toobfreak
Tungsten/Glass Member
Watched a PBS NOVA special the other night primarily about the California fires of 2018 and found it interesting that in the final analysis, it isn't any climate change causing these fires but man's own stupidity and arrogance!
They've identified THREE FACTORS in causing these disastrous megafires that resulted in the loss of so much property and lives:
Bottom Line: these fires didn't need to happen. Just as people build along the water's edge oblivious apparently that water levels go up and down then complain of flooding, this fire was caused by man's own arrogance and stupidity ignoring the natural dryness of California (which doesn't even allow for extreme dryness during drier spells like now), an electric grid not keyed to respond to breaks in wires, heinous forest management policies, and the greed and shortsightedness of building homes in deeply wooded areas with no planned fire breaks or good access roads. They set themselves up as a perfect storm just waiting for a disaster like this to eventually strike and now stand shocked.
All of this could have been avoided if only for better planning and intelligent forethought. Now that these fires have burned, California and places like it all around the world need to start rethinking their planning so that forests are better managed as well as more intelligent land development, because climate or not, these things will happen if man doesn't start thinking more broadly than pretty views, exclusivity and selfish needs.
The good news is that nature is self-adjusting. It recovers. But if a region experiences two fires in too short a period, it naturally makes that area slower to repopulate trees thus reducing further risk for a longer time equalizing the problem. Now if man can only be as intelligent.
Inside the Megafire
They've identified THREE FACTORS in causing these disastrous megafires that resulted in the loss of so much property and lives:
- Failed forest management policies where they are letting far too much undergrowth build up in the woods which allows fires to spread quickly. They used to do controlled burns every so many years to clear this stuff out but stopped because so many people complained about it. Ironically those fighting this were the very same people who were at HIGHEST RISK of getting burned up in a fire! If that wasn't stupid enough, their basis of complaint was petty and two-fold: afraid it would "ruin their view" and "didn't want to smell smoke." So instead, they've caused massive fires which not only TOTALLY ruined their view and made them smell smoke, but lose their homes and communities!
- Building homes in highly wooded, high risk areas. Economy and housing market was such that it is now in vogue to build homes and communities in hard to reach, highly wooded areas most prone to fire loss and damage!
- Dry conditions. 2018 saw 200 days without rain making the woods extra highly flammable. Now everyone wants to blame this on "climate change" but the fact is that California is normally naturally very dry through much of the year and hot. One must allow for natural variation that these are dry times. Nature goes through natural variations that can last a few years, a few decades, even a few centuries without the need for climate change.
- California has a windy season where high winds blow. It was this wind that blew down a high tension power line that sparked the fire. The question is: why wasn't the grid designed that it be shut off during such high winds? If this was impractical due to supply needs, then why wasn't it at least built rated to take such winds or at least keyed to detect a fault in the system when there was a break in the current (connectivity) that it auto-shut down in such an occurrence immediately? I mean, whoever it supplied wasn't getting power now anyway!
- Fire now started, there were NO fire breaks anywhere which would have assisted in stopping or at least slowing the spread of the fire, not to mention give better access to emergency responders. But fire breaks aren't pretty so Californians didn't want them and windy, little narrow roads are cute and "exclusive."
- Fanned by ideal conditions of very dry conditions under high wind and starting in a valley, the fire naturally spread very quickly (an acre a second) because everywhere it spread was going uphill. An uphill slope assisted the fire because cool air feeding it comes in from behind forcing the heat out ahead of it at a higher rate more quickly drying and prepping that ahead of it to burn faster and sooner.
- Very poor access roads meant that when the evacuation signal sounded, all the roads out were small, narrow, windy roads that could not handle the traffic. Things blocked the roads, one woman went into labor, people ended up stuck sitting in longs lines not moving and fire-fighters could not get in.
Bottom Line: these fires didn't need to happen. Just as people build along the water's edge oblivious apparently that water levels go up and down then complain of flooding, this fire was caused by man's own arrogance and stupidity ignoring the natural dryness of California (which doesn't even allow for extreme dryness during drier spells like now), an electric grid not keyed to respond to breaks in wires, heinous forest management policies, and the greed and shortsightedness of building homes in deeply wooded areas with no planned fire breaks or good access roads. They set themselves up as a perfect storm just waiting for a disaster like this to eventually strike and now stand shocked.
All of this could have been avoided if only for better planning and intelligent forethought. Now that these fires have burned, California and places like it all around the world need to start rethinking their planning so that forests are better managed as well as more intelligent land development, because climate or not, these things will happen if man doesn't start thinking more broadly than pretty views, exclusivity and selfish needs.
The good news is that nature is self-adjusting. It recovers. But if a region experiences two fires in too short a period, it naturally makes that area slower to repopulate trees thus reducing further risk for a longer time equalizing the problem. Now if man can only be as intelligent.
Inside the Megafire
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