Keep the faith Brother. You are respected and a positive influence and positive contribution to the education to this site and also have feet on the ground; not only words but actions.
As someone who contributes so much as you do and have, please ignore, as best as you can, the negative (ignoret ?) responses.
keep the faith brother, you are doing good!!!
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Thank you Zeke for your leadership, for your willingness to endure that steep learning curve that is often a cost of stepping forward. Thank you for being an example of continued learning, re-thinking, and for taking responsibility for overreach (however small and infrequent).
You are a gentleman and a scholar.
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Thanks. I donāt write off criticism from someone like @norcal74 as ignorance, though. We just have super-different life experiences within fire. They have been on the hook for a lot of real-world operational consequences, and felt pressures from the job that Iāll never know.
Iām glad to have the freedom to be a radical voice, at times (radical means ārootsā, BTW). Weāve got a lot of problems with fire in our communities that arenāt going to be solved by the thinking that caused them. Across my career, Iāve had long leashes and the luxury of noodling about the bigger picture of wildland fire management in the abstract, while not being bound by the constraints or realities of working for a public agency. I hope I can keep saying the things many of you think, but canāt say out loud.
This forum, and @norcal74 in particular has helped pull me back to reality, at times, for example, helping me tone down my cheerleading for managed wildfire in the parts of California that arenāt somewhere between Redding and Crescent City.
I changed the name of this thread, BTW.
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Honestly finding this write-up a little confusing & non-helpfull in moving the bigger Fire conversation forward. Also, its not lost on me that in one (or more) sentences we kick the horse of scolding the FS while trying to make a point of showing who is burning while the fedās are not - then, you wrap up by asking whoās gonna do the work?? After you just higlighted all the other players in the arena who are doing the work now!? Id like to have heard some discussion about building towards a model of intra-regional burning and force multiplying AKA prepositioning resources when/where the Rx conditions call for it. Like the suppression model only different for Rx. We must move past/suspend the suppression is to blame convo & Fire policy of 1910 convo - if you still want to take the coversation to those places you are not helping things imoā¦ 2cents from a booger pickerā¦ Edit; this is the convo in my head after re-reading the link - the āyouā that i mention is the folks being quotedā¦ \m/
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Halting burning now because resources are deployed elsewhere seems strange. Much of the USFS land in the Sierra got some rain last week, there are storms lined up across the Pacific, all but a few of the fires on the Inciweb map are 6 to 10 weeks old and have not grown for weeks. Plus regions with more fires showing have prescribed fires on the map.
For reasons of earning some credibility it would be good to post number when making statements like R5 has. Shading isnāt helpful, transparency is goodā¦In my (maybe not so) humble opinion.
A local SoCal forest currently has 2 of 5 crews available and only 15 engines available day to day. 5 of those exist engines being out of region. That equals a local work force in the 50% range.
Not have the labor to perform the project is the #1 problem. With the #2 problem being how do you pay for the project when all you have available is 50% of your labor and the rest being VIPR contractors.
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And, b4 i forget
Once āwe the peopleā get congress to act on pay/benefits for the Fedās - Can āwe the peopleā get our national fire training program(s) to FINALY establish a better model to a Fuels career & real Apprenticeships (in Fuels & Rx Fire) that build capacity and talent beyond the Gs 4/5 senior FF / Lead in the federal system. Please letās grow this conversation also bcuz by not having a fuels program of excellence āweā are missing out on hiring the best & brightest. The #Fire Industrial Complex is just that - so i donāt want to see a bunch of contract specialists in #Fuels jobs to manage NGOās and all other non Fed resources. That isnt the capacity OR talent pool our future generations need! If you kno you knowā¦
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A lot of the VIPR contractors are unavailable right now, also.
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For edification, for understory burns in the Northern Sierra, we usually like to see the 10hr fuel moisture at or above 6%, and RHs between 20 and 50%. Temps 50-85%. You can go higher on temp or lower on RH depending on how the Probability of Ignition works out. A common target prescription max is 70% POI. 80% POI can work if you want taller scorch heights or arenāt as worried about holding. For example, you could potentially burn on a 90 degree day if your fine dead fuel moisture was a 5 (RH over 36%).
Itās better to base your prescription on a metric like POI than on hard and fast limits on RH and temp, because you can still get the fire effects you want on a hot/moist day or a cold/dry one.
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Happenings in Rx Fireā¦
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