We’ve got an ongoing conversation about resource benefits and ‘Good Fire’ on Facebook. Check out the ‘Good Fire’ group if you are interested in being part of this conversation.
One current topic is how the distribution of past fires affects size of subsequent ones.
Had a good day of burning in the foothills of Butte County today. We got started about 1200. We could have used a little wind. Barely got any wind at all, just 1mph upslope winds after 2pm.
Temps were in the 60s, and RHs were between 25-30%. Fire carried well in taller grass on south-facing slopes, and in deeper maple and pine needle litter on shady slopes. Didn’t carry very well in live oak litter or shady grass. We blacklined a 70 acre unit, and the crew will jackpot the burnable portions of the interior in next two days. Good participation from CSU, Chico Reserves, Firestorm, the Watershed Center in Hayfork, Cal Fire, Plumas Firesafe Council, Feather River RCD, Butte County RCD, UC Cooperative Extension, Deer Creek Resources, and Terra Fuego.
Perhaps this should be taken to a prescribed fire thread so apologies but…
Prescribed fire will be such a vital part of Wildland management (more than just fuels management) going forward, I would suggest that staffing burns with extra resources to further minimize escapes would be a sound investment.
We need prescribed fire very very much.
Fuels management is indeed crucial. Staff it with as many resources as you like, but if you can’t carve up the adjacent land, Murphy says that a random gust will drop an ember deep in.
We can never burn and blame nature or global warming when a fire rips under bad conditions, or, we can burn under favorable conditions. The conditions that support a good burn window might spot, but shouldn’t be laying fire over so bad we lose improvements, especially if defensible space clearance has been done.
We should recognize that spots shouldn’t but do happen and educate public.
I agree. Especially don’t burn where structures don’t have defensible space
Spots will happen. So one aspect of careful burning is to understand ember cast in real time. Keep some forces unengaged and down wind.
One of the most effective uses for small UAVs in Wildland fire --in my opinion-- would be to watch ember cast and detect spots immediately on prescribed burns. The cheapest IR cameras on a multi rotor or even hand held 50 yards downwind could understand and get the jump on spots.
One thing I have been pushing hard in our work with Prescribed Burn Associations here in Butte County is to set yourself up for success with your unit layout, avoiding complex holding by doing away with midslope lines, starting at the top of the hill, and bringing in your neighbors so you can have units that make sense from a fire-behavior perspective.
With the amount of wildfire we have had here in the past couple years, there are a lot of opportunities to run prescribed fires into the black of a recent burn. I think we really need to go after the low-hanging fruit until we can rebuild our burning capacity and re-establish public trust around it.
Well, it sucks their piles escaped, but on the bright side, they achieved some serious defensible space for that neighborhood, and some time in the next several years, this burn will probably save that neighborhood from being roasted by the next Carr Fire.
Yes, they got a firebreak…but at what cost ? Tens of thousands of dollars in suppression costs, evacuations, more fire and smoke damage claims to drive up insurance premiums and above all a loss of trust in their Fire Services.
Yeah, I agree.
Whatever the cost im gonna guess a absolute minuscule cost compared to the Carr fire…
Keep burning when the conditions are on your side, even when things go bad like this they are always better than having a fire later in same exact place but with the worst conditions. Push through and fight the good fight even through the ups and downs despite nay sayers. I hope the public realizes that firefighters are humans too and while we are professional and fight a very serious and dangerous fight we do make mistakes/things can go bad but its a fight worth having on our terms. If we wait we all stand to lose exponentially more
Lot’s of debate about advantages/disadvantages of pile burning and Rx burns, however; it sure seems a better alternative than “managed fires” during fire season. Agree with posts that this is better than another unplanned and uncontrollable wildfire.
You can execute control burns and pile burning if you do so in a responsible manner. You can’t blame a predicted cold front passage on an act of God. We ( the Fire Service ) are the experts and are expected to be able to handle a simple task like pile burning without an escape.
A burn like this will only increase the hazard in 3 to 5 years if no followup is planned or carried out. Control burns are not a one and done scenario. And now, with the public scared and angry, you’ll play hell getting permission to do another burn in that area.
I agree there is a lot of debate. I am thankful we can begin to agree here on key principles where in the past years there was a great divide here. I am not personally privy to the forecasted weather or the prescriptions weather limits that were in place in this escaped pburn but I most certainly agree they must be done in a responsible manner. If there was any negligence on our end it must be handled properly and immediately. I also Couldnt agree more about follow up burns and we put previous burns on a rotation based on fuels, type, growth and projected goals. Down here in the southeast we prescribe burn more acres than anywhere else in the country, more acres a year than are burned by all the wildfires out west combined.
As for public image/trust/insurance etc…those things change after we responsibly change and time. It will take years most likely decades of properly managed pburns to make an impact on nearly a century of no fire is good fire areas and if properly managed overall the public will see and agree with the benefits as they have in other regions where prescribed fire is a way of life. And finally naturally the overall insurance rates etc will go down as homes are not burning and mega fires decline no matter what the weather does in the future.
Currently I am deployed on the Chipola complex of wildfires in the panhandle of florida doing structure protection after some homes burned down from a wildfire. This fire is burning in dead and down fuel from hurricane michael 4 years ago and had proper prescribed fire and pile burns been utilized in this area this incident may not have ever happened. Of course this is endlessly debatable as any mitigation efforts could have resulted in an escape/wildfire.
Thank you for and open forum where we can discuss such debatable topics in a professional manner.
With all do respect… Apples and Oranges. We have just recorded our driest January-February in 127 years. Our fuels and weather could not be more different than the SE. Our burn windows are changing and we have 41 million people in our state. We also have hills… and mountains.
Thank you for your respect. Respect due back and i am thankful for your response. Very good points. Ive burned in both states for just under two decades and in many states in between. If you read my post to compare states/areas in any way you are completely mistaken. I was trying to show other places that take very serious large scale aggressive safe and prescribed times to manage land in relation to wildfires as well as an area that probably did not act aggressive enough in the same area and has to now deal with the destruction. If its going to work it will have to be massive scale all in. I will agree your point about every area has unique challenges. Every fuel laden part of our great land is fire dependant to some extent some more than others and the removal of fire is never the answer as your part of the country is realizing and i am grateful despite the devastation it has taken to realize it. Of course record droughts, temps, population growth are monumental challenges, they are also the more reason to burn under proper conditions. No matter what our differences, apples oranges dont matter. Fact stands good fire on our terms responsibly managed within a prescription will always be more beneficial than the same fire at the same location with the worst conditions. It will never be 100 percent perfect or safe and that needs to be understood still and respected. Further it will have to be aggressively pursued for decades as it has taken many decades of fire starvation get to this point and coupled with the weather conditions is dealing mega fires.
Apples do matter… when you do not want them to burn. The narrative is that fire was excluded in my part of the country… and that is a false narrative… It is being pushed by people who have an agenda.
In “your” part of the country it rains off and on throughout the year. We do not have that luxury. We deal with RH’s that often remain at critical levels for weeks on end- while that is always relative to the location… it does make a difference when you consider the prescription as you have pointed out.
In California the primary reason for fire suppression decades ago… was water. We need to preserve our watersheds so that we could have drinking water. This was before we had the water infrastructure in place that we have now, where we ship water all over the state and support one of the largest agricultural industries in the world.
The current narrative being pushed by some( Zeke) would suggest that fire suppression was not tied to any particular reason that had any benefits.
We suppressed fires to harvest the timber to build America, fund two world wars and protect and preserve the privately owned lands of people who purchased that land to grow something, raise something and then harvest that resource to make a living.
We began suppressing fires because they were killing people and burning down their personal property.
We suppressed fires so that we could expand our infrastructure and produce clean energy through hydropower to power the 9th largest economy in the world( the state of California).
No one wants to talk about all of that… they just think they have it all figured out. People like Zeke have publicly made comments about our tactics and strategies and referred to modern firefighting strategies as an extension of white colonialism and related it to the extirpation of native populations…( Bring your own Brigade).
Everyone is an expert… especially when they are not the ones holding the bag. Apples and Oranges are very different…
I think triggerpoint is simply agreeing about the use of fire during non-declared season for prescribed fire. I don’t think he’s trying to compare fires and fire season’s or who has the largest stick, well you know what I mean. You may not mean to be at all, but in reading your responses and comebacks, from just another hosedragger, your responses make it appear your being a stick! Let’s just have an easy conversation and just be happy while we can. Cause, it’s going to get angry real quick once things start burning, days off are canceled, no relief, wife’s mad ( especially if your Cal Fire), and on and on. Stay safe in 2020!
It is frustrating that everyone has jumped on the bandwagon, with half the information. Go beyond SM and educate yourself about why things are the way they are. Yes… we have a lot of fuel… everyone seems to miss the weather issue. That is what is causing this. We did not just start having big fires in Ca…
Why did we only have one “big fire” in 2019?? Because we had a wet spring.
As far me being a “stick” if you don’t like it… don’t read it.
My mom(RIP) taught me at a young age, “you get more Flys with Honey and Sugar than you do with Piss & Vinegar” This is a dynamic problem that has its roots in the 10am rule after the Big Blow Up of 1910. That is 112yr of PPM(Piss Poor Management) from the 10am rule, to 41 million people living in a state with that can be Hot, Cold, Wet & Dry. It is a Mediterranean Climate with a brush species that has a lifespan of 14-18yr then dies. Now let’s add the ever increasing Wilderness, National Monuments and Roadless area’s and you have removed roads, skid trails and access points that just 30yr were used to catch a LARGE fire at 20,000 acres. On the CNF in So Cal, they use to “Chain” the ridges and had fuel breaks. Most of those are gone and have been “reclaimed by nature”. I’m currently working ona fuels reduction project where we are thinning and pile burning 44 acres to protect an HOA of 200 homes. This project took 5yr to “permit” before we could start work. There are still ongoing litigation to stop the project. It has been proven that a health forest in the west is 10-40 trees per acre. Yet a majority of the forests(FRA & SRA) are well over 100 and some areas over 800. Let’s add to that the timber companies clear cutting in the 30’-80’s and replanting at 1,000+ trees per acre. Finally, the work force has changed drastically while at the same time shrinking(look at the Demographic change of the Babyboomers to today) This means there is more work to do with a smaller work force, that has different work ethics, standards, and motivation.
I stated all of this because just like energy needs, ALL OF THE ABOVE needs to be used. Zeke is right, we need more fire on the landscape, The environmentalists are right, we need to be better stewards of the land. Chad Hanson is right, there needs to be better home hardening. Finally, we need better staffing and this MUST BE a year round project if we are going to correct the issues at hand. I’ll close with this, we have more computing power in the palm of our hands than used to land Neil Armstrong on the moon. This Technology has only been around 20yr and look has far and fast it has progressed. Yet this problem with fuels and fires started over 110yr ago and it won’t be corrected in what remains of my career(15yr) or lifetime(if I’m lucky to live to 100)
Completely agree. Whereas other parts of the country may not have environmental extremists they in fact may be much more productive in reaching VMP goals than CA. Projects in Ca are litigated, opposed, commented on, legislated, dictated, delayed, and otherwise strung out so long that we get further behind the goals in and of itself, aside from all the other poignant comments. While now retired , I wish we had the success alleged in the South but dont ever see that happening in the environment supported by politics in CA
