I follow this guy for reports on the California wildfires. He’s an airline pilot by trade but lives near the area. He gives a great description how the winds pushed the fires so quickly.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4b0j-V_bE_Q

With respect to his “Tweets” on the California wildfires, the President proves once again, that while he may do a lot of things very well—he still is an “ass clown.”

^^^^^^^^^

The thing is that Trump is telling the truth.

The federal govt. gives multi millions/billions of money to CA to manage federal forest areas, but they don't perform the tasks because of leftist regulations prohibiting such (controlled burns, harvesting dead trees, cattle grazing, etc). But Jerry Brown takes the money anyways, YOUR TAX DOLLARS, and spends it elsewhere.

I have no problem with Trump's tweets.

quote:

Originally posted by oddball:
^^^^^^^^^

The thing is that Trump is telling the truth.

The federal govt. gives multi millions/billions of money to CA to manage federal forest areas, but they don't perform the tasks because of leftist regulations prohibiting such (controlled burns, harvesting dead trees, cattle grazing, etc). But Jerry Brown takes the money anyways, YOUR TAX DOLLARS, and spends it elsewhere.

I have no problem with Trump's tweets.

Yep, he may not be PC, but he tells the truth.
California needs to manage the forest areas.
When nature is left to manage itself, it does just that.

I just learned a neighbor and friend of ours lost his Aunt in the Paradise fire and his Uncle has severe burns and had to be hospitalized, on top of losing everything they own and their home. Please pray for these folks and the firefighters and a change of weather soon.

I have a number of family friends, classmates from high school and college who live in Paradise and I have no idea if they are dead or alive but I'm sure they lost everything.

There's nothing left of the town. A whole town and all the homes, businesses and infrastructure are gone.

I also have friends that live in Paradise. Their house was on fire as they evacuated. The family is safe, but they lost everything.

quote:

Originally posted by oddball:
^^^^^^^^^

The thing is that Trump is telling the truth.

The federal govt. gives multi millions/billions of money to CA to manage federal forest areas, but they don't perform the tasks because of leftist regulations prohibiting such (controlled burns, harvesting dead trees, cattle grazing, etc). But Jerry Brown takes the money anyways, YOUR TAX DOLLARS, and spends it elsewhere.

Actually, that's not true at all.

Not remotely so.

I'm no fan of the state of California, but when it comes to forestry and fire, California is larger, more active, and more aggressive than any other part of the country. Moreover, California spends its money on the CDF/CALFIRE, but there is a very large, very active USFS presence there, along with BIA, BLM, etc. I've worked very closely with all of them for nearly three decades.

I've also been a part of a number of prescribed and controlled burns, and I have ample video of the sawmills and forestry I flew over while working fires, landing for retardant at places like Chester, as recently as this last year.

Where forest management is impeded, you can thank groups like the Sierra club, which nearly got a complete injunction on retardant use, and has prevented management in some places; this is not the USFS, Calfire, or any other management organization failing to do what they should. It's limitations placed by the legal wranglings of special interest groups. I had fires I literally couldn't drop on last year, not because we weren't available, but because retardant was prohibited on that particular area and there wasn't time to flush tanks and go.

There is a great deal of prescribed fire out there, mostly done during the winter months.

No government agency has the capacity to groom forests, nor the funding. That role is best served by forestry companies that profit from maintaining the forest, thinning, planting, etc. The problem a lot of operations have encountered, however, is the earth-first crowd that spikes trees and gets legal injunctions to shut down logging and forestry.

I had a fire contract many years ago on the Kiabab national forest, which was maintained by Kiabab Industries, a logging operation. It was well maintained. The operation was shut down, the mill shuttered, and razed, thanks to protection of the Mexican Spotted Owl...which was shown to not be present and have no habitat on the Kiabab, only after the mill was shut. After the mill was shuttered, fire activity began to increase, and there was little maintenance that could be done to the scale that the logging industry was able to handle.

It's one thing to try to pay the government to do it, another to get a company in that pays for itself and hauls off what it cuts, and sells the material, and plants.

This is not a failing on the part of the agencies, but you can look squarely at the Sierra Club, et al, for the problems that do occur with maintenance or restrictions. It's not the fault of the USFS, BLM, Calfire or others. Not in the least.

quote:

Originally posted by ElToro:
I just learned a neighbor and friend of ours lost his Aunt in the Paradise fire and his Uncle has severe burns and had to be hospitalized, on top of losing everything they own and their home. Please pray for these folks and the firefighters and a change of weather soon.

Very sorry to hear. It's always tragic.

I was at Yarnell Hill a few years ago, and one morning surrounded in a hotel by angry home owners, forced to evacuate. I caught the brunt of it, and I understood their anger...but those folks need to realize that those on the line are risking life to help, and on that particular fire we lost 19 firefighters.

We're up there putting our own lives on the line; placing the blame on us is more than a little misplaced.

For those who are losing homes, lives, and worse, stuck in between with burns and suffering, my heart most definitely goes out.

quote:

Originally posted by kimber1911:

quote:

Originally posted by oddball:
^^^^^^^^^

The thing is that Trump is telling the truth.

The federal govt. gives multi millions/billions of money to CA to manage federal forest areas, but they don't perform the tasks because of leftist regulations prohibiting such (controlled burns, harvesting dead trees, cattle grazing, etc). But Jerry Brown takes the money anyways, YOUR TAX DOLLARS, and spends it elsewhere.

I have no problem with Trump's tweets.

Yep, he may not be PC, but he tells the truth.
California needs to manage the forest areas.
When nature is left to manage itself, it does just that.

Nope. It was a dumb comment, didn't help. Overly simplistic comment to a more complex issue.

Many of these fires are grass/vegetation fires, there's no forests in SoCal. These fires have been as destructive as the ones in Napa/Sonoma, the massive Mendocino Complex fire and the crazy Carr fire where all of those were not in heavy forested areas. The wind is the main constant to all of these fires, human negligence is another major culprit, structures pushing deeper into rural areas don't help and of course those enviros whom what to tell the firefighters what to use, how to use their gear and where they can/can't go.

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:
Many of these fires are grass/vegetation fires, there's no forests in SoCal.

San Bernardino National Forest.
Angeles National Forest.
Cleveland National Forest
Los Padres National Forest
Sequoia National Forest
Inyo National Forest

Other than those?

Forest fires are vegetation fires.

It’s been a while but it’s important to remember that this is not a new phenomenon. Do some reading on the peshtigo fire, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo_Fire

when the conditions are right as they have been in CA fire can move wherever and whenever it wants to and destroy everything in its path while doing so. Prayers for the people affected and my brothers working the lines. The devastation looks awful.

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:
Many of these fires are grass/vegetation fires, there's no forests in SoCal.

San Bernardino National Forest.
Angeles National Forest.
Cleveland National Forest
Los Padres National Forest
Sequoia National Forest
Inyo National Forest

Other than those?

Forest fires are vegetation fires.

Largely naming conventions; the impression many have is these 'forests' are thick, continuous stands of massive pines and evergreens, with an over abundance of underbrush. Thick grass and low-laying vegetation is what's fueling many of these fires, the area around the Feather River where the Camp fire is light vegetation with steep landscape, same as what's fueling the Woolsey fire.

Forest aren't naming conventions. They're forests.

There are many types of forests, and there are many types of fuels.

Nearly all fires, including those in coniferous forests, employ most types of fuels.

Fuels are classified and rated by "hours," meaning the number of hours required to change the fuel moisture; large timber may be a thousand hour fuel, while light grasses and twigs are one hour fuels. These change burn characteristics rapidly, and dry faster in the face of an advancing fire, but also respond better to changes in relative humidity, and vary their fire behavior accordingly.

Paradise is set into the forest with considerable lodgepole and ponderosa pine, as well as numerous types of ladder fuels; all are present. Steep terrain not only makes cutting fire line difficult (and thus control and containment difficult), but also increases wind speeds locally due to the venturi effect, and can create some severe and greater turbulence for aircraft attempting to work the fire.

I've spent a lot of time, and a lot of years fighting fire in each of these locations, and have frequentlyk seen extreme fire behavior, which is what's being seen right now. The different presently is the severity of the fires, which are wind-driven, with nine of the ten worst fires in California (Region 5) state history now having occurred in the last two years.

What we're seeing of late is unprecedented.

quote:

So, then, what has changed to produce these suburban firestorms?

nothing has changed ,
as there has been vegetation has grown year after year, decade after decade.

weather is weather.

Now when you get three million people building homes in the middle of a tinder pile,

stuff gets complicated.

when we lived in the westlake /T.O. area,
the fire depts went house to house, ranch to ranch and told the occupants what to do to save their homes when the fires went through during the next dry season.

90 days later they would stop by to see what the owners had done to prevent their homes from burning down.

fewer than half of the owners did anything at all .

Sns3guppy, your relating of your experience and expertise is greatly appreciated by this 3rd-generation Californian.

stand by for the mud slides , they will be coming up next.

just like the last 30 years of those as well.

its all relative.

I pay the price of living in the Midwest by having to shovel snow and mow the yard.

they pay the price by having to build a new home on a regular basis

It’s been difficult for me to find information about the veg types that the two major complexes, Camp Fire in Butte County and Woolsey in Ventura County are burning in. I suspect that the Woolsey Fire is burning primarily in chamise, a highly volatile fuel type with a frequent fire regime. Drought and 60 mph Santa Annas will present suppression difficulties no matter who is in charge.

I assume the Camp Fire is burning in timber, I believe sns3guppy mentioned LPP and Ponderosa. Two very different pine species with different fire regimes. LPP is a low frequency-high intensity veg type which will typically produce stand replacement fires setting the plant community back to “pioneer,” when a fire does occur.

Ponderosa, in a natural state, evolved with a high frequency-low intensity fire regime. Unfortunately, Ponderosa has been allowed to escape the kind of management that would maintain a natural fire regime. Dense blackjack stands are the result.

The President was wrong. Dead wrong. He should apologize. He should visit the affected areas. He should offer any and all assistance at his disposal.

My family cabin at Tahoe was in peril a few years back. A wind shift at the last second and the diligent work of the absolute bad asses on the fire line saved the entire tract. The fire stopped ~250 yds from my porch. I wasn't there at the time but the sheriff started banging on doors at 2:00am with evac orders.

The Forest Service presents a constantly changing regulatory atmosphere. Much of it has to do with the clarity of Lake Tahoe but there is strong fire component. They urge defensible space but limit what can be cut. They do prescribed burns to clear dead fall and undergrowth when and where they can but don't have the budget or manpower to do enough. Thinning the forest is necessary but logging is tricky given the politics and the absolute goofs that stand in the way. I don't have a ton of love for management but they aren't dealt the best hand.

The President is dead wrong about the fires in CA. I get that CA is a deserved punching bag almost all of the time but this isn't one of those times.

It's ironic that there's any pointing of fingers to California for not doing enough. As said before, I've spent a lot of years fighting fire there (and most of the rest of the US, and abroad), and California is a pain in the ass when it comes to fire. In a major way.

It not frivolous, though. Their fire response is rapid and over the top; far, far more aggressive than anywhere else in the country. They dispatch on run-cards, and they are very integrated when it comes to interagency cooperation and assignment. From an aviation point of view, it's typical that up to 9 out of 10 dispatches are false alarms, but they take no chances. None.

I've shown up over a single tree with overkill in the extreme and a lot more coming, and on the other hand I've shown up on fires that began as a single tree and were rapidly at 25,00 acres as the fire ran. The population density and conditions and location often determine a very aggressive response.

California isn't the only place that is experiencing extreme fire behavior; fuel moistures and fire conditions are different than they've been in the past. There have been fires before, losses of property and lives, but the fires we are seeing of late are unprecedented. It's not coincidental that the best season I've ever had in terms of income and demand was just last year; the seasons get longer, harder, and we're doing things now that we didn't do in the past because the fires demand it.

There is a lot of misunderstanding about the fuel models in play and the fire behavior, and what is done to fight it. Understand that fighting fire is very seldom about putting the fire out; it's about impacting fire behavior and directing it. I most cases, extinguishing the fire isn't an option. It falls to tactics, and the truth is that there are forces in many of these fires that exceed man's capability to extinguish.

There are 7 basic classes of vegetation fuel models, and all are found in California, and some of the fuel types (like chaparral) are frequent and dense throughout California, burn fast and hot, grow well in arid or drought conditions, and tend to grow fairly quickly, and tend to fill in burn areas. The same can be said for pinion/juniper environments ("PJ"), which often burn explosively, literally. In many cases, these different fuel types and models are found near one another or in the same location. Some of them have re-burn potential; they can burn through, and burn again shortly thereafter. In some cases, one can burn and not the other, and in others, one contributes to the other. Fuels are often not continuous, and areas where fires have occurred previously will often see a different fuel type or model take off in the burn areas.

All fire behavior is not the same; not within the same fuel type or model. Many are unaware that more firefighters die in grass fires than any other, but grass and light one hour fuels can exhibit vastly different fire behaviors depending on fuel moisture, time of year, relative humidity, location, wind, etc. Some may burn with a creep action and the same fuel can have six foot or greater flame length and much more rapid and aggressive rates of spread, energy release component, etc. Put a 70 mph wind behind it, and all bets are off.

I don't know if this 2005 pic helps, but the vegetation is very representative of the rest of the town. The barn in the backround has been reported as destroyed.