I listened to the 27 October podcast of KCRW’s Left, Right, and Center as I do every week. They discussed the recent fires in California (and other political wonkish stuff).
In the program, the moderator Matt Miller (holding down the center) wondered whether preparations were adequate and whether money could have been better spent (rather than in Iraq) on a few more air tankers (retardant and water-dropping aircraft). During news coverage, all the firefighters he saw said they didn’t have enough air support. The California fires were “a gripping disaster.”
Robert Scheer of Truthdig.com (on the left) brought up that no matter where one looks: education, health care, or public services, the amount of money spent on those compared to Iraq debacle is chump change (no disagreement from me).
Tony Blankley (listing to the right) mentioned that he had lived in Topanga Canyon in the 1970s when fire came through and had been grateful for the fire engines coming in to save his house.
These commentators typified much of the debate about allocations of resources for wildland firefighting and its future in California.
First, no amount of equipment will stop a wildland fire in six-ten foot high chaparral in seventy mile an hour Santa Ana (foehn winds). Why no air support? The aircraft cannot fly in winds like that and if they could the dropped liquid would be blown away and dissipated before touching the chaparral (the ‘fuel’ in firefighting parlance). When conditions are right, there just isn’t enough of everything, including aircraft. [see a drop here]
Fires burning during Santa Ana conditions (humidity close to zero and winds over fifty miles per hour) go where the wind pushes them, often jumping mile-wide barriers such as lakes. The standard firefighting technique for such fires has been to keep them as narrow as possible and herd them to the Great Pacific Fuelbreak.
Second, as long as people want to live in the mountains, hills, and canyons of California, the most effective methods for preventing, lessening, and stopping wildland fire are not possible. Chaparral is designed to burn. During the wet winter months, it grows and uses as much water as it can. It goes dormant when the soil moisture drops. The plants’ waxy outer layer and resins within help keep the plant from wilting but it burns readily. In fact, many of these plants making up chaparral forests need to burn to regenerate. Before humans arrived some 10% of California burned annually (about 10 million acres each year).
When Portuguese explorer João Rodrigues Cabrilho (sailing for Spain under the name Juan Cabrillo) sailed along the coast of California, he noted the plumes of smoke from fires burning in the Santa Monica Mountains. The native population set fire to the mountains each year to have the plants resprout later and provide forage for wildlife and thus hunting for them. The Mexican Californios continued the practice when they arrived.
Let’s consider what led up to these latest fires. This summer had been one of the driest on record in Southern California. The drought stressed thousands of trees. Beetles killed many of those trees. Undergrowth beneath these dead trees has been allowed to occur. This lower stuff makes a perfect fire ladder to the dead branches above. On the lower slopes, waxy pyric chaparral which hasn’t burned for years due to effective fire control bides its time. Now toss in low humidity, high winds, and high-voltage powerlines waiting to arc, it’s a disaster smoking a cigarette over a lake of gasoline.
Americans usually think in terms of high priced-high tech solutions. California’s southern neighbors have lower tech methods. Pragmatic Mexicans have placed herds of goats into hilly suburbs to control the chaparral—and have far fewer catastrophic wildfires. In the higher areas where pine trees grow, logging will change the characteristics of the fire ladder by making openings where the fire comes down to ground level again.
Unfortunately, goats and logging aren’t ‘natural.’ As though million dollar homes, gardens, exotic trees, etc., were.
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And, just so you can say, you read it here first, look for gripping stories on CNN, et. al, about the massive Southern California mudslides coming to a television screen near you in January. “Why didn’t anyone see this coming?” the newspeople will ask.
Nullius in Verba 
Interesting and informative, from one who knows.
Thanks, Norm.
Just one brush-beater’s opinion.
The solution has been to get better and better at putting out fires. This makes for older and older (taller, rangier, and more flammable) chaparral. Clearly that doesn’t work at some point.
Wow, how frighting things are there.
I heard on our news that they believe the fires were started by a teenager…;-(
best wishes and thank you for sharing
Annie
Frightening? I suppose. Most of the time the weather is perfect and pleasant.
Did I mention the earthquakes?
While I agree with the Norm on most points and found the writing informative (I learned a new word ‘Foehn’wind for the Santa Ana Winds here in Southern California) I disagree with Norm’s assessment of why homes where built so close to a fire area. Most of the houses that burned in the Santa Clarita (these were not “Million Dollar Homes”) and the San Diego areas were part of large tracts. Houses that burned happened to be on the edge of the present development in all likelihood more homes would soon pushing the development out further.
While I am on the soapbox, here in California we have two choices for building homes in areas were farms should be (flat areas that are easy to build on) or in areas that were not used as farms (such as hills that require more site preparation). We are losing far too much farmland to housing and once it is gone we can’t get it back.
C.L.
Hey Bro,good points.
You’re right, when the Santa Anas blow so hard that they blow over tractor-trailers, fire can rip through most anything.
Carry the home-building to its not logical, but probable, conclusion and the chance of fires in housing tracts decreases. When there are no more forests (pine, chaparral, or otherwise) around the houses, the main conflagration driver is gone.
I understand people have to live somewhere.
Read Cadillac Desert and you’ll wonder how long the San Joaquin Valley will produce agricultural products anyway.
Hi Norm,
Nice to see you weighing in on this topic. My friends in Malibu feel very neglected with all the talk of the San Diego fires etc. They’re still dealing with bad situations you WON’T see on the news.
Hey Fiona,
Good to hear from you. You are missed by your YWO friends.
Having grown up in LA and worked for LA County Fire Dept (Forestry Division in the mid-1970s), I’m familiar with the vegetation, the climate, and some of the other stuff. I came within a day of spending Thanksgiving on the fireline (long time ago).
My current location has its own fire worries. Narrow roads, insufficient water supplies (Clear Lake has plenty of water, no hydrants in the lake), highly flammable vegetation… pretty much like So Cal. Our family evacuation plan–initially–is to sit on our dock and watch. If the dock catches fire, we jump into the lake.
Norm,
I heard on the radio last night that fires put out in the wild can continue buring underground for up to a year, flaring up like the ‘Grass Fire” did this year. This is big news to me. Is it true?
Yes.
Such worries are why we continue to watch the fireline. There is also equipment that can detect heat (used to detect bodies decomposing too)underground.
When fires flare up again after being extinguished they’re known as “rekindles.” Much like coal fires that have been burning for decades. The fires are damped down much like a fire in the fireplace and can move through roots (usually dead and decaying).
That said, it’s unlikely to make it through a winter.
Totally off-topic, and not even for you, Norm.
Alan, I’ve just seen your Wobbly Sketches post and very much enjoyed it (including gracious mention of me).
My favourite is the shelf one at the top, which has a lot of zip and go. Do you ever use paint or crayons?
A rerun. “Controlling, Preventing, Wildfire in California and Other Pipedreams” – http://t.co/JjNi6FYU6a http://t.co/JjNi6FYU6a