A Northern California fire is growing at a rate of about 80 football fields per minute

CA Gov. Jerry Brown Vetoed Bipartisan Wildfire Management Bill in 2016.

Obama-era regulations have resulted in the new normal: an endless and devastating fire season. Obama-era regulations introduced excessive layers of bureaucracy that blocked proper forest management and increased environmentalist litigation and costs– a result of far too many radical environmentalists, bureaucrats, Leftist politicians and judicial activists who would rather let forests burn, than let anyone thin out overgrown trees or let professional loggers harvest usable timber left from beetle infestation, or selectively cut timber.”

 

Indeed, and its worth noting that the places where the Feds are in control (forestry land) they have been able to take steps to better manage the fauna.

The problem, is democrat environmentalist nuts are getting people killed.

Last I heard it was over 50 from this fire alone-the deadliest in California history.

Notice how many of Californias worst most destructive fires have come only recently, under democrats.
http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/Top20_Destruction.pdf

 

False. Decades of policy that discouraged controlled burns to reduce the fuel load in the now-burning forests in the north and hillsides in the south, creating tinderbox conditions. In fact, Some of the needed prescribed burns in Southern California’s coastal chaparral and grasslands have been deterred by environmental lawsuits and air quality concerns.

Liberal policies combined with stupid Environmentalists have created this mess. Once you get rid of liberal polices, everything improves from welfare to environment.

 

Agreed, and don't forget the economy.

Also his screen name is as ironic as it is apt.

 

77 dead.
1300 unaccounted for
65% contained after consuming 150,000 acres.
13,000 structures destroyed



The environmentalists shut down logging to save the spotted owls. Do they have any concept of how much wildlife perishes in these wildfires?

It's amazing how the communities of Chico and Oroville are coming together as one to help their neighbors who are displaced.

 

Obama 2014:
While mourning 19 dead, US again prepares to ax wildfire prevention funds
The Obama administration, which will send Vice President Joe Biden to Arizona on Tuesday to mourn 19 firefighters killed in the Yarnell Hill fire, is cutting federal programs meant to control the spread of exactly that kind of catastrophic wildland fire.

For the third year in a row, the Obama administration has proposed slashing spending on hazardous fuels reduction, the federal buzzword for clearing away underbrush and smaller trees through controlled burning and cutting. The idea behind such work is to make future fires easier to put out by removing now the fuel they need to spread rapidly. Congress has cut the program in the past two years. For fiscal 2014, the administration proposes cutting by another 41 percent, or $205 million, eliminating more than 1,000 jobs. These cuts will hit the Forest Service, the National Park Service and other federal land agencies.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/invest...ain-prepares-ax-wildfire-prevention-v19320654

Obama 2016
President Obama’s Budget Request Proposes Cuts to Fire Service Programs
WASHINGTON (National Volunteer Fire Council) - On February 9, President Obama submitted the Fiscal Year 2017 Budget for the United States Government to Congress. The President’s budget proposal would reduce funding for the Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) and Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant programs by $10 million each, to $335 million from $345 million. The President is also requesting $40.8 million for the United State Fire Administration (USFA), which would represent a reduction of $3.2 million. AFG, SAFER, and USFA are all part of the Federal Emergency Management Agency within the Department of Homeland Security.

The President’s budget includes $13 million for the Volunteer Fire Assistance (VFA) program, which is funded through the U.S. Forest Service within the Department of Agriculture. VFA provides funding to the states to distribute to local volunteer fire departments to prepare for wildland fire response. VFA was funded at $13 million in FY 2016.

https://www.firefighternation.com/a...t-proposes-cuts-to-fire-service-programs.html


Jerry Brown 2016
CA Gov. Jerry Brown Vetoed Bipartisan Wildfire Management Bill in 2016
At the request of the City Council of Laguna Beach, Sen. John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa), authored SB 1463 in 2016, a bipartisan bill which would have given local governments more say in fire-prevention efforts through the Public Utilities Commission proceeding making maps of fire hazard areas around utility lines.

Laguna Beach went through four fires sparked by utility lines in the last ten years, and has done as much in the way of prevention as they could afford. The bill would have allowed cities to work with utilities to underground utility lines, and work with the Public Utilities Commission to develop updated fire maps by requiring the PUC to take into consideration areas in which communities are at risk from the consequences of wildfire — not just those areas where certain environmental hazards are present.

Moorlach’s bill came about when on February 2, 2016, the PUC served the final version of Fire Map 1, and the City of Laguna Beach was not placed within the low-risk margins of the Utility Fire Threat Index.

Gov. Brown vetoed SB 1463, despite being passed by the Legislature, 75-0 in the Assembly and 39-0 in the Senate. That tells you this was political. The Governor’s veto message did not properly address why he vetoed the bill. Brown claimed that the PUC and CalFire have already been doing what Moorlach’s bill sought to accomplish. How on earth could Brown kill this bill when the state was burning down?

Just sayin.

 

77 confirmed? Fuc.

Whats as disturbing is that many of those 1300+ missing haven't shown up in over a week.

If they aren't accounted for, that is NOT good.

Imagine, potentially over 1000 dead-and the government of CA can't seem to see a problem with its policies.

I've always said-the greatest sin of leftism is ignoring the harm they do.

 

How else would I be able to hose down my wrap-around driveway once every week or so?

 

Thats changing real fast.

The AZ locals have known it longer than you apparently have.

Demographic shift is real guy.

And the democrats like to use it for votes.

 

Why not? I do it on my property every year. We have 10 acres. Everyone in this area does the same. When the pine beetle moved through I was dropping 60 to 80 trees a year on my property. We clear out brush and cut grass. We have yearly classes for the people that are new to the area on wildfire mitigation. Everyone does it. The ranch next door has a pile of about 300 logs in the middle of a clear field that were dead standing.

The state and federal forestry services do controlled burns near us every year. They start in the fall and go through the spring. They cut trees down and put the tree in a burn pile. When the weather permits they burn the piles. They burn within 100 feet of structures and haven't lost control of a fire since I moved up here. We have several houses up above us. They do a damn good job. We only got funding for this after the High Park fire for wildfire mitigation. Hindsight is a mofo. It can be done.

California has to get their power infrastructure fixed and spend some money on mitigation and training for the residents in these areas.

PG&E reports second power line problem before Camp Fire. Paradise residents file lawsuits
A week after reporting a power-line outage near where the Camp Fire is suspected of starting, Pacific Gas & Electric said in a regulatory filing that it suffered a second problem with a high voltage line the morning the devastating fire ignited.

The utility company filed an incident report with the state California Public Utilities Commission Friday afternoon saying a high voltage line near the rural Concow area in Butte County suffered an outage at 6:45 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 8.


PG&E previously had informed the PUC of another high-voltage line outage a few miles away near Pulga that occurred at 6:15 a.m. that morning. That initial incident happened minutes before Cal Fire officials say they got the first reports of a wildfire in the Pulga area that would swoop through Paradise, Concow and Magalia later that day.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/state/california/fires/article221861975.html#storylink=cpy

 

Yeah, that's devastating. I can't even imagine.

 

At least they saved the great horned, spotted ladybird beatels...oh wait, they burned up too!

 

The biggest consumer of electricity in California is its water department.


Note that they WONT fix resevoirs or Dams, but they WILL allow the dry brush to build up as people die horribly in fires.

I've seen people die in fires and in the weeks afterwords.

It is hell on earth.

 

Tonight I hit a flying owl while driving.

10 minutes later he wasn't on the road, but if it takes that birds death to save lives, count me in.

 

That doesn't much relate to what I said.

 

And our deplorable "president" went on and on about Finland and their forest management and "raking their forests" but Finnish President Sauli Niinistö said he doesn't know what trump is talking about. So once again, as in every day for 670 days now, trump makes it up as he goes.

 

Is this not your post?

The problem isn't a new problem and was exacerbated by Obama's cut in federal funding. They think the fire was caused by PG&E's old equipment. PG&E has power lines and transformers on federal land. The bill that Brown vetoed would have provided money to upgrade some of the old power grid infrastructure in California. This isn't the first fire started by old equipment from PG&E. The problem is more than two years old. It rests on Obama and Brown, not Trump. How many more people need to die before Brown and the state govt pulls their head out of their ass? Do they just continue to holler "cuz Trump" because that isn't going to fix the problem. People will just keep dying.


CalFire Concludes PG&E Violations Caused 2017 Wildfires
https://www.ecmag.com/section/systems/calfire-concludes-pge-violations-caused-2017-wildfires

PG&E Power Lines Blamed For Northern California Wildfires
https://www.npr.org/2018/06/08/618444388/pg-e-power-lines-blamed-for-northern-california-wildfires

PG&E blamed in Cal Fire report for causing Butte Fire
https://www.kcra.com/article/pge-blamed-in-cal-fire-report-for-causing-butte-fire/6265246

PG&E blamed for 12 more October fires
https://www.chicoer.com/2018/06/08/pge-blamed-for-12-more-october-fires/

 

So why isn't trump proposing increased funding of forest management to get back to a proper level? Why did he blame California and why did you try to support him with numbers? --and those numbers don't relate to PG&E.

 

This fire was on state managed lands. The federal managed land doesn't have the same problem.

 

Trump doesn't run PG&E, California does. PG&E is starting the fires. That's on California to not start fires. Can't fix stupid from outside. It's like "Why doesn't Trump keep Johnny from crapping his diapers?" Johnny is a grown adult. He should know better than to crap his diapers. Those fires wouldn't have happened if PG&E didn't start them. Increasing the wildfire mitigation budget is up to Congress.

 

Up to 80 dead now. As for Gov Brown, I'd love to crap all over him on this, but, as was pointed out to Trump after he blamed CA for the foolish forest management in the State, 46% of CA forest is FEDERALLY managed. We are 30 years into childlike policies that supposedly preserve wild life, but how much wildlife can outrun a fire moving at 8 football fields a minute? And for how long? The loss of wildlife is simply incomprehensible.

All that timber is either coming out on lumber trucks or its blazing out in flames and smoke.

Once again, I hope, pray and trust that common sense is suddenly and unexpectedly going to break out all over. In the meantime, the cities of Oroville and Chico are engaged in the selfless heroism that we always see in the aftermath of these tragedies. People are helping and taking in total strangers like family, sharing food, blankets, spare rooms, RV's whatever is needed.

I rock climb and a lot rock climbers are fire fighters and we talk these things over as we climb. When they hit a forest where they have to fire fight that has no logging infrastructure, they have no roads in, no access, it's difficult to air drop because of all the tree cover, they really sit on the edges, try to set fire breaks, which is very difficult because there is no break in the forest cover. What they really need is a windshift that turns the fire back on itself, but when it's running forward into unbroken forest, it's very dangerous and difficult and everything in its path is dying.

When we had sustainable logging, beetle damaged wood is being harvested before it becomes standing dead fuel or dead fall, access roads are brought in and checker board clearing used, alternating clearings of 160 acres square.

When the fire storm cannot be outrun by wildlife, they crowd into these cleared squares and survive the flames. Wildlife by the many thousands take sanctuary in these cleared areas.

Gov Brown is a drooling moron, but Federal Forest Management is no better.

When CA had sustainable forest management, the costs were covered by timber sales with the surplus going into the State Treasury, not only was total forest area not depleted under these policies, it actually increased.

I suspect that one outcome from all this will likely be reconsideration of policies that worked, and all of these sound policies were place while Gov Brown's father was Governor, many of these were his policies.

 

kqed??? fake news, lol.

 

PG&E starts the fires, the massive amount of fuel load from misguided environmental policies turns them into unstoppable killers.

How Misguided Environmentalism Is To Blame For California’s Wildfires

"When explaining to Mother Jones why the California Wine Country fires were so bad last October, fire ecologist Sasha Berleman said, 'We have 100 years of fire suppression that has led to this huge accumulation of fuel loads.'" ​

But...But...But...Global Warming!

President Trump summed it up on Nov 10. He wrote, “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor … Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

Trump is right. Mismanagement and over regulation deserve most of the blame, but he should keep in mind that the federal government owns 57 percent of California forest land. This mismanagement is also not a result of a lack of care. Believe me, Californians care.

California and federal agencies have mismanaged forests, not because they don’t care, but because they chose the agenda of environmentalists over commonsense forest management. The result has been deadly.

The federal government owns 45.8 percent of California’s land, while 4 percent is owned by the state and 51 percent is privately owned. CAL FIRE manages both state and private land. Part of the reason it is so difficult to manage California forests is the bureaucratic milieu. The Forest Service manages 193 million acres of land, has 28,000 employees, and has an annual outlay of $7 billion a year, according to a 2017 Analytical Perspective from the budget of the U.S. government.

For decades, environmental protection schemes have usurped common sense. For example, most fire ecologists say that the surest way of preventing massive forest fires is to use prescribed burns. The California Environmental Protection Agency states that

“prescribed burning is the intentional use of fire to reduce wildfire hazards, clear downed trees, control plant diseases, improve rangeland and wildlife habitats, and restore natural ecosystems.”​

Prescribed burns keep forests healthy by burning up the underbrush that accumulates on the forest floor and by thinning trees. Yet for decades the Forest Service has suppressed most fires. According to a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection executive summary:

“Land and fire management have in many cases increased fire hazard. In some shrub types, fire suppression appears to have shifted the fire regime away from more, smaller fires toward fewer, larger fire.”​

Despite scientific evidence, the federal government continues spending more money on fire suppression than prescribed burns. The Forest Service has performed prescribed burns on an average of 2,187,64 2 acres a year for the past ten years, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

This means the Forest Service has only performed prescribed burns on 11.3 percent of the land they manage. When explaining to Mother Jones why the California Wine Country fires were so bad last October, fire ecologist Sasha Berleman said,

“We have 100 years of fire suppression that has led to this huge accumulation of fuel loads.”​

The policy of fire suppression has created what insurance companies call “mega catastrophes,” a term that describes disasters that result in insured losses of more than $1 billion. Mega catastrophes are becoming the norm in California. In 2017, there were 5,906 fires on state and private land, Kathleen Schori, an assistant chief at CAL FIRE, said in a phone interview.

“Extreme fire behavior has become more commonplace,” says the Forest Service.​

“The laws of the past 45 years have not only failed to protect the forest environment, they have done immeasurable harm to our forests,” said Republican Rep. Tom McClintock, who represents a northeastern district in California, in a congressional hearing. “Time and again, we see vivid boundaries between the young, healthy, growing forests managed by state, local, and private landholders, and the choked, dying, or burned federal forests.”​

According to a Reason Foundation study, another flaw in forest management is a systematic reduction in timber removal. This began in 1990 when the spotted owl was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. In response, the Forest Service placed restrictions on timber harvests. Additionally, President Bill Clinton introduced a rule that restricted the construction of new roads on 49 million acres of national forest. This limited the ability of the Forest Service from thinning trees. In 1993, 1,797,574 acres of wildlands burned, but in 2017 this number jumped to 10,026,086 acres.

From 1960 to 1990, 10.3 billion board feet of timber were removed from federal forest land each year. From 1991 to 2000 that numbered dropped to 2.1 billion board feet of timber per year.

“There’s an old adage that excess timber comes out of the forest one way or the other. It’s either carried out, or it burns out,” McClintock said in a speech supporting The Resilient Federal Forest Act, a bill that stops the practice of taking fire prevention funds to pay for fire suppression. It also streamlines environmental reviews so that forest managers don’t have to fill out hundreds of pages of documents just to cut down rotting and diseased trees. As of November 2017, this bill was still under consideration in the Senate.​

When trees are too close together, they fight for resources. Many of the trees are weakened and become more susceptible to disease and insect infestation. These conditions turn entire forests into tinder boxes. A 2017 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) states that 129 million trees have died in California’s forests since 2010. The USDA report agrees with Trump — California’s forests suffer from neglect and mismanagement.

In order to cut down trees on private land, property owners must fill out a Timber Harvest Plan and get permission from CAL FIRE, said Schori. As of 1995, the private sector owned 8 million acres of undeveloped fire prone land, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Yet Timber Harvest Plans were only granted for 3,282,950 acres of privately owned land in 2017.

Air quality control laws also make it difficult for factories and private landowners to dispose of deadwood. The difficulty these regulations impose may prohibit private owners from effectively managing their land.

To prevent fires, both the California’s state government and the federal government need to deregulate logging and encourage the Forest Service to make a profit by selling timber. Until the environmental protests of the 1970s, the Forest Service was one of the only departments in the federal government making a profit. It is a myth that environmental concerns and business interests are always at odds. In the case of California’s forests, thinning the trees is in the interests of both parties. Trump understands this, and his administration is expanding timber sales on federal land.

Ironically, these ill-conceived environmental policies designed to ward off climate change have been the source of massive amounts of carbon dioxide pollution. A forest fire’s initial blaze releases 5.2. million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, according to Forest Service ecologist Leland Tarnay. This is equivalent to the amount of emissions from 1.1 million passenger cars in a year.

We care about the spotted owl, but we also care about our loved ones in Redding, Sacramento, Paso Robles, Camarillo, and Oxnard.

The saddest part about these fires in California is that they are self inflicted. Californians should not allow such mismanagement to continue. At what point will commonsense forest management practices win out over the ideologically driven environmental lobby? Soon, I hope, commonsense and the spirit of cooperation we see all over Paradise, Chico and Oroville will pervade the minds of our State and Federal Lawmakers.

http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/16/misguided-environmentalism-blame-californias-wildfires/

 

Why not...because it can't be done to any level of satisfaction that will prevent fires. If there were no houses in these fires it wouldn't even make the 6PM news. But since in some areas there are 100's or 1000's of homes, if conditions present 50-75mph winds, and a spark is created, the fire cannot be stopped until the winds subside or there is no fuel. We live in these types of areas and even with 100' defensible space around the house we're toast if there are 50-75mph winds. Almost every square inch of where I live is private property filled with fir trees and other indigenous trees as well as houses and outbuildings, and good luck forcing every land owner to remove 100% of the fire hazards! All it takes is dry fuel, some lightning, with high winds and we have a raging wildfire. Yes there are some things that people can do to provide better fire safety but this alone won't stop wildfires...

 

Hopefully the homeless fire victims are out of the rain.