Heh. Good instincts there.Quote:
Originally Posted by claymond
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Heh. Good instincts there.Quote:
Originally Posted by claymond
Yeah I don’t see these UAVs cutting out a fireline by themselves through steep terrain with lots of slash and brush. At least in the next five years. The proximity sensors would go apeshit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Meadow Skipper
But yeah, in open, mellow terrain I definitely can see the value. Like widening firebreaks along roads.
That said, they are training the machines with human operators. So the concept of one “pilot” directing two skidders - at scale- is probably less than ten years away.
Volcanic eruption in MT? Bitterroot fire seen from Bozeman https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...1ca4ee6a77.jpg
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That’s a beautiful picture.
I will always recall the huge pyrocumulus cloud from a large back fire light on the south end of the “north complex fire” a few years ago, southeast of oroville and northwest of Downieville, north San Juan, Nevada city, etc. it stopped the southward march of part of the fire front. The cloud was very large, ominous, and amazing.
I thought this journal article was really interesting. https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wi....1002/eap.2973
Understanding and appreciating indigenous fire practices is valuable and instructive. We kind of run into problems outside of a relatively few areas like the Klamath country. Population distribution and current vegetation conditions are a couple of things that were very different for historic indigenous burners.Quote:
Originally Posted by bodywhomper
I’m a little sensitive about this because I’ve been at places and meetings where someone will come in and strongly advocate for implementing indigenous burning practices without considering how that would affect nearby urban areas and/or rural residents. Then there’s the radical change in vegetation from a century of aggressive fire suppression and grazing/logging/exploitation. It’ll be a bitch trying to implement widespread indigenous burning practices. That ship might have sailed. But it’s valuable history, we just can’t flip a switch and go for it.
I found it fascinating because it’s apparently pretty comprehensive. There are some big names in the author lists. It is interesting to read how they focused on a certain plant for certain uses but it resulted a lots of side benefits. Like burning in black oak/conifer woodlands for better shoot and then high nut production of hazelnuts, but that likely resulted in keeping general biomass down of a lot of other plant species and kept dead fuel generally low in that ecosystem.
Here’s some interesting observations from Lunder in an area of the Park Fire. The contrast between treated versus untreated is remarkable: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?sto...ibextid=6yaNxA
Well yeah, burning in the ‘indigenous’ way would definitely make things a lot better in our wildlands.Quote:
Originally Posted by bodywhomper
Not to derail, but on the topic of indigenous burning, how rangelands were burnt in the past is fascinating as well. For some locales at least, I’ve read & heard old accounts of how grasslands used to have more grasses & forbes and less sage. This was due to indigenous people lighting fires behind them as they migrated for winter. In the spring there would be new growth of herbaceous plants for game.
As indigenous people were displaced and fire suppression was applied, along with fences and the concentration of grazing cattle, herbaceous vegetation decreased while sagebrushes were able to become more prolific.
In California the native grasses, which stayed green in the summer, were replaced by grasses from the east, which turn "golden" in the summer. That would affect how they burn, I would guess. I don't know if the same thing applies to the brushlands. The pioneers looked at the Central Valley and saw Eden--green savannah teeming with herds of deer and elk, rivers full of fish, the skies clouded with migrating flocks. (The occasional inland sea in the winter.) Not quite the same today.
^ Not just California, but annual grasses (that only live one season, and many are from Asia) have, or are, replacing the native perennial grasses which live over several or many seasons (and are generally much less flammable and more nutritious for animals). Cheatgrass and similar invasive species like red brome have radically changed the ecosystem of the west. Blame things like industrial grazing and widespread landscape disturbances by humans. This drift is almost getting me going, so I’ll save the lecture for later.
But cheatgrass sucks! It burns like gasoline, as do a lot of the invasive annuals in California.
My understanding of some issues with grasses, especially non-natives, is that fire based treatment that target is most effective in the summer. In California, that’s a no-go with Calfire. The air force base by me successfully broadcast burns hundreds of acres of grasslands every summer.
In the grassland of the front range west of Denver, I’ve heard local fire agencies encourage larger property owners to use fire to reduce grassland fuel loads and discourage herd grazing. Apparently. there’s been a lot of invasive spread through the use of grazing animals to reduce grass fuel loads.
On a landscape-ish level, it seems that indigenous style burning could be similar to a maintenance method once a baseline is established (if that could ever occur). Around me, a local tribe has acquired a few large-ish properties and their initial stewardship objectives seem to be biomass reduction and catastrophic wildfire mitigation. They’ve hired a local state-certified burn boss who also has a few goat/sheep herds, and they’re going through the process of site prepping with mechanical tools, grazing this time of year, and broadcast burning. At an easily accessible area that they’ve already treated, they’ve hosted some small cultural burn demos.
The man knows his meadows.Quote:
Originally Posted by Meadow Skipper
Nerdness stemming from working on land management agencies for so long.Quote:
Originally Posted by old goat
Double entendre. And here I thought he was a 3pingrin hippie meadow skipper. Certainly is also a captain on the meadows
My kid shot this on his way to work.
Attachment 499439
Lin fire in San Bernadino Country, burning towards Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear.
Maybe I should have posted in the distracted driving thread.
SoCal is starting to get its ass kicked. Around 2 pm today, local time. Big air shows - each purple thing is a fire aircraft.
Attachment 499591
And that fire near Reno is getting some attention.
Attachment 499592
The bridge and airport fires blew up today! The town of mt baldy (bridge) is definitely in a bad place, and wrightwood is now under evac.
It doesn’t look like the Line Fire has pushed more into running springs. I know Zeke lunder posted some interviews with local fire experts about the potential for it to burn into the big bear area…. Is SO early for this stuff.
The Santa Ana mtns can't catch a break ...3 fires in 7 years. First one set by a crazy guy who wanted to burn out a neighbor he was fueding with and then apparently went after responding firefighters with a sword. Second fire caused by explosives as CDFE worked with marines to blow up old check dams that inhibited steelhead movement. On a red flag day of course. The Airport fire was started by OC county works moving boulders to prevent illegal access by dirt bikes. Also on a red flag day. You'd think they would learn?
Central Oregon is getting crushed at the moment.
Word on the street is that the state has spent all their resources and Kotek has been begging for federal resources for weeks now. It almost has a boy that cried wolf tone, as she scored a bunch of relief money for ranchers out east, but if she doesn't pay for caterers, heavy equipment, and air support on this Little Lava complex of fires we could lose Sunriver.
I’m hearing that feds are pretty much scraping the barrel on things like incident management teams, caterers, and maybe aircraft. SoCal is taking off and they seem to get the nod on scarce resources.Quote:
Originally Posted by lowsparkco
Cal Fire has a reputation for always getting things done including securing resources.
Seems like it's an election year and no one can agree about anything so the Feds shut down funding.
I can't imagine what the asset loss would be if they lose Sunriver. Astronomical.
I will say we had a fire threaten the northeast side of Bend and they annihilated it with air support. So, maybe there's just a proximity threshold that hasn't been met yet. I've spoke to some folks that have been evacuated so I suppose it's threatening structures.
180 aqi in SLC currently. Flanked by three new local fires since this late morning.
Glorious steady soaking rain here in west central Montana.
The smell is fainter now as the scrubbing continues, but man, someone pissed on the campfire
The smoke lingers on our window screens for a long time.
According to FEMA’s morning ops report, almost 42k people are evacuated in SoCal. The SanBerdu Co FD has already put out a video describing the success of the evacuation of the mtn high community, and along with defensible space around many structures, allowed them to successfully keep most of the town from burning down two nights ago.
Wasn't the plan to finally start getting Holy Jim reopened? And now it is burning again, ffs...Quote:
Originally Posted by evdog
Just got off the line at the Davis fire. Thankfully on days. They put us up in hotels as we were told there are no available shower or sleeper trailers, all committed to incidents. Now it’s So Cals turn to burn. We got real lucky the Davis didn’t do what was predicted. First 48 hours were spicy.
Yeah they just had a public comment period for rebuilding Trabuco and West Horse thief. Holy Jim opened last year then they closed it again this summer to re-build the bottom and get it away from the stream. I think that work was pretty much done, apparently it was really nice. Emphasis on "was".Quote:
Originally Posted by 406
For some reason that no one can figure out, the Northeast is burning this November.
The Times oped linked here is not cheery:
https://archive.is/wya9C
For some reason that no one can figure out, the Northeast is burning this November.
The Times oped linked here is not cheery:
https://archive.is/wya9C
^ Yep, I saw a newscast of some New Jersey or New York municipal firefighters being amazed at how different it was fighting wildfires - humping hills, away from the road, lasting more than 4 hours…
And there aren’t many experienced wildfire people that don’t believe in climate change.
Attachment 505132Quote:
Originally Posted by ex-powderbroker
Drone video of volunteer fire fighters battling a standing wheat fire in Walla Walla county
https://youtu.be/6BTBFK6ZrQM?si=kndxxWrVuMmrP9wn
Racing the head with a tractor!
Stephen Pyne, friend to Meadow Skipper (right?), wrote an essay on the history of WF in New England. Pretty interesting. https://mailchi.mp/historynewsnetwor...nd-burns-again
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More of a confrère, or a “hey, how ya been?” and swap some stories/info.Quote:
Originally Posted by bodywhomper
Interesting article, thx for the link. Timely.
Got it!
Fascinating article. 4-5M ac WF in New Brunswick and Maine! Bison in Pennsylvania?
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up here the old fucks on FB who are probaby as old as the Mars are bemoaning the end of the Martin Mars water bomber, if you read the posts its like the fucking old piece of shit put out all the fires whereas the reality is the plane could barely make it to the job site and right now it can't even make it to the museum in arizona
^ heh. Old fire fucks, livin’ in the past. I’m an old fire fuck and I can’t stand to listen to them complain about how ‘we did it better back in the day.’ That Mars was the Spruce Goose of the fire aircraft world. Cool looking, but I would never have gotten into it for a flight.
Attachment 507394
Yeah in real life the fire service really does not want the Mars, even if they did you can't fill it on just any lake, you can't land it anywhere but a big lake, it has to stay in the water, it takes a huge crew, a lot of fuel, they have to work on them constantly and no spare parts unless you make them, but majestic to watch
what the fire service really wants is the airtractors I've seen them sortie out of the local airport cuz i think they need to fuel 4 times a day, I thot i was tripn when i see the same craft fly by 4 times but it was just a flight of 4 doing the go round till they could form up . Post mission they fit the whole crew mayeb 7 guys around a double bar table at the local craft brew for the toast
the Mars can't go away fast enough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_iuAT2oxqE
https://burnbot.com/technology
There's an article on Page 7 here...
https://www.trpa.gov/tahoe-in-depth-december-2024
^ Kind of limited to relatively level and treeless lands. More for prescribed fire prep than suppression. Like they say, around structures and developments…just gotta get it there, and get all the stuff it needs to run. Wonder what it cost to build.
I kind of flinched at their use of the phrase “…because there’s no risk of escape fire…” Hope they’re right.