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Wildfires?

Geo-TH,In

Geo-TH,In

Well-known Member
It seems every year the news reports Wildfires, over 200 burning. Fire fighters dying.

I can't build in a flood plain. So why isn't something done to prevent people building next to a tinder box? Then after the fire there will be mud slides. Who is paying to fight the fires, States or Fed government?
 
In most cases it is the Feds (Taxpayers) that pay the money - sometimes. The Feds would come and requisition whatever equipment they wanted from ADOT, abuse the equipment and leave it parked wherever for ADOT to retrieve. Somehow they kept forgetting to pay for the use of the equipment and the repairs necessary to put the equipment back in service.

The environmentalists are somewhat to blame for the forest fires, as they had laws passed that prevent the type of management necessary to control the growth of the underbrush. Lawyers are also to blame for getting the courts to grant everyone their rights to go into the forest and start a fire. Lots of places to point the finger of blame, but nobody has any real suggestions to fix the problem.

People build so they can be "in the trees" and they refuse to clear a fire zone around their buildings. Those who do clear a fire zone around their buildings do survive the fires that go around them for lack of fuel.

It's a strange world - and getting stranger!
 
"The environmentalists are..."

I concur that they are in part the blame. They shut down irrigation and farming our west because some minnow was being killed by pumps. Shutdown the routing from river dams for irrigation to actual farms. But its not just them. Its courts that rule with them, and state governments that go along with them as well. A far, far west state government comes to mind. They turn the water off, and then wonder why stuff burns. I remember a few years ago when some fella in California got into trouble for violating local law by cutting down the brush around his house. Got into trouble for it. Then there were videos of his home, the only one standing after a forest fire raced through his area, subdivision, burning down every home but his because of dry brush.

I don't know. If I point a gun at my foot and pull the trigger, I expect bad things to happen as a result. Out west? Apparently they expect some fairy with magic powers to come along and save them from...themselves, and his nickname is "Moonbat".

Mark
 
If the fire is on Federal land, the US taxpayer pays the bill, State and private lands are payed by state and county taxes. Fires started in forests are generally started by lightening.
 
News stories will seldom differentiate between forest fires and range land fires. The nations largest fire, on the Oregon/Idaho boarder, was a range land fire and (I'll say it again) it's cheat grass that was burning, uncontrollably. There is nothing new about range land fires but cheat grass accounts for their explosive rate of expansion and not a single stalk of cheat belongs in this country. I've recently traveled between Boise and Twin Falls - 125 miles - nothing but smoke. Friends came in from SLC to Boise - smoke all the way. My sister in law in Moscow, ID has had her home smoke alarms going off. It's smoke from burning cheat. And what will be the first thing to come up following these fires? More cheat grass.
 
It's like that here in California. There is a few types of plants that can't be removed, because the gnat catcher bird lives in them. Someone forgot to tell the fires, because when they come through the don't stop for the protected plants, or birds. Stan
 
Are you saying you are not allowed to get rid of this "cheat grass"? What is it and what's it (supposedly?) good for?
 
Devastating fire in Lake Tahoe a few years back...the locals didn't want to disturb the local flora and fauna, so didn't trim back. I don't remember how many homes were lost, but it was substantial.
They changed the laws after that.
 

Cheatgrass is an invasive annual grass from Asia if I recall it's origin correctly. Cheatgrass (Downey brome) grows very early in the spring, in a drought year it will use up the moisture so that the native grasses won't have any moisture to grow with. It then dries out early summer, is a very fine grass with little grazing value once matured. I have seen it burn when it was still green.
 
Is that the same kind of invasive, tall grass from Asia, we have here in the Midwest called Phragmites? That stuff is incredible.
 
(quoted from post at 16:38:47 08/24/15) Is that the same kind of invasive, tall grass from Asia, we have here in the Midwest called Phragmites? That stuff is incredible.
Click to expand...
No, phragmites is a relatively new weed to us in Wyoming. I believe phragmites likes moist areas, river banks, creek bottoms, etc... Cheatgrass in general, thrives in climates that have lower annual precip., although it has no problem thriving in irrigated alfalfa fields. I guess to give an example of how flammable cheatgrass is, it is not uncommon for someone to be cutting hay, strike a rock with the sickle, or more commonly these days with the knife of a rotary head, and that is all it needs for a spark to take off burning.

To get back on topic, if we were to limit housing to where wildfires are not a threat, no one will live west of Omaha.
 
I live in the California forest. The "Rim Fire" darkened my sky for months, and we have has much closer calls.
"SHTF"ers, people watching for the end of civilisation, seem to have an idea that they should come up here and live off the land. Guess what? The firemen wont be coming to work, so it will be a scorched wasteland full of hungy, armed people. Plan on staying home.
 
It's called cheat grass because it cheats farmers out of their crops. It's an invasive species from SW Asia, probably came here as a contaminate in feed grain. Draw a NS line, boarder to boarder, through the
the western end of Nebraska. From any where along that line head west. In front of you the land will be yellow, to the horizon. Look left or right, yellow to the horizon. It will stay that way until you
encounter some moisture in the coastal mountains. The yellow is all cheat grass. When it all started, no one knew what to expect. By the 1940's it was recognized as unstoppable. Land owners, state
governments and the federal government gave up with out a fight. It has become the "habitat". I suppose you'd need permission to try to eradicate it.
 
(quoted from post at 17:46:17 08/24/15) It's called cheat grass because it cheats farmers out of their crops. It's an invasive species from SW Asia, probably came here as a contaminate in feed grain. Draw a NS line, boarder to boarder, through the
the western end of Nebraska. From any where along that line head west. In front of you the land will be yellow, to the horizon. Look left or right, yellow to the horizon. It will stay that way until you
encounter some moisture in the coastal mountains. The yellow is all cheat grass. When it all started, no one knew what to expect. By the 1940's it was recognized as unstoppable. Land owners, state
governments and the federal government gave up with out a fight. It has become the "habitat". I suppose you'd need permission to try to eradicate it.
Click to expand...

I have seen what they call cheatgrass out here, looks like what we called wild oats when I was a kid in south central South Dakota. I have also bushhogged something that looks the same, but stirs up a big red cloud of dust!
 
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