It seems like simple construction codes like flame proof roofs and siding would go a long way.
It seems like simple construction codes like flame proof roofs and siding would go a long way.Let's put this years fire season in perspective. According to the USDA Forest Service in 1930 approximately 50 million acres burned in wildfires, while this year it will be around 10 million acres. In no way am I trying to ignore the devastation and losses felt by those on the west coast. Nor am I discounting those firefighters working hard to save life and property. What makes modern fires so devastating is just how many people live in the wild land/urban interface. People like to live in the woods. What might have once been hunting or line shacks are now multimillion dollar homes in fairly dense neighborhoods.
Every year (except this covid-19 year) my fire department in Sublette County (Wyoming) trains with BLM and Forest service firefighters to better integrate on initial attacks and fire fighting strategies. We always hold these trainings in important communities that typify the wild land/urban interface. Every year we cover the same problems: narrow roads!, limited water sources, poor home owner fire mitigation, and short-sighted home owners associations that restrict tree cutting close to homes. It is amazing how much land management around the home and neighborhoods can protect homes. My guess is that insurance companies will be the drivers to address the problems I listed.
A second factor is historical fire management practices by the Forest Service and short sighted viewpoints by some environmental groups (my personal opinion). Managed grazing, logging, and fires (letting more acres burn) can all be helpful devices to reducing under story growth and deadfall accumulation, as well as, contribute to road maintenance. I don't know about what the forests are like where you live, but most near me are dead fall messes with unnaturally close tree spacings (or so I'm told by range management experts). Grazing can be helpful, too. I've seen running fires stop dead at a forest grassy areas because it had been recently grazed by cattle. Grazing should not be eliminated but managed better. Right now out west we have a three way firing squads of ranchers, environmental groups, and federal land managers, all to the detriment of what each group wants to see - healthy rangelands and forests.
It seems like simple construction codes like flame proof roofs and siding would go a long way.
New Jersey does controlled burning of brush a few miles from my home in a fairly populated area. They burn into the wind so it moves slowly and they can control it. It's not in major woods.The Aborigines have been in Australia for 65,000 years and are the oldest continuous civilization [the Neanderthal started cave paintings 14,000 years ago.]. The Aborigines had been doing controlled burns over 40,000 years ago. Thus Australia did not have these large burns over the 65,000 year period until only very recently with the European take over. Controlled burns are small slow burning fires that do not get very hot. The mega fires burn very hot and sterilize the soil for decades. Obviously the Aborigines were doing something right. Read about controlled burns and other things the Aborigines did in Dark Emu: Black Seeds: Agriculture or Accident? by Bruce Pascoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Emu_(book)
You are right, especially with the roof, but so much more has to be done. Fire wood stacked near (or against the house), above ground porches used as storage of fuel, firewood, lumber, solvents, etc., trees close to the house. Trees close to the house should at least limbed at least six feet off the ground. How many houses in the west have you seen up slope of a forest. Without mitigation that house is a goner when fire starts running up the hill.It seems like simple construction codes like flame proof roofs and siding would go a long way.
That gets you going about 10 mph when the fire is coming at you at 60 mph.It seems like simple construction codes like flame proof roofs and siding would go a long way.
The other advantage of NJ and the east is we get a lot of rain. Even though homes may be surrounded by lots of woods and trees and brush, the climate is wetter than the west especially California which gets very hot and dry during long periods of every year. New York's Catskills and Adirondacks (6 million acres) and the Appalachians have huge forests. But you don't hear of these kinds of fires which hit the west every year.
Don't speak too soon. The main difference between the West and the East is the pine beetle, which doesn't die during warmer winter's, hence massive dead pine forests and giant fires even in Alberta, Canada. If those beetles get to the East, everything might change. What are ordinarily quite wet areas of Oregon burned this year. There are all kinds of unquestionable symptoms of accelerated global warming, including 90% of the glaciers I once knew now completely gone. There have been giant fires in Siberia. People were just let back in what was once my living room view of the San Joaquin Canyon. What survived were areas that had already burnt in the last two or three decades. Fortunately, most of that country is uninhabited. But when you're talking about a thermocumulus cloud 50,000 ft high generating internal fire tornadoes that can uproot large trees and incinerate them mid-air, that's a function of very steep terrain and wind patterns. In that case, a 20 foot wide fire break won't help much; maybe a 20 mile break, maybe not. Smaller fire tornadoes up toward the ski resort took out brand new lakeside houses almost instantly. My former property did fine, although that whole area itself had to be evacuated for weeks. A tiny shift in the wind, and hell can be at your doorstep. Finally blue sky today, so me, all the kittens n cats, even the tree squirrels, are lounging in the back yard enjoying it.
Oh, and we do not rake our forests.
Not beetles, drought.
Photojournalism as we knew it is dead. Newspapers are dying. Our local paper, the Sacramento Bee is moving out of their building to save money because the parent company McClatchy Newspaper went bankrupt. As for retouching pics, it’s verboten. Sac Bee has fired a photographer for photo manipulations.The fires out here in California are terrible...and I find that many of the still images I am seeing of fires here and elsewhere are just as terrible, from a photojournalistic viewpoint.
Way too much image manipulation. It is as if the media has decided the hell with reality (and photojounalisms ethics) and goes with what will draw the viewers' eyes to their news feed.
I have fought a few wildland fires and have a good idea of what they look like.
Edited to add -- sorry for the drama of the Post title, but I think I will keep it up there. Photojournalism is in a lot more trouble than moving a slider in Photoshop.
Did you click any of the red markers and then the image? The surveyors took photos of the destroyed buildings.Bill, I agree, that is an interesting and emotional way of looking at things. The maps don't have contour lines but the background shadowing implies/helps to understand the terrain. In some areas if you go in close, (I went in to 100m) at that scale you can sort of see the hills where on one side everything is gone, on the other side, everything appears to be there. Like in my country, the wind direction and the terrain you are situated on, can be the major factor.
Mick.
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