rydabent

Have the fools in charge ever had a fleet of say 20 huge water tankers attack the fire line in train********************??? No!!!!!!!!!!!!!

rydabent

Tell me, the rest of the country, and sadly the families of those killed, how well the forest if being managed in Calif right now.
The biggest and easiest help would be to log out large fire breaks that a fire cant jump!!!!

eja_ bottecchia

ogmtb

More extreme ignorance.

A wind-driven fire easily jumps fire breaks as burning embers are spread for great distances ahead of the actual fire line.

During the Oakland Hills fire there was an really large fire break with eight lanes of concrete down the middle (Hwy 24). That fire easily jumped the break.

rydabent

So apparently you side with the ignorant fools whos mismanagement allowed these fires to happen.

Something has to change!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BTW personal attacks and name calling directed to me will NOT change one thing. Direct your ire to the fools that have mismanaged the forest, and allowed this huge disaster to happen---------------They are at fault.

rydabent

Im talking fire breaks at least a half mile to a mile across.

ogmtb

Your accusations have no basis in fact and serve only to highlight your ignorance, once again.

ogmtb

lol

So your solution, in addition to tax break for pools and ponds(still laughing at that one), is to carve a network of 1/2-1 mile wide fire breaks across the 33 million acres of hilly or mountainous forest lands in California.

If that ridiculous feat can be accomplished, how are you accounting for the fact that embers can be driven 1/2-1 mile ahead of the fire line and would be crossing your fire breaks?

Again, your ignorance is simply astounding.

cb400bill

Let's tone it down a notch.

woodcraft

747s for fire fighting. LOL

Those incompetents down south should have put up wind fences to stop hurricane damage too!



For those interested in a deeper look at fire in the west, this book has a chapter covering from early European settler accounts thru current (pub. 2010)

forest service practices & scientific debate,by a naturalist with a long view.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...+of+california

eja_ bottecchia

ogmtb

woodcraft

Well there you go.

A bunch more of those & we'll have this fire thing in the bag.

rydabent

With approx 7000 building burned down, 70 some dead, and over 1000 missing, the people in charge now are not making it. Try something different!!!!!!!!!!!!

BTW not to worry about the name calling, I am a big boy and just consider the source. Name calling is the end result of people that are losing an argument.

FrenchFit 

It is not helpful to throw out ignorant comments on either side, which is evident above.

Yes, there are horrific mismanagement issues with respect to California's forests, but it has little to due with bureaucrats or other "swampy" things That's simply fodder for cable news nonsense.

Federal policy has been to put out fires asap, state environmental policy has been to aggressively restrict burns & lumbering, and all those bark beetle dead trees have been adding up...fuel, fuel, fuel, and the State's gotten browner. Both Fed & State forest management needs to change from a 1990 'preservation' mindset to a 2018 'thin those forests' mindset. We are talking about a major sea change in policies that are dug-in to "protect" forests and air quality much like we are dug-in to protect our coasts.

Hopefully, this will be a wake-up call.

DrIsotope

At least someone in this thread gets it. 129 million dead trees in California forests.

"Fires are a natural part of the ecosystem in many forests. Blazes clear out underbrush, restore nutrients to the soil, and help some plants germinate. However, the severity and the damage from recent wildfires is due in large part to human activity. People are moving into areas prone to burning, and people ignite the majority of blazes. How we manage forests is another key factor increasing the dangers of wildfires, from preventing natural fires from burning, to cutting down the wrong kinds of trees, to neglecting pruning in forests near population centers."

Nachoman

One of my best friends, a long time cyclist, had just under two hours to fill his car with all his valuables and evacuate his malibu home before it burnt to the ground.
I was surprised to hear that he didn't save his brand new, less than 4 months old, Di2 bike!

Jon T

Sometimes it's more important to put life ahead of things.
Jon

Nachoman

Jon, It wasn't a life over things issue.
It was a "lets see how many valuable "things" we can cram into our two cars".

rydabent

In the wax and wane of things it is a small thing. But a whole generation of mountain bikers will have rotten areas to ride in.

caloso

My cousin's in-laws (my goddaughter's grandparents) lost their house and everything they couldn't fit in a car. It is not a small thing to them or any of their neighbors.

And yes, we have a fleet of tankers, which includes a 747 and a DC--10. Next thing, someone will suggest raking the forest floor.

rydabent

It seems you protest too much. Are you in forest management?

Cyclist0108

Most people own a rake.

Biker395 

FWIW, any discussion about "forest" management" in terms of harvesting lumber and getting rid of dead trees with regard to the recent fires in the Santa Monica Mountains in SoCal is misplaced. Most of that "forest" is little more than shrubs. They are not something one would "harvest,", as far as I know, they are unaffected by bark beetles, and there aren't a lot of dead ones lying around. They're also unusual in that they have evolved to survive fires of this sort. Many of the blacked out shrubs you are seeing on TV are not dead and will sprout leaves again, and sooner than most expect.

Those shrubs were burned by fires driven by 60 MPH winds. It's simply not possible to stop fires in that kind of terrain under those conditions.

GailT

The Forest Service started changing management practices more than 20 years ago - doing prescribed wildland burns and allowing natural wildfires to burn when they don't threaten populations. The idea that bikeforum members figured this out but the Forest Service experts remain clueless is just silly. There are several aspects that make this a very difficult problem to solve - it will take decades of prescribed burns to restore forests to a more natural state, but the larger problems are more people moving into areas that are vulnerable to catastrophic burns and the effects of climate change. The city of Paradise had developed evacuation plans but they were inadequate, maybe other cities can learn from this and improve evacuation plans. But there is no level of planning or management that will eliminate risks when you have 60 mph winds in extreme drought conditions.