to others as they consider rebuilding. The link is really useful.
Building with brick or cinderblocs in some of these areas subjects them to earthquake danger. Straw bale buildings are quite resistant to EQ problems. I also saw a strawbale home a year after Katrina that had survived quite nicely while neighboring buildings still had blue roofs.
Check out this video, and see my more detailed comment just a few comments above on how to rebuild more safely.
No doubt at all that CalFire is incompetent. One of their biggest mistakes is squandering resources fighting minor fires in the early season when it safe to let them burn. That’s exactly when they should be setting prescribed fires in areas with overgrown brush. The 2016 created lots of ladder fuels which were going to inevnitably burn. They should have mostly been burned in 2016 and 2017.
No, that was not a problem. The problem was CARB not alowihng burns of the brush in the forest. CalFire failed to burn the brush. The brush (from the 2016 El Nino) turned into ladder fuel and was a disaster waiting to happen. Look at the videos and pictures around Paradise. Many trees are still standing, some burned, some just singed, some spared. The biggest threat to those trees was the stick built houses next to them. The biggest threat to the houses was the ember storm from the wildfire raging outside of town.
Put more simply, any sort of fire inside town could have been easily put out. The firefighters could only watch it burn last week because putting out any single fire would have been futile.
Logging is mostly useless too, The largest and deadliest fires in US history followed the logging in the midwest. The large trees are immune to fire unless the low intensity fires are suppressed (CalFire’s biggest mistake). But with a large amount of unburned brush, even the largest trees can burn.
Generally speaking, you are correct about a bale burning. I demonstrated to an employee that wet hay burns. I soaked a bale with water and let it sit 2 days. After two days, I cut it open and you could not keep a hand in it due to the heat generated (This is how most barn/hay fires occur, wet hay decomposing.). I also lit one bale and another I put some fuel on and lit. Neither would sustain flame for long.
The night of the Nuns Fire, I had a stack of hay. when embers lit on it and it began burning, in single digit humidity, with driving winds, with air super heated by the surrounding fires and the weather, not only did that pile sustain fire, it sustained flame, and nothing could put it out. They burned for more than a day. A week later they rekindled what was left.
People think metal is the ticket. The metal structures here became super heated enough that the framing under the metal caught. Even framing covered with fire resistant hardi-board and then metal burned. Everything in the metal pump house burned. Everything in my “fireproof” all metal shipping container burned. We found very little, half notebook size sheets of metal and then only a few of those, from the metal roof of the barn. Unless you are really studying this stuff or have seen these fires burn in person, it is hard to comprehend what is taken by one of these fires.
Do not kid yourself that a bale building will resist fire. I have seen these fires time and again and given the right circumstance they will burn too and burn well.
It might have been worse if this brave nurse and his fellow workers hadn’t worked to save patients at the doomed hospital.
“Toyota offers to give Camp Fire hero nurse a new truck!”
https://www.foxnews.com/auto/toyota-offers-to-give-camp-fire-hero-nurse-a-new-truck
I think you all have a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to logging. Undergrowth is removed and if possible chipped for use in co-gen plants which provides energy to run the sawmill and many times supplement the energy use of neighboring towns.
Unless the section of forest diseased, only some trees are harvested, leaving most of the big trees behind. This clears the undergrowth which allows the bigger trees more access to nutrients.
While I may give you the fact that Malibu did not suffer from the spotted owl, to think Paradise and neighboring areas did not is simply untrue. Many sawmills near Paradise have been shut down during my lifetime.
And to think that logging is not fundemental in forest stewardship...well again just a fundamental lack of understanding. Wood is a valuable resource, and it will come out of an overgrown forest, either on a bed of a logging truck or through fire.
https://drudgereport.com/?NF=1
Forgot to add that we all know that the drought here in CA a few years back really helped the bettles tear up alot of our trees. These dead trees were obviously a fire hazard so work began to remove them.
Of course, due to CA laws and the destruction of our logging industry, there were not enough sawmills left to handle them all. Many sawmills, who were hanging by an thread and were downsized to survive, were now having to turn away logs. Many were sent to be chipped or cut into firewood. Perfectly useable board foot down the drain due to years of CA regulations purposely designed to kill the logging/lumber industry.
I have always though the best place to ask about these forest fires is forestry guys. Go find some, talk with them, and you may just find that forest stewardship relies fairly heavy on the logging/lumber industry.
I will not make jokes about how many ballots were found completely unsinged. I will not. I will not.
When the fire first started, it was devouring 80 football fields a minute.
Unlike a wildfire, you have days of warning that a hurricane is coming.
Of course, due to CA laws and the destruction of our logging industry, there were not enough sawmills left to handle them all. Many sawmills, who were hanging by an thread and were downsized to survive, were now having to turn away logs. Many were sent to be chipped or cut into firewood. Perfectly useable board foot down the drain due to years of CA regulations purposely designed to kill the logging/lumber industry.
I have always though the best place to ask about these forest fires is forestry guys. Go find some, talk with them, and you may just find that forest stewardship relies fairly heavy on the logging/lumber industry.
Thank you, walkingdead.
Emphasis mine.
You are absolutely correct. How do I know? My late Dad's degrees were in Forest Management, Forest Ecology, and Forest Genetics. Plus he accumulated over 60 years of practical field work, extension work and consulting.
One other thing. Radiative heat will go right through a double glass window. Not to mention that glass melts in or near any intense fire.
“I have always though the best place to ask about these forest fires is forestry guys. Go find some, talk with them, and you may just find that forest stewardship relies fairly heavy on the logging/lumber industry.”
The forest products industry works to protect itself by making sure that fire won’t destroy the raw product.
The big growers like Weyerhauser and IP have a staff of foresters who work to protect their investment.
I am a timber grower and have worked with a forester for about 30 years to grow and protect our future raw materials that will be turned into 2X4’s in the futures.
You’re welcome. Men like your dad understood good forest management, many others do not. I grew up in the lumber/logging areas of northern California and have many friends who went into forestry. Their hands are now tied, and for a few decades now have been trying to warn everyone of the crisis we now find ourselves in.
Forests are no longer allowed to be thinned as needed, roads which used to allow access for firefighters are overgrown and impassible, and here we are with article after article wondering why these forest fires are so bad. What in the world do they think were controlling them in the past?
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