ECOSTRESS Data Incorporated Into New Wildfire Response Tool

Yes, Scissor, I know it well. The high density unmanaged F-WNF has been a tinderbox waiting for a megafire for years. For awhile in the 70’s and 80’s fire access roads were built and firebreaks constructed. A few clearcuts were made and a few cattle grazed in the openings.

But when Bill the Perv and Al the Braindead were elected, all that stopped. Knowledgeable citizens begged for fuel treatments, but those were rebuffed. Instead logging of any kind was halted. Various radical extremists made videos excoriating loggers and logging — with a bullseye on Lakeview, OR. [I’ve seen those videos posted here at WUWT! I know who did it. He’s a regular.] Lawsuits galore by oligarch-funded seditionists helped hamstring rational stewardship.

Fires 15 years ago were allowed to burn. The crown-scorched trees attracted pine bark beetles which irrupted the following year and spread across 300,000 acres of the F-WNF. It became a sea of red trees, lodgepole and ponderosa. Nothing was done. I went on tours led by the USFS, the Forest Superintendent and Regional Forester. They talked a good game. Said they didn’t want to “push the reset button” on Oregon forests.

But nothing was done. Some salvage, but LP pine is worthless even when green. The beetles carry blue stain fungus, and it’s actually the fungus that k*lls the trees. Blue stained ponderosa pine is nearly worthless. Fence boards are all it’s good for. It doesn’t even make good chips — chip board is not made of rotten wood.

No thinning, no piling and burning, no fuels management. Roads were closed, deliberately ripped so no motorized travel was possible. The cattle were removed. Flammable brush grew in the snag patches.

Then lightning struck, as it always does, and there was no way to access the ignition sites, except perhaps by smokejumpers or helicopters, but it’s basically a suicide mission to drop into a mega inferno. A few boys and girls with pulaskis can’t build an effective fireline. It takes bulldozers, hauled by semis on trailers, with fuel tanker trucks. But there are few if any roads any more, not where they’re needed. The decision was made to “block in” the fire, meaning let the whole thing burn to the edges, to private land, where the roads remain.

And so it goes. Another Oregon megafire. Ever since the Biscuit Fire (500,000 acs in 2002) in the Chetco, Oregon has been subject to numerous gigantic burns in old growth forests, on unmanaged Fed land.

No Touch, Let It Burn, Watch It Rot. It’s a Swampy thing, bureaucrats making political policy from thousands of miles away. Central Government overweening Hate America Firsters stepping on the neck of flyover country. It costs hundreds of $billions in funny money to do such destruction, but that has never stopped them.

We had one local lightning started wildfire near where I live in Utah. Lucky the location was bordered by lava on the south and west. There were roads to the location and there was a very quick response. It was adjacent to developed land and the crews were able to stop the fire before it took any structures. About 10 to 15 years ago the forest service had cleared dead standing 1 mile on the windward side and 1/2 mile down wind of the developments on Cedar Mountain. A remnant of the W presidency. This is Ponderosa Pine/Doug fir forests, and Ponderosa very fire resistant when there is no understory to get the fire up to the crown. There are areas visible from roads and atv trails where nothing is left but large Ponderosa pine with charred bark from previous fires and the stands are healthy.

We have been under fire restrictions in the national forest for all of last summer until this past Friday, no camp fires allowed. All restrictions were lifted due to the monsoon rains we have had throughout southern Utah the last month. BLM/Forest Service had even restricted the use of gas chainsaws, limiting my collection of firewood. I had been using a battery chainsaw to drop dry dead standing beetle kill trees and cut some rounds, but that is MUCH slower. Got a lot done this weekend with the GAS chainsaw after the restriction was lifted. 2 to 3 times faster. The gas has a much longer bar and, although heavier, much easier on my back since I don’t need to bend down to cut rounds.