memo to california

[TimC]

Outside of being hard-headed, how does anyone die from this after the first few hours?

[rhippens]

Outside of being hard-headed, how does anyone die from this after the first few hours?

 

Sadly, fighting the stinking things is a large cause. No house is worth a life, but wildfires can be fast and aggressive and change directions or blow out dramatically. In large scale incidents, a lot of evacuations occur, but there are the occasional hiker, camper, etc. that get caught up in them as well. That's an extremely generic response, but my gut feeling would be a majority of fatalities reported, depending on the source and scope of numbers (are 85-year olds that died from smoke inhilation listed?), are firefighters.

[whomper]

I have a friend whose wife works for a company that creates controlled fires for training purposes. They are very expensive from what he told me. They only have to sell a handful every year to be profitable. I believe they not only create the fire but provide the structure as well.

[Pope Flick]

the green denotes vegetation, it doesn't denote wildland. the white is either agriculture OR, I guess, desert (which of course WOULD be wildland, though not much of a fire risk).

 

in any case, you can't really compare one state to another, because the landscape, climate, vegetation are so different. but it certainly does seem to be the case that southern california has less of a handle on the wildfire problem than just about any other part of the country. perch and polk are the first people I've heard say that a big factor in that is the reluctance to implement large-scale controlled burns or clearing.

 

 

My reading of the map leads me to believe that they don't consider the white areas to be "wildland" as they discuss "wildland fires": the central white strip in CA is the San Joaquin farm strip for instance. The greens seem to be the indicators for what they consider "wildland" because believe me there is plenty of vegetation to be had in the red areas of both states.

 

Two things: since the maps are to scale with each other, it's pretty clear that if CA is 60% the size of Texas that then green "wildland" areas in CA take up more of the state than it does in Texas. In other words: CA has more wildland % wise than Texas does, at least by perch's own site's measurements.

 

Past this point, a simple look at a topographical map will show the obvious: Texas is largely flat, whereas much of the areas that burn in California are remote areas by and large. Even the Tahoe area, while being developed since the 50's, is very much an area that is NOT conducive to fighting fires: one lane each way mountain passes, etc. That's where most of this stuff is happening. Historically, many of these roads were built on the original wagon trails from back in the day and there's little that's accessible via flat road in Cali....especially in the east.

 

Somewhere in one of those charts there was an alaska fire in 2006 that showed a 2 million acre burn.

[AtomicCEO]

I think you could set over 75% of Texas on fire and nobody would even notice.

[bushwacked]

Outside of being hard-headed, how does anyone die from this after the first few hours?

 

Sadly, fighting the stinking things is a large cause. \

 

In the ~10 years I did that work; I worked with one guy that got killed and had a buddy with 2 close calls; never even remember hearing any "civilians" dying from direct causes.

[Yukon Cornelius]

I think you could set over 75% of Texas on fire and nobody would even notice.

yup

[I Like Soup]

How long will insurance companies continue to cover an area for wildfire since southern California seem to have these fires every year? Home insurance must be outrage out that way.