Kincade Fire Sonoma County California--Link is Map

sonomacounty.maps ^ | 10-27-19 | Sonoma County

[The Westerner]

Spent part of my youth there. Cannot remember such fires even though the dead, dry grasses were all over Napa and Sonoma during Indian summers. But that was before hippies took over gov. BTW, how are people to evacuate and abandon livestock, chickens, etc.?

[kingu]

100ft defensible space works in the worst conditions. Fell free to see what Paradise, CA looks like today. Almost every house that still is standing is because it was either up for sale (requires actually complying with CalFire requirements for brush clearance) or was owned by a homeowner who actually followed the recommended clearance.

I doubt you could possibly find a better test; it was first a brush fire, then the largest structure fire in the state’s history, then a crown fire that swept the town. 100ft defensible space works when cities and counties and courts actually allow it.

[gnarledmaw]

"planed"

There are those that believe that that spelling is more correct than what you likely intended.

[pbear8]

Our families have lived here since 1875 and 1900, we have never abandoned God. Thank you for your kindness.

[Syncro]

Local news just reported the Kincade fire doubled in size today. It’s not the fifth day.

A break in the wind tomorrow will help firefighters, but wind will be back Wed.

[Syncro]

Sorry if my spilling triggered you.

Some also believe using two words in a row is a bad grandmer.

[Syncro]

For over a decade fires have been worse than they needed to be because the envirowhackos think dead wood and brush should not be removed cause it’s not “natural” to do so.

So more damage is done and more lives are lost because of their worship of Gaia.

[Syncro]

It is NOW the 5th day; not NOT the fifth day. Thypo in that post.

[Syncro]

Thanks for calling out the broadbrusher.

California has millions of people that do not, will not, and have not abandoned God.

[Syncro]

how are people to evacuate and abandon livestock, chickens, etc.?***

Fairground are taking large animals, although the fairgrounds in Petaluma filled up pretty quick.

Chickens maybe too. They could go in the stalls with horses and cows.

[Syncro]

Correction

Petaluma will only take animals in trailers.

Santa Rosa fairgrounds has many stalls, I think they are taking large animal.

[Elsie]

California has millions of people that do not, will not, and have not abandoned God.

And in Sodom there was Lot; a righteous man*, the bible says.

Yet; all he had got burnt up; too; and after the fire everything just went downhill for him.

* 2 Peter 2:7

[Syncro]

Yeah CA could go either way, but eventually all will be lost and we will not be here.

[Wuli]

I know the area. Spent my summer and early fall after High School working for the California Division of Forestry, and was assigned to the forestry fire station in Cloverdale; which is north of Healdsburg (which at that time was a small inexpensive quaint little town). I stayed with a sister & brother-in-law in Healdsburg on days I was not on duty at the fire station, and hitched back and forth between them.

Wotked a number of fires that fire season, east, north and south of Cloverdal all the way from Ukiah way up in the north to south east of Santa Rosa. I remember it as a great experince and at that time I was maybe too young to think about the dangers too much. Learned a lot from it.

[Yollopoliuhqui]

Area residents are hoping that fire crews can knock down the fire enough to give them a control handle in time for an uptick in the wind speeds slated for tomorrow night. The local fairgrounds look like a D-Day staging area. This morning I watched fire truck refueling operations, a line of 100 trucks of different types and sizes. Must have been a dozen large tractor trailer rigs with huge Cat bulldozers waiting to deploy and cut fire breaks and roads.

I spoke with a two woman water tanker crew from Oregon about their tactics and com nets. They had been briefed earlier this morning on their target zone and were waiting deployment orders. The Fairground marshaling yards contained about 10 acres of fire trucks, tankers, tent cities, a corner made up of several dozen 10 man yurts and even vendor tents selling toiletries, hats, shirts, etc. Trucks were from departments all over the state, Oregon, Idaho and Nevada. They will have their work cut out for them tomorrow night.

The strategy at this point is to keep the fire away from populated areas. The mountains to the east are extremely rugged and few defensive positions can be taken. Strategy 1 will be to keep the fire east of Healdsburg and put a defensive line across Shiloh Ridge. Strategy 2 will be to create a defensive line on the flanks of Mt. St. Helena to keep the fire from entering Napa Valley and threatening the town of Calistoga at the north end of Napa Valley.

The fire front is about 8 miles north of Santa Rosa and its first victims if it breaks through the lines to the south will be the same area ravaged by the Tubbs Fire two years ago. Maximum effort will be directed to prevent this.

The current calm weather conditions are a two edged sword. They allow the building of fire breaks but also curtail air operations as much of the smoke is hovering over the area and filling the valleys.

[pbear8]

The fire front is about 8 miles north of Santa Rosa and its first victims if it breaks through the lines to the south will be the same area ravaged by the Tubbs Fire two years ago.

We have a friend who just rebuilt and moved in in August, she and her husband are now evacuated.

[gnarledmaw]

I wasn’t really commenting on spilling so much as referring to a subject related to your post and trying to nudge the conversation that way but no one else took the bait. Youll hear about it eventually so nevermind.

[Syncro]

The turtle is on the post—Quidam

[rxsid]

"In Winsor concern fire may jump Hwy 101 into highly weeded/bursh area which has not burned for 40 years.

That’s what the repoter said.

Actually weeds and brush needs to be cleaed out for fire season."

That's correct. This isn't about CA's dry summer weather. That's just the way CA is, at least during the last several hundred years based on tree ring studies among others.

This is primarily about forest management...or the lack thereof.

California's Devastating Fires Are Man-Caused -- But Not In The Way They Tell Us
Chuck DeVore Texas Public Policy Foundation VP and former California legislator | Jul 30, 2018, 06:11pm

…

As timber harvesting permit fees went up and environmental challenges multiplied, the people who earned a living felling and planting trees looked for other lines of work. The combustible fuel load in the forest predictably soared. No longer were forest management professionals clearing brush and thinning trees.

But, fire suppression efforts continued. The result was accurately forecast by my forest management industry hosts in Siskiyou County in 2005: larger, more devastating fires—fires so hot that they sterilized the soil, making regrowth difficult and altering the landscape.

…

In 2001, George E. Gruell, a wildlife biologist with five decades of experience in California and other Western states, authored the book, “Fire in Sierra Nevada Forests: A Photographic Interpretation of Ecological Change Since 1849.” Gruell’s remarkable effort compared hundreds of landscape photographs from the dawn of photography with photos taken from the same location 100 years later or more. The difference was striking. In the 1850s and 1860s, the typical Sierra landscape was of open fields of grass punctuated by isolated pine stands and a few scattered oak trees. The first branches on the pine trees started about 20 feet up—lower branches having been burned off by low-intensity grassfires. California’s Native American population had for years shaped this landscape with fire to encourage the grasslands and boost the game animal population.

...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/07/30/californias-devastating-fires-are-man-caused-but-not-in-the-way-they-tell-us/#12e10f0370af

 

The Lights Are Out in California, And That Was the Plan All Along
By Chuck DeVore | October 9, 2019

...

They ignore the fact that annual precipitation totals over the past 100 years show no statistically meaningful trend.

…

But California, unlike the rest of the nation, receives most of its moisture in the winter and the months bracketing it, while getting precious little rainfall during the summer. Further, California is drought-prone, and has been for as long as scientists can determine from tree rings and sediment records.

The bottom line is that California has always had a high threat from wildfires and always will. The issue is how will that threat be managed, accommodated, or avoided?

…

To better understand how we came to today’s blackout, it is useful to look to the past. When the gold rush led to modern California, early photographers chronicled the landscape. In George E. Gruell’s 2001 book, “Fire in Sierra Nevada Forests: A Photographic Interpretation of Ecological Change Since 1849”

…

For decades, up until the 1970s, California would harvest and replant about as much wood as could be grown through an abundance of sunshine, snow, and rain. But in the 1990s, concern over logging’s effect on the spotted owl (largely misplaced, as time would tell) led to a massive slowdown in the timber harvest, especially on the federal lands that make up about 60 percent of California’s forests. With a decline in the harvest came a decline in the allied efforts to clear brush, build and maintain access roads and firebreaks. This led inexorably to a decades’ long build-up in the fuel load. Federal funds set aside for increasingly unpopular forest management efforts were instead shifted to fire-suppression expenses.

All of this was clearly foreseen by the Western Governors’ Association 13 years ago when it published a Biomass Task Force Report that accurately predicted: “over time the fire-prone forests that were not thinned, burn in uncharacteristically destructive wildfires… …In the long term, leaving forests overgrown and prone to unnaturally destructive wildfires means there will be significantly less biomass on the ground, and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/09/the-lights-are-out-in-california-and-that-was-the-plan-all-along/

[Paul R.]

Excellent post! (My Dad had post-graduate degrees in Forest Ecology & Forest Management, and about 60 years practical experience.)