Sorry but we pay taxes to the government to manage the Forests and NP’s to the best of their ability. Whether it is with fire or without. If we don’t like the way they are run we have to turn to politicians and vote in the ones who will make changes to your liking. That is where the problems can be corrected. Unfortunately… Bureaucrats don’t always do what is best for nature, it’s what is best to keep their jobs.
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National Park employees work for the federal government where just about everything done at that level is paid for by taxes so can’t follow your reasoning there.
Maybe I’m being a little thick but your fence story makes no sense at all toward prescribed burning.
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Can we please get back to the FIRE
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Exactly what I was thinking. One agency might benefit from fire enhancing flora and fauna, a neighboring agency might benefit from reduction of fire risk to a community. Both agencies provide resources for mutual benefit. A local agency I worked for occasionally provided resources to assist feds with burn projects.
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Local Govt agencies are not financed through the Federal Govt. Using state or Local Government Agencies for prescription burns make them unavailable for new expanding incidents. Norcal74 hit nail on head.
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Never mind, I take it all back!
https://www.alertwildfire.org/region/sierra/?camera=Axis-Deadwood
Like I said in my science fiction post, though, we were going to keep our in-season burn out of the Canyon. :^>
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And Now back to our original program - Who left the stove on?
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Thank you for writing this up, and I don’t disagree with much of it.
Was it really a policy choice? I don’t think NPS actively trying to put fire back on the landscape right now is a factor in how they have run the response. After it made the initial run, there was no putting genie back in the bottle regardless of strategy. Other than bringing in dozers, which probably wouldn’t have changed the equation with long-range spotting, they haven’t seemed to be holding back on the aircraft.
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You cannot do prescribed fire during the heat of fire season… the point of the fence is that if you want to do that… plan for it. Build lines, staff and then manage it. What you cannot do is let a fire go crazy and then ask everyone else to bail you out.
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I think you can burn in-season, in some fuel types like grass and brush where you have a proper catchers mitt - like burning a couple thousand acres of rangeland in May to surround a unit you want to burn in July. Or burning an island of low-severity burn surrounded by thousands of acres of high-severity burn a few years after something like the Dixie Fire.
I was obviously off-base in my comment about running this as an rx burn right now, got carried away in the fire behavior we were seeing, and was thinking about what you could do as a burn boss with the millions of dollars in resources we have on this thing.
I do think we are up against a wall with changing burn windows. We have several million dollars worth of contract timber burning sitting on a shelf for 3 years now due to a non-existent fall burn window in upper elevation areas on the Tahoe NF.
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With the exception of as I remember early in this discussion the AA requesting aircraft early up then having to re request them more than once because he didnt have any
This is shades of the station fire on the ANF. We need to listen to the experience running these incidents
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And I will also add that I am not saying this fire is or compares to the station fire now.
These types of things add to the ole swiss cheese model when we try to rationalize all of these discussions.
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Local Govt agencies are not financed through the Federal Govt.
Be careful with broad statements like these. There a lot of new type 3s and type 1s in stations in addition to an extra body floating around on a lot of engines courtesy of Federal tax dollars. Also a not insignificant amount of training is financed by the Feds.
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Yup, the season is getting longer, the shoulders are getting tighter, the budgets are still paying for humans with “seasonal” in the title. There comes a point where it’s all the “heat of the fire season” somewhere in the US calendar year or heck, just R5. We need this discussion NOW, so that budget and plans can prep for action when the time comes, and get the population educated to GOOD fire so the facebook warriors don’t go berserk seeing trees on fire. And good grief can we please remember the nuance in all of this? People are reacting as if some want 100% MIST in the Sierra Foothills in August.
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Sounds like you read stuff posted on the Talk of the Hill Facebook page.
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No comment
I remember AA asking for permission to use retardant multiple times not criticizing the AA but just wondering why not have the tankers load up with water and get some drops in until they get approval.
BrushSlasher, I felt the same on the ANF- Station Fire and as AA actually used the Martin Mars (6,000 gallons) Made three high drops over a deep canyon just before sunset. Next day two IHC crews were able to tie that 1/4 mile line in, because the three high water drops raised canyon RH to 50% overnight.
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I / we don’t know how much is organizational culture or policy implementation that they appear to drag their feet in the first hours when an Initial attack has the greatest possibility of success. We will also never know if an aggressive initial attack would have stopped the fire. Accessible and under 10 acres at the end of the initial burning period I going to estimate there was a better that 50-50 chance. Unfortunately we will never know. The frustration is that the attempt was not made. As many have mentioned the heat per unit area is huge. Responses to fires reported in areas with fuels in this volume - condition should have comeserat response and pre plans for massive air and boots on the ground attack. What is happening and going to happen was 100% predictable, another source of frustration.
BTW, I along with many others truly appreciate all your work and willingness to share your thoughts.
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