[teilo]

The same US and state governments that used to regularly practice controlled burns in the Pacific Northwest, later banned those controlled burns, to devastating consequences. It's only been the last few years that we've seen a reversal of that, but it's been too little, too late.

[olivermarks]

I'm also in Sonoma County and the combination of urban building spread on known fire plains coupled with a lack of vegetation management is having devastating consequences. I've been listening to the Sonoma County budget deliberations of the cliquey board of supervisors here all week, there is greater emphasis on spending on itinerant and homeless populations than on forestry management which makes little sense.

[kurthr]

I agree that Sonoma county is mighty cliquey and likes to beat around the bikeshed... but, I also don't think they're the ones who would do controlled burns. I'm also glad that we have (some) state officials that know what they're doing on controlled burns since they're hard to do without endangering people, property, and prosperity. Certainly, it's a lot better than having a bunch of SWE figure it out by reading news articles or wikipedia. Maybe that's what happened in Big Sur?

I don't claim to be an expert, but I've talked to oldfarts^d^d^d^d^d^d^d^d people (partnered with First Peoples) who have designed controlled burns, forest management experts with degrees in the topic, and even folks who run timber companies... and it's known there's a lot that could be done, but... the Santa Cruz and West Sonoma redwood fires are unprecedented. It takes a lot to get those coastal forests ablaze... enough that you're not going to get a controlled burn in Cazadero, Bonny Doon, or Empire Grade. They (unlike the interior) don't typically burn more than every 50-100 years. You can log reasonably large areas and remove underbrush, but in a wildfire like these last few weeks the flames can jump miles and that's too much area to safely log (mud slides) or regularly burn. Big Creek lost a lot of good timber in well managed forest that didn't stop the fires.

I'm also confused by the idea that if the same areas of Napa and Lake county could just burn a few more times then they wouldn't burn the next few years. It hasn't worked the last 3 times (really check caltopo for the burn overlap). It's just low brush that grows back quickly, because all of the trees that were on it have been burnt off. Then you get to Sierras where the pine beetle has created huge areas of kindling... but where was that beetle 300 years ago? Not in the Americas. How invested were the Miwok in stationary real estate? Not so much, it was a different time and a different attitude.

This all just has the ring of climate change denial...

[olivermarks]

x86_64Ubuntu https://sonomacounty.ca.gov/PRMD/Fire-Prevention/Vegetation-... SC run a chipper program for residents to chew up their trimmings, but various state bureaucracies are responsible for what's left of forestry management.

Walking around redwood groves of 1000 year old trees with burn scars, the reality is that California ecology has always had 'cleansing' fires. The humans, the abysmal electric grid that starts a lot of the fires and building in fire plains have predictable results in amplifying that at this time of year.

Paradise (which used to be called 'pair of dice') is one of the most dangerous places to live in California, a combination of winds, canyons and narrow roads. They've had endless fires in that part of the world, but more people moved there (cheap) and when the 1912 pge power pylon fell over on a 45% wooded hill the inevitable happened. Most of Houston Texas is built on a flood plain, yet people will be astounded and appalled when they have a 100 year flood and the UK Guardian etc will blame it on global warming...

[x86_64Ubuntu]

Is forestry managed at the county level?