FU*K FIRE

[rogdeb]

Extremely sad..

 

[Bugnatr]

I'm in the SoCal desert this weekend, just checked the news. 23 dead and over 100 missing. Heartbreaking.

 

[Uncle Hud]

My oldest boy, living in Santa Clara, sent smoke-filled photos of his commute. Hes at least 300 miles away from the fire.

Prayers and my strongest good vibes sent west.

 

[Hudson]

The Rock Store, Neptune’s Net, and many other places survived. Three friends had no damage but one other friend lost his home.

This was is a devastating fire.

 

[Tyler]

The Rock Store, Neptune’s Net, and many other places survived. Three friends had no damage but one other friend lost his home. This was is a devastating fire.

The town of Paradise is gone... completely... then the Thousand Oaks shooting followed by the fires down there... my heart hurts...

 

[BanjoBoy]

Mah parents dun moved to Paradise over 20 yrs ago, 'n we liked the area so much, we bought a crib up in Magalia, 5 yrs ago. Been fixing it up, 'n plan'in to move there soon. (Or not?)

Wuz talk'in to Pa last Tuesday 'n he was tell'in me there wuz a fire near by, when his brave, noble, neighbor came a run'in in say'in; "the 'hood's ablaze, we gotta go!!!"

My 90 yr old parents tried to follow him out in their own car, but soon they got split up in all the smoke and fire. Neighbor Rick got down to where it wuz safe 'n clear, and waited, but parents never showed up.

Parents had a cell phone we got 'em, but they never use it. (Fuckers!) All day long we were try'in to locate 'em, at shelters 'n stuff but no luck. My brother sent his 20 something yr old son 'n daughter up there, and they finally located 'em at the Chico Marriott. Now they're stay'in with mah bro down in Pleasant Hill. Phew!

Most like their crib's gone, thought ours wuz too, but my cop neighbor texted me 'n said our places are still standing, butt it's devastation all 'round. He also predicted the death toll will much likely exceed 100. Hope he's wrong.

Oh, and I live in Santa Rosa, where I went through this nightmare last year.

Thanks PG&E

 

[Bugnatr]

Easy on the PG&E, everyone who complains about them has power. I have seen real progress in how they maintain their grid system here in the foothills but a real fact of life is you can't "out build" mother nature in the forest. If we/they cut every tree within 150 feet of a power line there would not be many (if any) trees in most towns and populated rural areas. I've watched California double in population over the last 35 years while the forests continue to be mismanaged and left to burn.

Should we ban cars too? It was a car that started the Carr fire in Redding this summer.

With climate change (let's not go into the cause but it IS changing) we need to rethink fire prevention. Perhaps someday all power lines will be underground but until then we are going to be subject to these catastrophic events. Instead of large fines against the company I suggest that money should to go into system upgrades. All the large fines do is make our power rates go up with increased rates. Unlike the state, the power company does not have unlimited source of money.

 

[gregory]

Banjoboy,

Glad to hear your folks made it out ok. Sadly, I think your cop friend is going to be right.

 

[Uncle Hud]

Out of likes, but I'm glad your folks are OK, BanjoBoy.

a snippet from what Bugnatr posted: ... you can't "out build" mother nature in the forest.

Truth is, you can't outbuild Mother Nature in any environment without a metric shitpile of money. Ask your Florida cousins after a hurricane or New Englanders after a bad nor'easter.

Having said that, I do not understand why utility companies continue to build overhead lines in fully developed areas. For example, why are there overhead power/cable/telephone wires in old Atlanta neighborhoods? It's not like you need access to the lines to add new customers.

Especially in areas subject to ice storms, hurricanes, or falling trees, why aren't utility lines underground in the public right-of-way?

Not trying to beat up anybody -- especially the Bug Man -- and don't really expect an answer. Just trying to plant a seed of thought into FJR-owning brainiacs who might have some sway in public utility decisions.

 

[TomInPA]

The suspected cause of this fire may be a 115 kva transmission line or tower that reported a short 20 minutes before the the Camp Fire was reported. Aerial observations later that day revealed damage to a tower. These kinds of transmission lines are prohibitive, and possibly impossible to bury in mountainous terrain, and require cooling systems and above ground structures that still pose risks. PG&E already has incredibly high electric rates four times higher than we pay here in the east. Local distribution lines are often buried, but you cannot bury the transmission grid.

 

[BanjoBoy]

Easy on the PG&E, everyone who complains about them has power. I have seen real progress in how they maintain their grid system here in the foothills but a real fact of life is you can't "out build" mother nature in the forest. If we/they cut every tree within 150 feet of a power line there would not be many (if any) trees in most towns and populated rural areas. I've watched California double in population over the last 35 years while the forests continue to be mismanaged and left to burn.
Should we ban cars too? It was a car that started the Carr fire in Redding this summer.

With climate change (let's not go into the cause but it IS changing) we need to rethink fire prevention. Perhaps someday all power lines will be underground but until then we are going to be subject to these catastrophic events. Instead of large fines against the company I suggest that money should to go into system upgrades. All the large fines do is make our power rates go up with increased rates. Unlike the state, the power company does not have unlimited source of money.

I love you Dougie, (Most charming riding and dining companion.) butt stand by what I say **** PG&E!!!

I went through this shit last year in SR, which was the worst fire in the state's history, but was nothing compared to Paradise. (PG&E's gross negligence did make our property value go up, they're still crooks!)

Drought, over population, building towns in forests, are contributing factors, and if it were a lighting strike that caused this, so be it. BUT PG&E caused this, the Napa, Glenn Ellen, and Santa Rosa fires.

They're a public utility, when there's a problem, but for profit when times are good, and totally irresponsible at all times. Glad to see they're going down, too bad the state won't hold the honchos financially, or criminally responsible.

They blew up a bunch of people in San Bruno, they burnt down a quarter of Santa Rosa Killing 24, and now most of Paradise is in ruins killing at least 56; these are not accidents, or acts of nature, these things are gross criminal negligence.

Because a shithead in a motor home started the Carr fire in Redding doesn't mean we should ban cars, butt I'd be real happy if they banned shitheads from driving.

And, by the way, they've been clear cutting our neighborhood for a couple months now; most incompetent, pathetic workers I've ever seen in my life!

 

[gregory]

The Carr fire was started by a tire blowout on a trailer, causing the rim to spark as it ground down on the pavement.

 

[TomInPA]

Easy on the PG&E, everyone who complains about them has power. I have seen real progress in how they maintain their grid system here in the foothills but a real fact of life is you can't "out build" mother nature in the forest. If we/they cut every tree within 150 feet of a power line there would not be many (if any) trees in most towns and populated rural areas. I've watched California double in population over the last 35 years while the forests continue to be mismanaged and left to burn.
Should we ban cars too? It was a car that started the Carr fire in Redding this summer.

With climate change (let's not go into the cause but it IS changing) we need to rethink fire prevention. Perhaps someday all power lines will be underground but until then we are going to be subject to these catastrophic events. Instead of large fines against the company I suggest that money should to go into system upgrades. All the large fines do is make our power rates go up with increased rates. Unlike the state, the power company does not have unlimited source of money.

I love you Dougie, (Most charming riding and dining companion.) butt stand by what I say **** PG&E!!!

I went through this shit last year in SR, which was the worst fire in the state's history, but was nothing compared to Paradise. (PG&E's gross negligence did make our property value go up, they're still crooks!)

Drought, over population, building towns in forests, are contributing factors, and if it were a lighting strike that caused this, so be it. BUT PG&E caused this, the Napa, Glenn Ellen, and Santa Rosa fires.

They're a public utility, when there's a problem, but for profit when times are good, and totally irresponsible at all times. Glad to see they're going down, too bad the state won't hold the honchos financially, or criminally responsible.

They blew up a bunch of people in San Bruno, they burnt down a quarter of Santa Rosa Killing 24, and now most of Paradise is in ruins killing at least 56; these are not accidents, or acts of nature, these things are gross criminal negligence.

Because a shithead in a motor home started the Carr fire in Redding doesn't mean we should ban cars, butt I'd be real happy if they banned shitheads from driving.

And, by the way, they've been clear cutting our neighborhood for a couple months now; most incompetent, pathetic workers I've ever seen in my life!

That picture is classic example of the problem The density of trees, connected canopy and abundant fire ladders, in a residential area. Fire is inevitable, and while I have seen much worse examples of poor vegetation management, this image shows an area wit a lot of remaining work. When I lived in Pollock Pines I remember doing a timber harvest on our acreage property, selling the timber to Michigan California Lumber, and clearing the understory to 20 feet. When we were done, the forest that was so thick you had to push through with your arms protecting your face from all the stunted Cedar and undergrowth, was an open parkland with about 10 trees per acre, a fire/ skid road, and an open skid pad we used for a horse arena. I used to open burn across the forest floor to keep down duff and consume regrowth. Today, there are no timber companies to log and subsidize land clearing, burn permits are restrictive and hard to get, and the undergrowth has returned.

Not too many people living in rural areas of CA comprehend how much work it takes, and how aggressively vegetation must be managed to make an area fire-safe. Fire has always been here, and we can blame PG$E, climate change, the Forest Service and government, but nothing will change unless private individuals in rural communities areas aggressively clear fuels, then keep them managed with the expectation fire will come. It's expensive hard work, but it take one neighbor to neglect his land to burn yours. People here want to live in the forest and be screened from seeing their neighbors. They cultivate Manzanita and Hazel like shrubbery, and plant along the foundations under roof overhangs. That is a recipe for the disaster we are now seeing unfold.

 

[Bugnatr]

Andy, nothing personal as I enjoy your company as well but I do not wish to see PG&E go down. Tom in PA is right about vegetation management, it's a problem that most folks don't want to deal with. Believe me, I'm in the business of vegetation management and I hear people crying about tree cutting all the time.

Glad to see they're going down, too bad the state won't hold the honchos financially, or criminally responsible. What about the Oroville Dam disaster, that never should have happened except due to gross mismanagement by the State of Ca and now we have a 1 billion plus dollar repair bill for the tax payer.

You sound like the guy driving a car to a big oil protest. We all need affordable power and with that comes human errors that will cause fires.

No one can out build mother nature and this state was made to burn....sucks eh?

 

[FJRBluesman]

All very sad with loss of life and property. My sister and bro-in-law in Magalia and my cousin and his wife in Paradise are displaced. Thank God their homes are okay but neighbors lost theirs. My sister's next door neighbor lost his place and almost got my sisters place. May be many months before they can go live in their homes due to infrastructure issues. Just so sad for so many.

 

[BanjoBoy]

Andy, nothing personal as I enjoy your company as well but I do not wish to see PG&E go down. Tom in PA is right about vegetation management, it's a problem that most folks don't want to deal with. Believe me, I'm in the business of vegetation management and I hear people crying about tree cutting all the time.
Glad to see they're going down, too bad the state won't hold the honchos financially, or criminally responsible. What about the Oroville Dam disaster, that never should have happened except due to gross mismanagement by the State of Ca and now we have a 1 billion plus dollar repair bill for the tax payer.

You sound like the guy driving a car to a big oil protest. We all need affordable power and with that comes human errors that will cause fires.

No one can out build mother nature and this state was made to burn....sucks eh?

Sorry 'bout yer stocks Doug!

You're a businessman, I'm a business man, see picture above; 15 guys, 3 days to cut down a couple peuny little cedars. I couldn't run my business like that, and neither could you.

Since we bought the place 5 years ago, I've had a bunch of trees removed, (Creating a defensible space in back, prolly saved us?) and the Arborist I use has two guys; one 68 yr old scampers up the tree, limbing as he goes, and a 30 something tr old on the ground hauling debris. Then the old guy bucks it into 16" pieces on his way back down. They'd do 2 or 3 trees like that in a day. This is just a tiny little snap shot of the incredible waste, mismanagement, and irresponsibility PG&E is.

How'd you know I drive my '69 GTO to the big oil protests?

 

[BanjoBoy]

All very sad with loss of life and property. My sister and bro-in-law in Magalia and my cousin and his wife in Paradise are displaced. Thank God their homes are okay but neighbors lost theirs. My sister's next door neighbor lost his place and almost got my sisters place. May be many months before they can go live in their homes due to infrastructure issues. Just so sad for so many.

My parents crib...

 

[rogdeb]

Dislike ^^^^^^^^ :-((

 

[exskibum]

Having just finished (2 days ago) my ass kickingly large 9 month long defensible space project, I'm still in fear of fire, of insurance cancellation, of unaffordable premium hikes. (FWIW, on my SS income, I paid for and worked hard on not only my place, but my non-participating neighbors' places related to the private road that gives emergency egress and ingress.)

TomInPA described a level of clearance on his Pollock Pines property that does indeed sound protective, but WHO IN HOLY HELL CAN AFFORD (in time and money) TO DO THAT?!?!?! And what are the chances (0.0125% ?) that one's neighbors would do the same? Tom knows this stuff well enough to know that the specifics of each property make some properties feasible for timber harvests (the subsidy for affordability), but not for others (topography, access, timber types and specimens, etc.) - it must pencil out a profit to fly, and in my neighborhood it's highly unlikely to do that.

We have too many people, too many who have moved the boundaries (me included) of residential use into wildlands, and too little available resources to do what is necessary to truly mitigate this risk. Our market based society facilitates and encourages this - I can't move here without the developers/subdividers, realtors, insurers, financiers making it possible in return for a profit that, typically, does not account for all the costs associated with the product.

To say that this is HUGE JOB even on a 1 or 2 acre property is an understatement (I did ~ 3 of my 6.4 acres). And some/much terrain isn't susceptible even to getting a masticator in to do the work. Moreover, brush and lower lying vegetation aren't useful to timber operation removal, since the vegetation to be removed isn't saleable. And even then, a lot of the fires we've had (e.g., around Clear Lake, Napa, Santa Rosa, southern California, and the interface of brush/scrub to forest in the Sierra Foothills) have begun and raged in that kind of non-forest vegetation that is even more explosive than the timber it can and does set ablaze when it reaches those trees.

In the Rockies, regular rainfall in the summer afternoons mitigates runaway fire (some) in a way we just don't see out here where we often see months at a time without ANY precipitation in the summer after a winter of precipitation irrigating vegetation/fuel growth.

Using fire to control the build-up of fuel is a great concept, but NOT unless it can be controlled. If my neighbor tried that next door with what he has failed to do as a preliminary step, I'd make sure I rescued at least one firearm from my safe for his ass after watching my place become ash.

We're all great at blaming someone, so it ain't our faults and we can smile in the idiot belief that we're better than those we blame. But that's horseshit nonsense! We have a society that keeps growing, insists on individual rights to do whatever the hell we want, externalizes costs so we can afford the piece we have (yeah, me included), and then when some shit hits the fan, we only consider a fraction of the causal factors.

So, there's no climate change. Commercial timber harvests are a panacea. The company (or the homeowner whose lawnmower sparked on a rock) whose negligence was the ignition source did it all. Anyone who fails to clear their property is the cause. Government funding of preventative measures is bad because it requires the use of tax dollars. And on and on and on. What - the -fock - ever!

This is a rolling tragedy, but let's make sure we put politics first and take polar positions behind our well heeled but useless non-leaders. They stay in office while they fail to address the tough problems since they do such a good job for the donors that own them. And yes: we get what we so richly deserve.

Sincere condolences to those who are the victims of these tragedies, whether some piece of the blame can be attributed to them or not.

 

[jammess]

Bury high voltage long haul transmission lines?? Good luck with that impossible and not at all cost effective undertaking.

Approximately 82% of wild land fires are human caused. Maybe it's time to get serious about restricting unnecessary human activity in wild land interface areas altogether as in locked gates with very limited access. I mean there's what..forty million people living in CA and bazillions of them want to recreate in the boonies? Maybe it's high time to restrict humans from building homes in the interface areas as well as in not allowed at all!

Another thing that really irritates me is using federal wild land fire fighting equipment and personnel to do structural fire fighting and protection at all. People that presently live in wild land interface areas need to be required by law to purchase fire insurance and be self reliant. These folks should also be subject to annual property inspection and be required to maintain their properties to prevent fire as much as possible.

I would also like to see federal agencies like the USFS and BLM staffed up with necessary full time employees to increase effectiveness in properly managing our public lands. They could do things like trail maintenance as well as fire lookout construction and rehabilitation instead of relying on remote lightening detection systems and satellite imaging technology. In the PNW hundreds of fire lookouts have been abandoned or simply torn down. The federal incident command system that relies on sending fire fighters from all over this country to fight fires is not, imo, the best way to manage resources and get the job done. More trained local personnel on the federal payroll could respond much faster and more effectively to local fire incidents the way it was done in the past prior to about 1985.

There is no doubt that wild fire season is several months longer than in the past mostly due to our warming planet and this is not theory but fact and to deny this fact is a fool's errand.