Here is the issue… suggesting that we need to allow more fires to burn freely and once we do so will solve this problem, is just not realistic.
Burning pine needles on 3 acres will reduce the threat of a fire for about a week…
I have watched a fire burn through areas in the Feather River Canyon 4 times in the last 25 years.
My concern is that the narrative is being pushed… if we just burn more… it will be solved.
That is just not the case and does not take into account the loads of overlapping issues that come with trying to burn.
Before you blame “environmentalist” , remember that it was deplorable activity by the timer companies and government which caused those organizations to come into existence.
Our weather and fuels have dramatically changed and that has impacted our burn windows.
There is no tolerance for escapes, especially in communities who have experienced devastating fires.
When people oversimplify a complex problem a false set of expectations are formed.
Home hardening and community planning need to be stressed. Instead of plowing money into fuel treatments that are quickly overrun by fires… why not establish a fund where low interest loans are made from the state or insurance companies to install metal roofs on all homes in the SRA or FRA.
Why not invest in fuel reduction on escape routes?
Once we marry up the idea that it will be as simple as just allowing fires to burn- as has been suggested… we lose the opportunity to push a comprehensive strategy…
Increase grazing- hone and community hardening-fuel treatment… both with fire and mechanically and with livestock.
That model fits in California… that model would and has been proven to be successful.
Blaming the current situation solely on “eliminating” fire from our environment is a straw man argument. It is ignorant of our population explosion, it is ignorant of the need and value of the natural resources that were kept from burning, it is ignorant of the fact that people who own things do not want them to burn- because they would like to harvest that resource for profit, it is ignorant of the value of preserving our watersheds for drinking water.
That argument suggests that the state did not have large and devastating fires when fires were allowed to burn.
That idea is not supported by dendrology and paleo climatic science. What is supported is that the weather has a far greater impact on California’s fire history.
What that science supports… drier years have more fires… wetter years have fewer fires. Series of dry years produce really big fires.
Now that we have acknowledged that we have a changing climate… we need to focus on that as well.
Short term and repeated… fuel reduction.
Without a change in the weather… we will continue to see large and damaging fires.
NorCal74…I agree. Fuelbreaks don’t work in extreme burning conditions. 90% of the homes are lost on 10% of the days… but large scale fuel modifications are effective. Biomass harvest and thinning projects directed in and around communities can save those communities, but they must be maintained. We need to construct the Co Gen plants to burn the harvested fuel to generate electricity…aiding in the solution of 2 crisis…the power shortage and the reducing the fire hazard near our homes.
There are two home hardening projects funded by FEMA in California at this time…one in San Diego County near Potrero and one in Shasta County near Whitmore. The Shasta project anticipates treating 25 homes with up to $40,000 of improvements ( vegetation clearance, fire resistant siding, ember proof vents etc) in the first year. These projects are directed toward lost income families.
I would prefer to see a similar program using tax credits similar to solar tax credits. This would be available to a wider range of residents and not be restricted to low income.
I agree home hardening, grazing, and strategic thinning on major travel routes are very important.
I don’t think any of us ‘burning pine needles’ think we are going to stop the next Dixie Fire, but the acres the Butte PBA and others burned this year killed thousands of conifer saplings and seedlings, and knocked back a ton of manzanita that would have cost the landowner a lot of money to hand-thin or masticate 5-10 years from now, so it’s not a total waste of effort. And landowner burns are great for getting neighbors to think like neighbors, and empowering people to take responsibility for their own problems.
I don’t for a minute think we are going to rx burn our way out of this wildfire/climate crisis. There are too many people and commercial assets in harm’s way. But all of our science and policy are telling us that burning under less-than-extreme conditions is one of the best tools we have to save some of the green trees we have left. But for all the talk about scaling up to burn hundreds of thousands of acres a year - we’ve had excellent burning conditions for a wide swath of California under 3,000 feet since the middle of January - an incredibly small number of acres are getting burned.
It is raining money right now for fuels and fire hazard mitigation but we are stuck in the same mindset of buying more helicopters, C-130s, staffing more people for peak fire season, and cutting the same roadside fuelbreaks we’ve done every 3-5 years for as long as anyone can remember. If we can spend almost a billion dollars to mobilize 6,000 firefighters from all over the country in August to get their asses kicked by fires that are pretty much unstoppable, why can’t we build the capacity to mobilize IMTs and a couple thousand firefighters in January and February and burn tens of thousands of acres? We are missing big opportunities to use fire right now.
It’s clearly an all in approach to the problems. Every approach has some roadblocks to overcome. There is not just one answer. What I do know is that politics are real and impact fires and fire agencies across the land. Litigation is real, to stop our progress. Environmentalists are real and will stop and nothing to thwart our efforts. And most important, fires don’t burn where there is no fuel.
I do not deny that there are significant issue with some environmental groups, but I am not sure I would suggest they would stop at nothing. I think that script is overplayed as tranche of politics. I would argue that most environmental groups would prefer to see some additional fire in the landscape. I would also suggest that fires do and have burned in previous burn scars. I do not think that removing all the fuel is the goal of a VMP… I would point out again the impact of erosion, invitation of invasive and not native species and the impacts on water quality if we remove all the fuel.
I can tell you that just weeks after the LNU complex burned the Glass Fire was able to run through and area that had just burned…
A true understory burn leaves a massive amount of dead fuel- that must be dealt with. A true VMP would introduce fire, then either graze or mechanically thin/chain and then burn again a year or two later.
PBA burns are great feel good process, but they are not making a difference. If you are married to one narrative, you risk the issue of Confirmation Bias. You find the answer that fits your narrative. Any sound objective should be SMART… To me- the achievable portion is where the idea of large scale landscape burns in our foothill communities are just not reality.
As far as spending money to modernize firefighting tools… only someone who did not have operate in a 40 year old aircraft would complain about that.
Never in 35 years in the fire service have I shown up on an incident and had someone say " I wish you brought fewer people, with less training and old equipment". I would submit that only people who do not have to live with the results make statements like" We are not going to firefight our way out of this". Again… I guess you could argue I have some confirmation bias… but after 35 years of watching this happen… and in one day watching 18,000 buildings burn and 85 people lose their lives, and then less than a year later watching it happen again… I can tell you that standing up and saying that we are wasting money on modernizing our firefighting fleet and adding personnel would not be considered a salient perspective…especially in communities that are at threat from a fire.
As far as bio mass… not sure we have an energy shortage as much as we have a usage problem- back to the 41 million people thing…
Bio mass may solve the issue of dealing with forest litter and may produce a small amount of energy… but I am not sure that it would really be beneficial in the long run. Those plants require a lot of NG to operate and the which put out a lot of methane… a primary GG.
I want to make sure I clarify one point… I am not against burning, and in fact I support it extensively in my unit. I do think that we (CF) are not doing enough… but only because each unit is doing their own thing, rather than teaming up for larger projects.
I am just against telling people it will solve the problem… because it will not.
With VMP season coming into full swing now, CalFire is really good about telling the public that they are going to burn something. However, they don’t break down the true benefits of and the fuel type they are burning.
Back in the day, we used to burn thousands of acres of standing or crushed brush, or burning the understory in timber, really satisfying the original intent of the VMP program. These burns would reduce the volume of fuel, improve watershed and have beneficial results for wildlife.
Now, it appears to me, that CalFire toots their horn when they burn hundreds of acres of low land annual grass lands, perhaps to eliminate star thistle, rarely reducing the fire hazard for next year and years to come.
I understand times have changed with politics, climate politics, good and bad, with the air quality being the most scrutinized. But I have always said it is better to have controlled smoke on a day that is favorable for air mixing versus a summer day when there is no mixing and the folks in San Francisco have to wear masks for days at a time.
If the state truly wants to truly reduce the volume of fuel, improve watershed and have beneficial results for wildlife, go back out to those areas where I understand are difficult to burn, but have tremendous benefits. Only then you can truly toot your horn.