After sucking down a bunch of smoke this summer, along with numerous summers past having lived in MT, ID and WA most of my life I got to thinking. Were we better off preventing fires in the days when the West had large "clear cuts" to act as fire breaks as well as more numerous roads and trails. I guess I think it was better that way, but I don't have any actual proof. Any opinions among the pros??
Forrest fire question.
- Thread starter Wazzu
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Oh boy.
I think we were better off when we "salvaged" sick trees before they started dying en mass. Now, thanks to the corporate enviros, salvage is a bad word.
All I know is a former coworker told me that the Rodeo Chediskey fire, in AZ, laid down and slowed down when it hit the areas of the forest that had been thinned and had slash treated. The tree survived. When it hit the areas that were not cut because of wildlife concerns, it went hot and fried the trees.
Thats my thinking.
MIllion-Dollar Question, that. I've got lots to say on the subject... I'm just too lazy to type it all out. Buy me a beer and I'll tell you what I think.
I agree, when I last lived in MT they had an area that had been thinned. It burned the next year and did real well as far as minimal damage. There was an article about it in Range magazine. We are just burning up like crazy in Idaho this year.
Make that two beers. One for me too.
Most of the enviros I have spoken with on this subject have no knowledge of it but still want to voice their opinions as facts. The truth is that the same tactics don't work everywhere.
One question I like to ask people is what they think the environment should look like. I call this a snap shot. More often than not their snapshot has never existed in nature. For one thing their snapshot never contains large stand replacement fires in coniffer forests.
Lately here in Cali there has been talk of the ultimate bad stewards of the land and no they are not ranchers or timber companies, but were the indiginous peoples. The Indians. After all they used uncontrolled fire to clear land and manage the food animals. They rolling hills of Cali looked very inviting when the whites first saw them. It is the Indians fault the whites stayed.
In addition the word salvage is now a curse. Birds need burned trees to nest in so salvage logging must never be permitted in many areas. Basically anything man dues is wrong and must be stopped.
I think I would need a 6 pack of Irish Death to properly address this subject. It has been a very long process getting us where we are. And it hasn't worked.
Good news, we just got some rain.
Bad news, I think the radar is showing red and yellow blobby thunderstorms coming this way. More Lightning???
Good news, we just got some rain.
Bad news, I think the radar is showing red and yellow blobby thunderstorms coming this way. More Lightning???
imagineero
Addicted to ArboristSite
In years gone by, the australian aborigines were praised as good stewards of the land. They were nomadic people and used fire to burn large areas when hunting. They saw it as part of the cycle of life.
Recent research has suggested the idea that maybe it wasn't such a good idea. There's some suggestion now that maybe we had a lot more species of trees in past, but everything that couldn't survive burning was killed. It's also suggested that it increased desertification which is a big problem here. It seems pretty clear that they also hunted all the mega fauna to extinction much like natives in other countries.
Of course none of that really compares to the damage that europeans did with their slash and burn farming, and the introduction of hard hooved animals and other species that don't belong here (rabbits, cane toads etc) and the diseases introduced.
My feeling is the old way was better, but it was better because there was no transport or infrastructure. People could use as much as what they needed of resources available to them locally. If they used too much, they died off in number. Equilibrium was met. I think import/export/transport on a large scale is a bad thing for economy and ecology.
Shaun
Recent research has suggested the idea that maybe it wasn't such a good idea. There's some suggestion now that maybe we had a lot more species of trees in past, but everything that couldn't survive burning was killed. It's also suggested that it increased desertification which is a big problem here. It seems pretty clear that they also hunted all the mega fauna to extinction much like natives in other countries.
Of course none of that really compares to the damage that europeans did with their slash and burn farming, and the introduction of hard hooved animals and other species that don't belong here (rabbits, cane toads etc) and the diseases introduced.
My feeling is the old way was better, but it was better because there was no transport or infrastructure. People could use as much as what they needed of resources available to them locally. If they used too much, they died off in number. Equilibrium was met. I think import/export/transport on a large scale is a bad thing for economy and ecology.
Shaun
Fire is a management tool.
Here's the problem. Smokey the Bear was not thought out well enough. That campaign made fire a bad word.
Others already gave examples. I offer Rabbit Ears Pass on Highway 40 east of Steamboat Springs CO. as my example of Native Americans lighting it up & leaving before the snow made it too wet to burn.
It will take time to redirect the Smokey the Bear thing.
Here's the problem. Smokey the Bear was not thought out well enough. That campaign made fire a bad word.
Others already gave examples. I offer Rabbit Ears Pass on Highway 40 east of Steamboat Springs CO. as my example of Native Americans lighting it up & leaving before the snow made it too wet to burn.
It will take time to redirect the Smokey the Bear thing.
Oh, and we didn't used to have to worry about mega houses built in the woods or grassy hills.
That area burning by Wenatchee? There weren't many houses on the hillsides when I was growing up. Those hillsides would burn every couple of years--no biggie, the grass grew back. Now there are big houses in those places. We have to use fire resources to protect the houses instead of using them to control the fire.
I couldn't believe it when I read that some even had cedar shingles on the roofs! That area gets an average of 9 to 11 inches of precip. Most of it in the form of snow. Why would any sane person have a cedar shingle roof?
OK, you owe me a beer for this blurb.
That area burning by Wenatchee? There weren't many houses on the hillsides when I was growing up. Those hillsides would burn every couple of years--no biggie, the grass grew back. Now there are big houses in those places. We have to use fire resources to protect the houses instead of using them to control the fire.
I couldn't believe it when I read that some even had cedar shingles on the roofs! That area gets an average of 9 to 11 inches of precip. Most of it in the form of snow. Why would any sane person have a cedar shingle roof?
OK, you owe me a beer for this blurb.
mile9socounty
Two-Stroke Swope
Im going to surpass yalls beer and go straight for a 5th of Bushmills to get into the conversation. Floyd said it best, fire is a management tool.
OlympicYJ
ArboristSite Guru
Alot of houses down in Texas have shake roofs. Was a big fad years ago. They virtually last forever in dryer climates.
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Dalmatian90
Addicted to ArboristSite
To add to what others said above, there's a lot that has changed since "back in the day" as well -- used to be the basic strategy was to throw every warm, male body you could find at the fire with the goal to control it by 10am the day after it was discovered. Warm bodies included everyone the Ranger could roust out of the nearest bar.
Pretty simple system. My guess is they did a better job keeping the controllable fires under control back then. Roads and clear cuts where a factor, but they aren't the only thing that changed.
Today the system is much more organized, bureaucratic; there are more sophisticated processes. The trade-off is there are more decisions to make, they take longer and more people to make, and there is the lag between when you request resources and when they arrive.
On balance, we have a better system today then back then.
But there wasn't much someone could screw up when the decision tree was, "Is a fire burning? If yes, try your best to put it out by 10am. If no, go do something else." Now there's a lot more decisions being made so there's a lot more opportunities for someone to make what hindsight will prove was the wrong choice.
Pretty simple system. My guess is they did a better job keeping the controllable fires under control back then. Roads and clear cuts where a factor, but they aren't the only thing that changed.
Today the system is much more organized, bureaucratic; there are more sophisticated processes. The trade-off is there are more decisions to make, they take longer and more people to make, and there is the lag between when you request resources and when they arrive.
On balance, we have a better system today then back then.
But there wasn't much someone could screw up when the decision tree was, "Is a fire burning? If yes, try your best to put it out by 10am. If no, go do something else." Now there's a lot more decisions being made so there's a lot more opportunities for someone to make what hindsight will prove was the wrong choice.
In what way?
first off not a fire fighter never spent time on the fire line, only know what I've read. Seems that with the "old" way of clear cutting wasn't a whole lot better than the negligent management we got now (the don't touch its a wilderness/park). Back in the ole days they had some truly mammoth fires, large parts of Oregon Idaho and Washington burned I'm talking close to full/several counties big, most of these fires where in 1900-1920 that guy Polaski yes the guy who invented the tool, almost died along with 20 or so of his crew in one in Idaho. So the current method of thinning and brush/slash control is doing wonders for controlling the huge fires, Yes they get big in terms of acreage but from what I've read on it most of the time those fires are in "control as they burn lots of acreage, controlled burns reduce fuels on the ground while they are in a controllable state. The problem arises when young urban professionals, decide to move to the hills and have a "spectacular view" of the valley bellow, which equals big spendy houses on the front page up in flames, as far as roads go there mostly still there just not open to the public, because the idiots who dump their garbage in the woods rather than pay $20. at the local transfer station, not to mention vandalism,
stealing of wood or poaching
stealing of wood or poaching
These are two of the issues that piss me off the quickest.
sodbreaker
ArboristSite Operative
I aggree. A few years ago a bad storm went through the northern part of the state. The loggers wanted to salvage the down/ damaged tree but the DNR wouldn't let them because it was a "nature area." Now the people complain because it has gone up like a dry match stick every summer for ther past two years.
After the houses are built, the people in them don't want controlled burning because it makes smoke. :bang: I think the newcomers to Wenatchee may have a lesson to learn from this. A bit of smoke now, ore a lot of smoke later...
I bossed a RX burn earlier this year where 1) the burn unit was small (~40 acres as I recall) 2) the fuels were light 3) there were SUPERB control lines on all sides 4) I had enough personnel and equipment to cover any foreseeable contingency 5) flat topography 6) favorable winds 7) atmospheric conditions conducive to good lift. Problem was, this burn unit was RIGHT ACROSS THE STREET from one of those new gated cookie-cutter communities. The yards closest to the street all had more-than-adequate defensible space, and there were 3 rural FD's within 10 minutes' drive. We lit it off, the smoke lifted nicely, and everybody went home. Nonetheless, we got a dozen or more serious complaints from irate homeowners wanting to know WTF we thought we were doing burning so close to their homes. No harm came of this one, but what if I'd lost a line? It would be MY ass on the line. That's something I don't like to think about. We do our job as well as we can, using the best science we have, during the few windows of opportunity we get. What are we supposed to do -- let everything build up to explosive fuel loading levels and then apologize for not doing something sooner?
OlympicYJ
ArboristSite Guru
Sadly that is the world we live and work in. People are driven by emotion rather than reason. You could probably explain clearly and succinctly what you are doing with the RX burn and why you are doing it, but it still probably wouldn't sink in. I have come to the conclusion that people on the whole are stupid at some level or another.
I was flagging for the DOT many summers ago and had 3 incidents where cars went around stopped traffic on 2 lane rds. One guy almost got in a head on collision with the traffic we were letting through. The last incident of the summer 2 cars went around stopped traffic. Surprised the hell outta me cuz I had no idea till they popped past the semi I had stopped. Got em moved over and asked the older gentleman, hmph, if he had seen the signs informing him there was road work, be prepared to stop and such. Keep in mind there are a minimum 5 signs when flaggers are working and they are spread out over adequate distance, don't remember distance from first sign and the flagger, The old guy says he never saw a sign. This guy wasn't old enough to be senile so he was either a very unobservant driver or the biggest dumb **** in the world because he went around all those vehicles in a blind corner.
It is people like I just described that populate this earth and there are many of them. They don't have a brain within a mile of them, but want to and are given the ability to direct how managers manage resources. A very sad state of affairs. Maybe we should go back to if you don't own any property then you can't vote; like the founders originally had it :msp_rolleyes:
Although it sounds like it wouldn't matter because those folks in Wenatchee do have land and their idiots too :bang:
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