Those things don't make sense to me. We chose to not know what gender our kids were until they were born.
West Coast fires
- Thread starter simply1
- Start date
Those things don't make sense to me. We chose to not know what gender our kids were until they were born.
Sky looks red, so some kind of demon spawn?
I was backpacking in Stanislaus National Forest just north of Yosemite over Labor Day.
Hiked 6 miles in Friday afternoon, another 10 miles in on Saturday. Saturday around 6pm the sky and sun got really orange and an hour later ash started falling. We were too far out and too exhausted to hike all 16 miles back late that night with pretty full packs, so we camped and then hiked the full 16 back a day early to get out by 3PM Sunday (quite a workout above 9000k). On Monday they closed that park and other national forests.
In the morning when I woke up I could see a film of ash on the lakes, was able to get water from running streams instead although I'm guessing my filter would have been fine in the ash coated lake. When I went to take a leak on a bush it seemed like tons of little bugs swarming me but it was the ash flying up that had evenly coated everything. I think we may have had very minor smoke inhalation the night we slept, was never near a fire but everything we took with us smells like a campfire. Probably similar to the smoke inhalation from a campfire or bonfire.
The air quality was no different than where we live when we left and seemed fine first day, situation got much worse second day.
Hiked 6 miles in Friday afternoon, another 10 miles in on Saturday. Saturday around 6pm the sky and sun got really orange and an hour later ash started falling. We were too far out and too exhausted to hike all 16 miles back late that night with pretty full packs, so we camped and then hiked the full 16 back a day early to get out by 3PM Sunday (quite a workout above 9000k). On Monday they closed that park and other national forests.
In the morning when I woke up I could see a film of ash on the lakes, was able to get water from running streams instead although I'm guessing my filter would have been fine in the ash coated lake. When I went to take a leak on a bush it seemed like tons of little bugs swarming me but it was the ash flying up that had evenly coated everything. I think we may have had very minor smoke inhalation the night we slept, was never near a fire but everything we took with us smells like a campfire. Probably similar to the smoke inhalation from a campfire or bonfire.
The air quality was no different than where we live when we left and seemed fine first day, situation got much worse second day.
We got some massive east winds which blew some trees down and power lines, dropped humidity to dangerously low levels. Some arson, not sure we'll know the causes on a lot. Accidental human stuff.
living in southern Oregon, this is the worst it has "blown up" in this area in the 23 years I have lived here. The cool front that pushed through Monday night brought some serious winds, and between accidents and arson, gave birth to these fires. Its pretty bad in the state this week. Rumors are going around that some if not a number of the fires the past 48 hours have been set, but not sure if thats all true or not. Its been super dry and the wind really made conditions ideal, no matter what the source...
We have family in Montana and Oregon. Yesterday the Oregon (Corvallis) family stayed inside all day, and the car was backed out in the driveway so the kids could play in the garage instead of outdoors. SIL wore a mask just to stand in his doorway and show us the ash/soot around and on the car. Said it was awful.
These fires have a lot of causes, so do the rolling blackouts that are related.
One cause is climate change. Not necessarily the political hot button type of climate change. When many of these areas were first populated, it was a record period for rainfall. We now know from historical data that the current drought is closer to the average state of things for a lot of the west, particularly southern California. Of course, the other cause being huge populations in deserts with drinking water brought in from hundreds of miles away, causing droughts in areas which would normally not have issues.
Another is tough environmental regulations. It's difficult to get approval through the Californa "CEQA" process to do things like cut trees, do controlled burns, or other fire preventative maintenance to keep from having large forest fires on an annual basis. My understanding (last time I read up on this stuff) is that funding is there, but various issues prevent the necessary work from being done. Another factor is probably public pressure - people don't like to see trees being cut down.
Finally, tie in PG&E's poor maintenance practices and their lack of tree trimming which led to them being found liable for a fire that caused billions of dollars of damage. This led to them implementing their new policy: whenever the wind blows, de-energize all power lines at risk of tree contact. It reduces the risk of forest fire, but doesn't exactly win any friends.
What do we do about it? Other than moving tens of millions of people out of deserts in California and Arizona, I guess the best option is environmental policy reform to allow certain activities with simplified permits. Do a one time "bail out" of PG&E in the form of public funding for tree clearing to stop the de-energizing policy. Add state or federal tree clearing rules for utilities in fire prone areas to prevent future lack of maintenance. Current federal tree clearing rules do exist and have teeth, but apply only to the highest voltage lines. In these fire prone areas they should reach down to all voltage levels.
One cause is climate change. Not necessarily the political hot button type of climate change. When many of these areas were first populated, it was a record period for rainfall. We now know from historical data that the current drought is closer to the average state of things for a lot of the west, particularly southern California. Of course, the other cause being huge populations in deserts with drinking water brought in from hundreds of miles away, causing droughts in areas which would normally not have issues.
Another is tough environmental regulations. It's difficult to get approval through the Californa "CEQA" process to do things like cut trees, do controlled burns, or other fire preventative maintenance to keep from having large forest fires on an annual basis. My understanding (last time I read up on this stuff) is that funding is there, but various issues prevent the necessary work from being done. Another factor is probably public pressure - people don't like to see trees being cut down.
Finally, tie in PG&E's poor maintenance practices and their lack of tree trimming which led to them being found liable for a fire that caused billions of dollars of damage. This led to them implementing their new policy: whenever the wind blows, de-energize all power lines at risk of tree contact. It reduces the risk of forest fire, but doesn't exactly win any friends.
What do we do about it? Other than moving tens of millions of people out of deserts in California and Arizona, I guess the best option is environmental policy reform to allow certain activities with simplified permits. Do a one time "bail out" of PG&E in the form of public funding for tree clearing to stop the de-energizing policy. Add state or federal tree clearing rules for utilities in fire prone areas to prevent future lack of maintenance. Current federal tree clearing rules do exist and have teeth, but apply only to the highest voltage lines. In these fire prone areas they should reach down to all voltage levels.
Yep they're stupid and then this type of thing goes down or someone gets injured by whatever they used for the 'boom!' segment of the party, like it needed to be worse.
I work (for 2 more weeks anyway) for a Spokane-based utility and we just had 2 complete towns destroyed by fire south of Spokane. We also serve the Medford/Ashland, OR area and fires swept through there before we could isolate our natural gas distribution system so when the houses were destroyed, all that's left is blowing gas from our still-energized distribution system.
Yeah, some idiot in San Bernardino saw Iowa's pipe bomb murder gender reveal last year and decided to one up it with a 10,000 acre wildfire reveal.
Talk about starting out life with a disadvantage...imagine your parents killed people and/or destroyed communities to announce your birth.
Might not want to mention that to the kid. That could take quite a bit of therapy to work through.
So raking them isn't the answer?
Spending 30-50 days a year out in the Sierras I get a real kick out of the idea that we could rake the entire massive thing.
This makes more sense for southern california than northern california and OR\WA. Even then, Southern California is undoubtedly hotter and drier than it has been due to human-caused global climate change.
Keep your political bs out of here. Talk about the topic.
Not so fast. My parents had cousins in Bakersfield who were engineers for the SWP back in the 60's. There is a reason why they did this. California is two climates...arid and temperate. The idea.....was to make sure the "arid" climate was able to sustain itself through the "dryer" years. This was 60 years ago. A huge project, larger than the Central Valley Water project. I was very young when we went to visit them years later, but remember them telling us youngsters there is a reason why Mr. Redwood, who is 400 years old, and his ancestors, who lived there thousands of years, grew up in the central and northern parts of Cali.....but not the south.
As for this year.......the last 6 years Cali has been drowning. Which means a ton of vegetation. And not grass like here in Iowa. We get a grass fire in dry years when there is a spark. We are talking trees. And northern Cali does have dry spells. It happens. The only reason humans would carry blame is if they lit the fire.
That's true if they chopped down all the trees there wouldn't be forest fires. Not probably the best solution for the planet.
