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Forest fires choking us to death


AnchorSteam

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This is what it looks like where I live -

https://www.tripcheck.com/TextPages/CAMdetail.asp?camRoute=I-5&camName=I-5 at Medford - Barnett Road/2535

 

All of that is smoke from the forest fires. We get this every year... but it keeps getting worse every year. They say we are worse than Beijing now, with a 450 out of 1,000 on some index where 1.000 is killing you pretty damn fast.

 

This is probably the worst of it, but there are other hot-spots.

http://projects.oregonlive.com/wildfires/map#6/45.462/-116.595

 

It seems that the more land the GOvt takes over, the more loggers they evict, and the more access roads that they destroy, the worse every fire gets. The really big fires are not part of the natural cycle, either. They burn so hot now that they leave a Moonscape behind them, as was the case in Yellowstone. 

Something needs to be done, and at this point we really don't care what it is. 

Maybe it's time to impeach a Governor... and all her minions.

Edited by AnchorSteam
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Yeah the air has been pretty bad here too for about the last month, first due to fires in British Columbia and now from the cascade mountains.  Yesterday there was ash on cars from fires burning 100 miles away,  I have a view of the space needle from my house and could barely see it this morning.  I've had a headache and itchy eyes for the last three days.  Sucks man.

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Ban the sale of fireworks. I mean this, combined with the numerous injuries during 4th of July celebrations and New Year's celebrations, should be a good indication that they shouldn't be sold.

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25 minutes ago, OverSword said:

Yeah the air has been pretty bad here too for about the last month, first due to fires in British Columbia and now from the cascade mountains.  Yesterday there was ash on cars from fires burning 100 miles away,  I have a view of the space needle from my house and could barely see it this morning.  I've had a headache and itchy eyes for the last three days.  Sucks man.

The smoke choked out Alberta during the initial few weeks, it's come and gone since then. I've been cracking jokes about Marijuana officially being legalized in Canada next year :rolleyes:

Word is that the fires have continued spreading down the coast, LA is currently in the middle of their biggest forest fire in decades...not good man. With the right conditions, it's damn near unstoppable

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We had some cool sunsets here in Iowa from the smoke from the west coast and Montana fires.  Plays heck with allergies though.

Cousin just said that there was a big one just 15 miles from her house.  Some kid threw firecrackers off a cliff. http://katu.com/news/local/its-just-plain-not-safe-new-spot-fires-ignite-in-the-columbia-river-gorge

Harvey pretty much downplayed the fact that the whole of the west coast seemed to be on fire.  Old Air Force buddy was posting pictures of "Ash Snow" that was falling near his house in Portland. 

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We are getting it from here in BC and it coming up from the US.  Forecast is for rain.  I hope we get a monsoon to take out some if these fires. 

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2 hours ago, glorybebe said:

We are getting it from here in BC and it coming up from the US.  Forecast is for rain.  I hope we get a monsoon to take out some if these fires. 

For the big fires it will take snow, and even then they can smolder all winter as root fires.

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17 minutes ago, Likely Guy said:

For the big fires it will take snow, and even then they can smolder all winter as root fires.

It is so horrible here right now I would take snow early

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So, this is happening all over the place, and it really is unusually bad.

What can we do?

My last look at that cam (first link up above) makes me wonder, had Beijing ever been that bad? Like, unable to read a freeway sign from 100 feet away?

Storms are forecast for tomorrow, but ... lots of lightning too.
It will probably do more damage than it helps.

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With us, over 75% of the 150 (? lost count) fires in B.C. were human caused.  Cigarette butts and campfires even with warnings everywhere.  And in my area there were 4 "suspicious" fires set.  One had numerous homes lost to it.  The first local fire happened when we were in the middle of a flood!  This has been one heck of  rotten summer.  

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As the planet is getting hotter, there are more forest fires. It's worse than it has ever been.

That's not from too much regulation, it's from not enough regulation and too many people. 

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14 hours ago, glorybebe said:

With us, over 75% of the 150 (? lost count) fires in B.C. were human caused.  Cigarette butts and campfires even with warnings everywhere.  And in my area there were 4 "suspicious" fires set.  One had numerous homes lost to it.  The first local fire happened when we were in the middle of a flood!  This has been one heck of  rotten summer.  

Get tough on the arsonists, charge them with attempted murder too.

 

5 hours ago, ChaosRose said:

As the planet is getting hotter, there are more forest fires. It's worse than it has ever been.

That's not from too much regulation, it's from not enough regulation and too many people. 

I very seriously disagree with that. It would have to be noticeably hotter for that to be true, and that ain't even close to being the case.

And when you start hearing "Oh no, the fire moved to Federally owned land, we can't fight it now!" You gotta know that there is a problem with the rules & regulations. Even people that believe in the unlimited regulation of all human activity of any kind have to admit that.

Things worked better when there was logging, and there were people in the woods with a serious interest in stopping the fires, and there were access roads that were being maintained instead of sabotaged to prevent human activity in the wilderness. 

 

Forest fires have been a threat for a long time, in WW2 the Japanese had one chance to drop bombs on the US, they dropped a few incendiaries 40 miles from where I am sitting, to try to start a huge fire in the woods. "Smoke jumpers" were invented towards the end of that war, fire-fighters that went in by parachute to kill the fire while it was still small.

They were cut from the budget a couple of years ago. Too risky, too macho...

The Chetco fire was 1/4 of an acre on July 12th, some twerp behind a desk ignored it. Now 177,000 acres are burned, in places even the topsoil is sterile now. Un-managed Government land spawns fires that are so hot that nothing can survive down to the microbial level. Instant desert, and the run-off is enough to kill everything in the streams and rivers all the way down to the sea. 

That 747 is still grounded, despite the fact that it has been used effectively in South America and the Middle East, nobody in the USA's Halls of Power will authorize it's use because they are too stupid to know what to do with it!!!!

All it does is drop water, 20k gallons at a time.

The very same sort of pencil-neck schmucks have decided that all School-busses in Medford must have all their windows closed at all times. I guess that nobody told them that these busses don't have air-conditioning and therefore no air-filtreation for the interiors. There is no difference between the smoke inside and the smoke outside, I dare you to try to explain a concept like that to a School teacher, right?

 But what the hell, its only 90 degrees out there!

... and they wonder why rural folk get so freaking upset when urbanites shove their opinions down our throats on every aspect of our lives.... :angry:<_<:ph34r:

 

Edited by AnchorSteam
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6 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

Get tough on the arsonists, charge them with attempted murder too.

 

I totally agree!  A man got fined  $575 for throwing his cigarette but out his window.  He was comaining it was too much.  IMO it was too little.  I think $1500 minimum

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21 hours ago, glorybebe said:

I totally agree!  A man got fined  $575 for throwing his cigarette but out his window.  He was comaining it was too much.  IMO it was too little.  I think $1500 minimum

I was thinking more of the whackos that start them on purpose.

 

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On 9/6/2017 at 10:57 AM, AnchorSteam said:

It seems that the more land the GOvt takes over, the more loggers they evict, and the more access roads that they destroy, the worse every fire gets. The really big fires are not part of the natural cycle, either. They burn so hot now that they leave a Moonscape behind them, as was the case in Yellowstone. 

Something needs to be done, and at this point we really don't care what it is. 

Maybe it's time to impeach a Governor... and all her minions.

That is one part of the story, but the government is not taking over land as much as restricting use of their land in some areas.  In areas where there are access roads there are still fires like the Eagle Creek Fire in the Colombia Gorge caused by a firecracker throwing kid.  Impeaching the governor doesn't help  with the federal situation.  Greg Walden is usually pretty attuned to problems in his district of Southern Oregon.   He could use some support by email.  I don't mean money, congressmen use letters and correspondence from constituents to form and strengthen their views.  Most of the other reps are urban people.  Greg may be the lone rural congressman from Oregon.

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On 9/6/2017 at 9:30 PM, glorybebe said:

With us, over 75% of the 150 (? lost count) fires in B.C. were human caused.  Cigarette butts and campfires even with warnings everywhere.  And in my area there were 4 "suspicious" fires set.  One had numerous homes lost to it.  The first local fire happened when we were in the middle of a flood!  This has been one heck of  rotten summer.  

The fire service's stats are a bit misleading. A local current fire (around 1,200 ha.) was attributed to being human caused because there were no lightning strikes the night before it was discovered, though there were about three days before that. I live in a 'wet belt' where a lightning strike can smolder for days before it flares up. Also, the fire started on a cliff face with no road access for about 3 kilometres.

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4 minutes ago, Likely Guy said:

The fire service's stats are a bit misleading. A local current fire (around 1,200 ha.) was attributed to being human caused because there were no lightning strikes the night before it was discovered, though there were about three days before that. I live in a 'wet belt' where a lightning strike can smolder for days before it flares up. Also, the fire started on a cliff face with no road access for about 3 kilometres.

I know here there was a person seen running away after 'campfires' were lit.  

 

1 hour ago, AnchorSteam said:

I was thinking more of the whackos that start them on purpose.

 

As far as i am concerned, when there are radio ads, tv and newspaper ads, huge signage everywhere not to flick cigarette butts out of car windows as well as a campfire ban, him flicking it out of his window was attempting to start one on purpose.

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1 hour ago, Tatetopa said:

That is one part of the story, but the government is not taking over land as much as restricting use of their land in some areas.  In areas where there are access roads there are still fires like the Eagle Creek Fire in the Colombia Gorge caused by a firecracker throwing kid.  Impeaching the governor doesn't help  with the federal situation.  

No, bad argument. Would destroying access roads to the inner city reduce crime there?

I really think we need to get away from the notion that all of nature's problems can be solved by excluding humans from all parts of the planet that are not already Urban. I think that, in the balance, people are a force for good, not evil.

Lets keep the roads so the crews can get in there and fight the fires. 

1 hour ago, Tatetopa said:

Greg Walden is usually pretty attuned to problems in his district of Southern Oregon.   He could use some support by email.  I don't mean money, congressmen use letters and correspondence from constituents to form and strengthen their views.  Most of the other reps are urban people.  Greg may be the lone rural congressman from Oregon.

He is the only one, that's for sure.

And while he talks a good game, he never manages to get the important stuff done. 

As is so often the case...

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14 hours ago, AnchorSteam said:

No, bad argument. Would destroying access roads to the inner city reduce crime there?

I really think we need to get away from the notion that all of nature's problems can be solved by excluding humans from all parts of the planet that are not already Urban. I think that, in the balance, people are a force for good, not evil.

Lets keep the roads so the crews can get in there and fight the fires. 

Roads for fire fighting are quite a good idea.  Destroying roads is not.  However, I know more about private timber than government policy.  Weyerhaeuser is trying to put a gate on every access road and trail cams to watch some of them.   Some roads are permanently blocked because there is other access. The roads are there to fight fires, move equipment in and timber out. The gates are there to keep unauthorized people out.  Private timber and woodland is a very valuable crop that private companies want to protect.  You might know that most of the land between Roseburg and Coos Bay is privately held by two big companies and several smaller ones. Hunters can buy passes during season, generally not free and usually company employees increase patrols. .  At other times private companies limit access because unauthorized people cause fires and steal.  You will of course say that not all people do that and I will agree.  But if only 1 in a thousand do something costly and destructive, its not worth it to let anybody in.  You probably know too about destruction and vandalazation of logging equipment.  I can tell you first hand the havoc and danger caused in a sawmill by spikes buried in a log. - maybe put there by eco-terrorists.

 

I am a fan of the forest service.  I am not always a supporter of how the government manages that relatively small agency.  Certainly I like private timber companies, I worked for them for 15 years.   You are right about some of the senseless things that get done. But not all problems, not all fires, not worsening of conditions can be laid at the feet of some elected official of either party.  If anything, it is a willingness to do nothing, not to spend money on fire prevention as well as fire supression that causes some of the problems.  I was pretty proud of my generation of Weyco because they were replanting all land they logged.  That is a modern idea because timber has become valuable.  100 years ago it was seen as limitless and free.

If anything, I think there is on the whole more access to public land than privately held tracts.

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6 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

  You are right about some of the senseless things that get done. But not all problems, not all fires, not worsening of conditions can be laid at the feet of some elected official of either party.

Great post, I really had to work  at it to find something to question.

 

As for the above; we have to start somewhere. Starting with the top, which is also where the people who own their job to our consent, seems the logical way to go if we want any action on this.

6 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

 If anything, it is a willingness to do nothing, not to spend money on fire prevention as well as fire supression that causes some of the problems.  I was pretty proud of my generation of Weyco because they were replanting all land they logged.  That is a modern idea because timber has become valuable.  100 years ago it was seen as limitless and free.

Spending money is a problem alright, especially when the agencies involved are always looking for ways to spend more so that next year's budget will be larger instead of smaller... that is a serious problem, but we have been over this before.

 

I really wish that the price was high enough to make clear-cutting an option, instead of a mandatory economy measure. Woudln't it be great if they could still go out there with a "mule", pick the best trees, leave the rest and still make a good living?

(for those that don't know, a "mule" was a steam engine running on wood and mounted on a sledge, not the animal)

6 hours ago, Tatetopa said:

If anything, I think there is on the whole more access to public land than privately held tracts.

GOOD!

That is why it is called Public, after all. The Govt is NOT supposed to own any land at all, it is supposed to be managing it, for we the public. 

That's the theory, anyway. :rolleyes:

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Smoke is really bad in Southern Alberta today. It has come and gone over the last week, but what's really eerie is how the smoke filters out blueish light so the sun and Moon are blood red for days at a time...

Walked to the corner store for beer earlier, you can taste the smoke. A few small towns West of us have been evacuated

Edited by Dark_Grey
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