The Fires go on

[_canpakes]

With 76 people deadand nearly 1,300 unaccounted for and feared dead in California wildfires, President Donald Trumphad a word of advice about stopping future blazes: “Raking.”

“You’ve got to take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forest, very important,“ Trump noted Saturday surrounded by the devastation of the burned town of Paradise in northern California.

“I was with the president of Finland and he said, ‘We have a much different —we’re a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation, and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things. And they don’t have any problem. And when they do, it’s a very small problem.”

Critics were stumped by the raking solution.

They also pointed out the many extreme differences between warm, sunny, drought-stricken California with its annual destructive (and growing worse) fire seasons — and Finland, land of marshes, cold temperatures and snow. A quarter of the nation is within the Arctic Circle.

But even with the fire-preventing advantages of far colder temperatures and precipitation, Scandinavia and Finland were hit with serious fires this year due to unusually hot and dry conditions, which scientists attributed to climate change.

[_Jersey Girl]

“Prince Philip and I offer our deepest sympathies to the people of California, who continue to suffer from the devastating fires across the state,” the Queen’s statement read.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of the victims, and to all those who have lost their homes and livelihoods,” the statement continued. “I pay tribute to the courage and dedication of the US emergency services and the volunteers that have provided support.”

https://people.com/royals/queen-elizabe ... wildfires/

vs

"You’ve got to take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forest, very important. You look at other countries where they do it differently and it’s a whole different story,” Trump said to reporters while standing alongside California Governor-elect Gavin Newsom and California Gov. Jerry Brown.

“I was with the president of Finland and he said, ‘We have a much different—we're a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation, and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things,” Trump continued. “And they don't have any problem.”

“And when it is, it’s a very small problem, so I know everybody is looking at it to that end and it’s going to work out, it’s going to work out well,” the president said.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administra ... -floors-of

[_canpakes]

https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/wild ... t/10316400

Four months ago, in July of this year:

Firefighters are working round-the-clock to extinguish several wildfires in Finnish Lapland, while similar fires in Russia are within kilometers of the Finnish-Russian border.

On Saturday morning, Lapland Rescue Services said the situation in the eastern border municipality of Salla had worsened overnight.

"A quite strong fire in Salla's Kotala area is less than a kilometre away from the border. Sparks could ignite the Finnish side at any time," said Ari Soppela, the Lapland rescue unit's communications director.

A wildfire that crossed the border already at Raja-Jooseppi in Inari caused the border crossing between Finland and Russia to be shutdown Friday evening. The Border Guard has joined rescue services in the effort to put out the blaze, contributing a helicopter, several units and a band of conscripts.

Russia has informed the Finns that the fire has crossed the road connecting the cities of Lotta and Murmansk on the eastern side of the border, temporarily prohibiting traffic on the eastern side of the border crossing.

"We have several units that we have gathered from around Lapland working there, but we are trying to recruit even more people to help," Soppela said, mentioning the Oulu-Koillismaa rescue services and the Defence Forces specifically.

He is concerned that lightning strikes could start even more blazes in the area.

"They could escalate existing fires, or in the worst-case scenario, start new pockets of fire throughout Lapland. We have units throughout the area on alert," Soppela said.

He says fighting the Lapland fires has proved exceptionally difficult, as they have spread to large areas and they are in places that are difficult to reach.

Close call in Rovaniemi, Sweden battles over 80 blazes

Meanwhile, another wildfire moved dangerously close to Lapland's largest municipality of Rovaniemi on Friday afternoon, burning a six hectare area near the Santavaara district of the city. Rescue Services reports that the fire was within 100 metres of some dwellings before they successfully got the fire under control.

Fires are also ravaging Sweden after an unusually dry and warm spring and summer in northern Europe. As of Friday evening, 83 separate forest fires were estimated to be burning there.

Wildfires are burning out of control over very large areas near Brattsjö, Fågelsjö, Kårböle and Trängslet – all north of Stockholm. Up to 500 people have been evacuated and Swedish forest administrators say that over 58 million euros of forest has already gone up in smoke

Even after raking.

[_MeDotOrg]

Many Native Americans had raking ceremonies which they would perform to summon the rain Gods. The cleaning ceremonies summoned the Goddess of Tax Deductions and Payoffs.

We are also living through a seven year drought. That might have something to do with the situation.

[_moksha]

Trump has gone on record to proclaim, "We're going to have safe forests and we are going to have a great climate".

[_canpakes]

Before wide scale encroachment and habitation of forested areas such as California’s - with its unique environmental and geographic challenges - forest areas managed themselves just fine through regular and naturally-occurring wildfires. If we insist in planting our butts in harm’s way then the strategy for protecting folks within those areas becomes a bit more complex than Trump and his army of sycophantic simpletons imagine it to be.

One day of prescribed burning in the Tahoe National Forest offers a glimpse of the difficulties in completing these projects.

U.S. Forest Service wildland firefighters hacked a line into the earth, around a patch of land on the Yuba River District near Pendola, overlooking Bullard’s Bar for one day of work. A “hot shot” crew and crew members from two engine companies gathered for the day’s work.

“This day started a few years back,” Jennifer Hinckley laughs dryly. Hinckley is a fire and fuels specialist for the Tahoe National Forest. And she does a lot of paperwork: before the first torch even can drip fire on the ground, federal law requires extensive environmental review.

Even with approval, federal wildland managers waited months for the right weather and environmental conditions here. Hinckley says those criteria range from wind speed and temperature, to how much water is in the soil. It was a very wet spring; on-and-off rains created several months of delay here.

Thick vegetation in the understory is a limiting factor, too. Hinckley says her crews often need to chop and flatten vegetation to make safe conditions for burning.

Even when all of the stars align, Hinckley says she might not have warm bodies for the job. That happened last fall, when fires up and down the state kept fire crews hamstrung.

“I didn't have crews to perform prescribed burns," she says, "because the wildfires take priority.”

Even when the permit is done and the weather is right and crews are available, the air might already be too polluted to add more smoke to the mix. Air regulators grant permission for burn days, and it’s hard to get: regional atmospheric conditions mean that smoke from Sierra Nevada forests funnels toward the central valley, where air pollution is consistently bad.

Balancing Forest and Human Health

Whether from wildfire or planned burn, smoke feels like pollution to vulnerable lungs.

“The consequences are the same in terms of patient response,” says Fresno-based asthma and allergy specialist Praveen Budigga. “I mean, patients are going to have the same effects of the fire.”

State and regional air boards say they’re working to balance forest and human health.

"We have to protect public health; that's our mandate,” says Dar Mims, a meteorologist with the California Air Resources Board. “But we also recognize that we need burning in the forest, and a lot of those trade-offs have to happen in real time because the decisions have to be made—do we want to potentially impact the air basin, or do we want to burn.”

[_canpakes]

Trump has gone on record to proclaim, "We're going to have safe forests and we are going to have a great climate".

We can place as much stock in the value and seriousness of that claim as his pronouncement about violence, when he accepted the Republican nomination:

”I have a message for all of you: the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th 2017, safety will be restored.”

I’m sure that the fellow who thinks that climate change is a hoax, and that raking the forest floor will eliminate forest fires along with the human deaths associated with them, will do just as much of a bang up job on this problem as he has with violence in America.

[_Jersey Girl]

canpakes thank you for putting up relevant information. Some folks have no blessed idea what it takes to gain permission and time controlled burns and how hazardous a process controlled burns are to begin with since weather conditions can turn risky during the prescribed burn itself.

I think this one quote is also worth bringing forward.

“I didn't have crews to perform prescribed burns," she says, "because the wildfires take priority.”

There have been times when our Hot Shot crews supplied mutual aid to Cali and we've sent air support, however, it cannot do so when our own state requires coverage for wildfires. The same is true for other states that wish to provide mutual aid to Cali. There's a reason we have Hot Shot teams and super tanker availability out here--wildfires.

I think that one thing that Cali has in it's favor right now is the ability to drag the Pacific Ocean for additional water. When we burn out here, we have little to no water supply. Our firefighters have to truck in temporary reservoirs to hold water, fill and refill as needed. Our helicopter crews drag local ponds and lakes that are already low due to drought conditions.

It's simply unbelievable the massive and coordinated effort that take place and especially when you consider the fact that fires such as those in Cali, are widespread and starting all over the state in diverse sets of circumstances, each requiring it's own unique set of responses.

It is no wonder that there is a high rate of suicide within the community of firefighters who become overwhelmed while facing sustained and unfathomable danger, and fatigue.

[_Jersey Girl]

Thick vegetation in the understory is a limiting factor, too. Hinckley says her crews often need to chop and flatten vegetation to make safe conditions for burning.

I wanted to comment on the above, too. Our crews were filmed during one of the fires we had out here AS they were defending structures. The above is exactly what they do as the fire approaches structures. They do rake (this isn't support for Trump's meager and ignorant assertions) and create small fire breaks in the understory, they wet the ground, and continue to do the same as they back up to a house. While they are doing that, other members of the crew are nearing the house taking grills, furniture and anything other portable objects around the house and staging them in a pile of their own away from the house--that stack of objects is fuel for the fire. When it's positioned in one area, they can better defend the home.

What they don't want to see happen is for the fire to reach the home, embers getting under the eaves, or making contact with decking, wood mulch and furniture scattered around because that adds more fuel to the fire and increases the difficulty of successfully beating the fire at it's own game. Their goal is to stop the fire or reroute and contain it, before it ever reaches the structure.

I put the above here to serve as information for homeowners who might need to know how to prepare their properties and homes to better survive fire.

I don't believe that any of the above precautions would have helped Cali. It's too dry, too windy, too much, growing too fast, with too much available fuel to stop it.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Every_single_one of those homes, when being re-built, ought to be subject to strict fire-proofing standards.

I recall reading, years ago about the Oakland fires, about homes that were built smartly with the fire threat in mind that not only withstood these blazes, but did so magnificently.

- Doc