CA wildfires and prescribed burns
Most of the media finger-pointing by Trump and his cult has been about sullying Gavin Newsom as a presidential candidate in 2028. Trump and Fox don’t actually care about the reason for the fires (anthropogenic climate change) or how to mitigate the consequences.
Over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin Drum has a long but excellent summary of the history and challenges of controlled burns as a way to mitigate wildfire risk. I recommend you read the whole thing (link below) if you really care about the California fires and their implications.
Tl;dr?
“Bottom line: regulatory hurdles are real for both prescribed burns and mechanical treatments, but they aren’t the biggest obstacles by any means. The biggest impediments are public opposition, rising insurance costs, resource constraints, and the risk-averse views of forest managers, many of whom are still wary of prescribed burns. This is partly for technical reasons and partly out of fear. Only one out of a thousand prescribed burns gets out of control, but that’s enough.”
Why don’t we do more prescribed burning? An explainer. – Kevin Drum
Watch Duty is showing scheduled prescribed burns all over CA right now.
Standard practice for lightning fires is to let them burn unless or until they threaten structures. Some up the mountains burn for months until a good rain puts them out for good.
The areas that really need a good burn have too many people too close to make it possible without high risk. Clearing brush in a forest is labor intensive, and that means costly. Let Trump try to manage the federal lands the way he thinks they need to be managed before he tries to bully the state into managing theirs.
Hi Jane:
I was in Murphys California. My brother took me over to Calaveras Big Trees State Park to see the sequoias, It was Summer and they were doing burns in the park near the sequoias to eliminate the under growth. Not as many people and close houses around there. It sounds like the people who were burned out had under growth issues which was not taken care of. And then once it starts, it will jump from house to house. Thanks for the comment.