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I hope no one here is personally affected by the firestorms raging in california.I have a friend out there who is keeping a stocked dirtbike and a bugout bag ready.

if you're in california give us a sitrep free from media spin and let us know you're ok!

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They are still going on then?

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tneva82 wrote:
They are still going on then?

I've gotten the impression that wildfires in California are a year-round thing that you only hear about in summer because that's when it gets worse...
   
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On moon miranda.

I no longer live in CA, but I did most of my life. Some places have famously cold winters and snow, some places have infamous rainy seasons, some places have Tornadoes or Hurricanes, while CA always has a yearly fire season from late summer through fall, it is what it is. Preparing for fire evacuations was just a normal thing there. Not quite year round, but definitely a yearly season. When landscape like Chaparral goes dry later in the year, it's basically an entire biome made from matchsticks.

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tneva82 wrote:
They are still going on then?


I was under the impression that the current one has been going on for months now.
From my understanding, this is the second or third of these major fires in the past couple of years.

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Inside Yvraine

We have a designated fire season but the fires are getting stronger in scope and frequency every year.

The biggest part of the issue is climate change (we have been in perpetual drought for years now). Another contributing factor though is forest management. A lot of our rural areas have overgrown vegetation which, due to the drought, are just huge forests of tinder waiting for a spark. There's growing awareness about this issue but no easy solution. Most of the forestry in California is federal land, not state, and has to be managed on a federal level. A lot of the land is also on private property, which is a bureaucratic nightmare to try to do any large-scale operations on.
   
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Decrepit Dakkanaut




UK

Another issue, as far as I'm aware, is that for years they've also controlled and put out forest fires. The problem is parts of the ecosystem were designed to burn.


This has resulted in a huge build up of litter on the ground floor of the forests over huge areas. So now when a fire does take place its even worse than normal as it has no natural breaks from previous first and has a huge ready source of tinder dry material to feed it.

When you add global climatic change and the longer and drier dry season you amplify that issue many times over.




The other issue that has arisen is some species of plant coming under risk because without the fires their seeds don't germinate. Furthermore hotter and more intense fires do far more damage to the forest structure, so plants that would have weathered a "normal" fire are now being killed off or seriously damaged.



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On moon miranda.

 Overread wrote:
The problem is parts of the ecosystem were designed to burn.
This is absolutely true, many plant species reproduce best or only reproduce at all after fires.

That said, forests are only part of the issue. In southern CA, there are no forests, everything is insta-lite chaparral scrub.


This is what everything outdoors looked like to me as a kid. Grey-brown scrub on dirt as far as the eye could see.

Now imagine this landscape of purpose-built fire fuel, and stuff it to the gills with suburban housing tracts (most of which were constructed with grass lawns that can often no longer be routinely watered) and it's not hard to see where issues arise.

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Apparently a problem unique to this year is that usually CA uses it's prisoner population as nearly unpaid firefighters, and this year it's not really an option since those prisoners are coughing their lungs out.
   
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SoCal

 Matt Swain wrote:
I hope no one here is personally affected by the firestorms raging in california.I have a friend out there who is keeping a stocked dirtbike and a bugout bag ready.

if you're in california give us a sitrep free from media spin and let us know you're ok!


We were up near Big Bear when the fire near it started. It was like watching the evil clouds of a horror movie sweep across the sky. The ash and bad air has been a problem off and on since then.

Most of the places we used to go camping have burned down. My SIL has had a lot of lung issues, taking truly presidential doses of Prednisone, but other than that and her childhood happy places going up in smoke, we’re all safe and mostly healthy.

   
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My sister is in San Francisco proper. They're not at direct risk from the fires, but the smoke has been an issue since midsummer.

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The ecosystem is evolved to burn, and burn it will. Yeah global warming is making it worse but it's nothing we can't deal with. The nice thing about fires is they have a cooldown timer; a big fire can't hit the same area in consecutive years because the fuel hasn't grown back.

It is a bit morbid, but there's somewhat of an 'inside joke' for SoCal natives to intentally giggle at people who aren't native freak put over fires while we just carry on because they happen literally every year. And before someone brings up the tragedy of people losing their homes and so on, yeah that does suck a whole lot. But those people knew they were living with that risk and all but the dimest have evacuation plans for themselves. They also benefitted considerably from the cheaper land value.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/10/21 18:13:05


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United States

tneva82 wrote:
They are still going on then?


Fires rage 24/7 across the globe. Always have been.

You can read accounts of trailblazers 100, 200+ years ago who trekked across western united states, and their journals tell you that the air was opaque all day long, and that this was a normal state of affair in nature.

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 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The ecosystem is evolved to burn, and burn it will. Yeah global warming is making it worse but it's nothing we can't deal with. The nice thing about fires is they have a cooldown timer; a big fire can't hit the same area in consecutive years because the fuel hasn't grown back.

It is a bit morbid, but there's somewhat of an 'inside joke' for SoCal natives to intentally giggle at people who aren't native freak put over fires while we just carry on because they happen literally every year. And before someone brings up the tragedy of people losing their homes and so on, yeah that does suck a whole lot. But those people knew they were living with that risk and all but the dimest have evacuation plans for themselves. They also benefitted considerably from the cheaper land value.


Out of interest how on earth do you get house/contents insurance if you live in an area where there is a relatively high chance of everything you own being destroyed by fire? Is it that much cheaper that you would risk everything and also with the danger involved?

In the UK it's almost impossible to get insurance on housing that has been flooded even 20-30 years ago. People generally either live with it and have sandbags ready or you move - this has happened more in recent years, as construction (a lot more areas are now built up with housing) and changing weather patterns mean that flooding is more and more likely. But, you have to be pretty unfortunate to die in that of flooding (a lot of the time it's related to the accompanying storms, people being hit by falling trees or debris) - I would assume somewhat less dangerous than some of those fires you see in California, which I have to be honest look absolutely terrifying.

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UK

It might be how car insurance is since that is often a loss for many firms. So its offered to keep the economy and people going, but might get government subsidies/support or simply be a loss for the firm who then makes profits on other kinds of insurance.

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 BuFFo wrote:
tneva82 wrote:
They are still going on then?


Fires rage 24/7 across the globe. Always have been.

You can read accounts of trailblazers 100, 200+ years ago who trekked across western united states, and their journals tell you that the air was opaque all day long, and that this was a normal state of affair in nature.


Well yes but not in same area 24/365 in year now does it?

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 Pacific wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The ecosystem is evolved to burn, and burn it will. Yeah global warming is making it worse but it's nothing we can't deal with. The nice thing about fires is they have a cooldown timer; a big fire can't hit the same area in consecutive years because the fuel hasn't grown back.

It is a bit morbid, but there's somewhat of an 'inside joke' for SoCal natives to intentally giggle at people who aren't native freak put over fires while we just carry on because they happen literally every year. And before someone brings up the tragedy of people losing their homes and so on, yeah that does suck a whole lot. But those people knew they were living with that risk and all but the dimest have evacuation plans for themselves. They also benefitted considerably from the cheaper land value.


Out of interest how on earth do you get house/contents insurance if you live in an area where there is a relatively high chance of everything you own being destroyed by fire? Is it that much cheaper that you would risk everything and also with the danger involved?

In the UK it's almost impossible to get insurance on housing that has been flooded even 20-30 years ago. People generally either live with it and have sandbags ready or you move - this has happened more in recent years, as construction (a lot more areas are now built up with housing) and changing weather patterns mean that flooding is more and more likely. But, you have to be pretty unfortunate to die in that of flooding (a lot of the time it's related to the accompanying storms, people being hit by falling trees or debris) - I would assume somewhat less dangerous than some of those fires you see in California, which I have to be honest look absolutely terrifying.
Houses at high risk of burning mainly fall into two groups; small and rural where the most difficult part of evacuation is farm animals, or these huge villa places for rich people who don't want any other people living within half a kilometer. I can't say I have knowledge on how they go about insuring themselves but I imagine both cases are different from the norm. There is also a matter of fighting the fires; California has a massive, well funded, very experienced system of firefighters, bigger than that of most countires. When fires approach suburban areas with strong infrastructure it becomes easier for them to move around and access resources to fight them, something I imagine insurance companies find very reassuring.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/10/23 18:25:27


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Western Kentucky

tneva82 wrote:
They are still going on then?

California wildfires can quite literally burn year round due to the types of plants that grow there and the drought they're experiencing. I have a friend who worked there and was fighting fires on Christmas. Colorado has fires starting up right now, which is unheard of. Fire crews are dealing with negative temperatures at night and active fire behavior during the day, the winds are that bad. Climate has been trending hotter and dryer, whether you believe in climate change or not, the reality on the ground is that things are getting worse. For guys on the ground it doesn't really matter if it's just a dry spell or global warming, the end result is the same.

As for what all is causing the fires, sadly you really can't trust any one news source to get info on it. They're all kind of right but they'll usually only cover the causes that fit whatever agenda they're trying to push and will avoid anything that makes their side look bad. I know that sounds very "fake news" but if you'd worked in this field you would understand what I mean. It's not just climate change, or just mismanagement, or just lack of logging, or just people not properly preparing their homes for wildfire, or just restrictive state guidelines blocking necessary burns, or just red tape, or just hippies blocking necessary work, or just arsonists, or just the budget. It's all of it and many more issues combining into one absolute bear of a problem. Americans are being let down by leadership on both sides of the aisle because all people want to do is assign blame, actually getting together to fix the problem just doesn't happen once you get above the fire programs themselves.

This year in particular has been very rough on fire crews due to some extreme fire weather combined with covid. The large fire camps crews are used to are being avoided wherever possible, so many crews are reduced to camping in a dirt patch in the woods eating MRE's and going 14-21 days without a shower. Granted crews did this before covid too, but this was usually avoided where possible so crews could have at least some comfort while out on the line pulling 16 hour days. Key firefighter practices such as networking, face to face briefings, and working alongside crews from across the nation to learn new skills have all been brought to a virtual standstill, and many trainings and tests that bring in new firefighters are on hold as well. California in particular is hard hit because their prisoner crews who work for practically free are no longer available. Covid was the perfect wrench to take an already stressful job to the next level.

The best advice I can give people is do a lot of research and try to find info directly from fire organizations wherever possible. Their fire reports are supposed to be purely fact based because they're meant to be info for the firefighters on the ground. If you Google fires in your area, you should see an inciweb link like this one https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6964/ . This is done by fire leadership and will have good info. You don't see it for small fires but the big ones always get a tab. Also if you're on facebook look up the name of any major fires near you. Many command teams have embraced social networking for getting notices out and will often give you short and simple updates to keep you up to speed. That said, you should always be ready to move, even folks in Eastern states. Gatlinburg residents thought "that could never happen to me" and paid the price. Have a go bag with several days supplies packed ready to go, a plan, and keep aware of what's going on in your community at all times. If you live in a rural area, look up defensible space advice like https://www.readyforwildfire.org/prepare-for-wildfire/get-ready/defensible-space/ . Many homes, even in the path of extreme wildfires, could have been saved if they had followed this kind of advice. Hope that helps some and answers some questions.

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Americans are being let down by themselves in their refusal to understand that the overwhelming majority of times any given trend or event has multiple contributing causes. As much as there is valid blame to go on politics and media for feeding the public crap, the other side of the coin is the public's appetite for crap.

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SoCal

We had to leave the house due to the smoke in the air. Ash in raining down on us, even miles away towards the coast. 60,000 people were evacuated from Irvine, about two miles north east of use. We could see a wall of smoke, like fog, coming towards us.

   
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Gathering the Informations.

Worth mentioning that a big part really is relating to politics and the gross mishandling of public lands(and wildlife management in general...friend of my dad's was the lead biologist at Yellowstone in reintroducing the wolf population and is just livid every time one of his beautiful animals gets killed or people opine that it's the wolves that are the problem and not the "ranchers"(read: corporate farms) who don't properly secure their animals) and funding for it that is currently existing.

FFS, we had someone genuinely suggest raking the forest floor as a solution.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/10/27 03:44:13


 
   
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It'd be nice if the causes and solutions to our wildfires weren't issues that are so strongly politicized. Instead, people argue while homes burn every year.

Still, we have the best wildfire firefighters in the world, and plenty more badasses come in from out of state and sometimes even other countries. There are dudes who jump out of planes into the path of a fire armed with chainsaws and shovels.

Imagine that. Jumping out of a plane with a chainsaw. Into a fire.

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Southampton, UK

 Ouze wrote:
It's what the Finns do, as I understand it.



Not sure if serious, but just in case...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/19/make-america-rake-again-finland-trump-forest-fire
   
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 diznoid wrote:
It'd be nice if the causes and solutions to our wildfires weren't issues that are so strongly politicized. Instead, people argue while homes burn every year.

Still, we have the best wildfire firefighters in the world, and plenty more badasses come in from out of state and sometimes even other countries. There are dudes who jump out of planes into the path of a fire armed with chainsaws and shovels.

Imagine that. Jumping out of a plane with a chainsaw. Into a fire.
Not getting into politics, but Cali often just ignores the stuff coming out of Washington when it comes to state policy. Which is to say, certain comments about raking leaves have zero impact on leaves being raked.

Forest management isn't simple. Yellowstone thought they were doing right by fire management until it turned out that by preventing a bunch of small fires over the years they ended up causing a huge one; they accidentally made it worse. A big issue is the ecosystems involved want to burn. For example, some trees become more flammable as they age, because part of their life cycle is burning down to make room for their offspring to grow. Prevent them from burning and they just get bigger and more flammable. Worse still is if they go unburnt for too long then when they DO burn the fire is hot enough to kill the seeds that would have survived if the trees had burned earlier.

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UK

Another issue is that a lot of our natural ecosystem understandings are flawed on several key areas:

1) Lack of appreciation for long term cycle. School tends to give us the impression that natural cycles work like human years; everything happens within a year more or less. Natural cycles don't and some might operate over decades, generations and centuries. So when we see a short term change we assume its bad, when in actuality its just part of a longer term cycle.
Deer in Yellowstone is one such cycle that, looking at the past catch/kill rates, suggests there's a very long cycle of rising and then falling populations even without wolves being part of the process*. From what I recall the wolves got introduced at the same time as there was a predicted natural dip in deer populations. So abundant stories from grandparents who grew up in a rising population are now met with new generations seeing a dip and they equate it to wolves taking the kills.

2) Natural is a bit of a false term. Humans have been modifying habitats for so long now that many natural systems are actually human created systems. Savanna ecosystems are almost totally man-made environments and when native populations are stopped from slash and burn practices the savanna starts to advance into woodland.
Similarly areas of large healthland in the UK weren't natural but were managed by generations of peasant harvesting for fuel.
Those systems did ecologically work though because they'd been like that for so many hundreds of years. The system had found a balancing point (plus all our data/experiences relate to them so we've no earlier data point until you get to really historical ecosystems).

3) Generations of "instinct" and religious based scientific understanding falsities. Victorians were notable for this, but its been around for a long while and still persists. We even still use instinct as a term.
Thing is any group doing wildlife reintroduction fast learns that many animals are not pre-programmed. They have to learn and adapt and if they don't get key experiences and instruction at a young age, they will ultimately fail to survive. If we extrapolate that out to wild populations it means that behaviour of animals isn't a fixed concept; they can adapt, change and shift. Which works in a shifting natural ecosystem which gets back to that concept that the natural world is not a static entity. Indeed often enough many species require disturbance to thrive. There's a good few plant species that need the ground torn up with trampling rather than carefully mown and harvested each year


*predators don't really regulate prey species; if anything its a duel process of joint regulation, especially if a predator has one key prey species

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Gathering the Informations.

 Overread wrote:

*predators don't really regulate prey species; if anything its a duel process of joint regulation, especially if a predator has one key prey species

Without wanting to go too crazy, they absolutely do. But it isn't just a case of them "killing the overpopulation".
Spoiler:


It's not just them regulating the prey species--it's regulating the damage that prey species can do if left unchecked. It's preventing disease from spreading in those prey species. If you want something interesting to read about Yellowstone, "Can't Chew the Leather Anymore" by P.J. White is my suggestion for you.
   
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I actually just watched a NOVA special on how predators regulate prey species. Turns out a huge part is not the minority they kill, it is the behavior shift they cause. A deer with its head up to look for threats is not eating. Open areas with good grass are suddenly a liability. Even when predator kills are accounted for the population growth of prey is decreased--they ALL have to spend more effort avoiding the predators.

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UK

Aye behaviour patterns shift. It's more that many think that predators eat/kill enough prey to lower populations significantly; when in actuality its more that there's often a balance.

Snowshoe hares and Lynx show an almost ideal case study; as lynx populations expand, hares reduce; then as hares reduce lynx then reduce which allows hares to increase.

So in the long term the Lynx isn't maintaining lower population numbers of hare; the hare is just as much maintaining low lynx numbers. It just depends at what point in the cycle you look at it. It's only long term that you see its a balance. It's a good simple case study since many other predators will often shift target prey; plus migration patterns can also create complications.

In general the only predatory species that actually destroys its own food sources are humans and invasive non-native species (ergo species introduced to a new region through artificial means or major climatic shifts).



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Wait....so doe that mean that the gak my scout master was peddling about hunting controlling animal populations wasnt true?
Serious question, because that always seemed off to me.

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