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> The article doesn't mention it, but controlled burns are actually a regular occurrence in the east and southeast US. I always assumed it was some decision by

> The article doesn't mention it, but controlled burns are actually a regular occurrence in the east and southeast US. I always assumed it was some decision by the Californian state government to not do so. Wait what? California doesn't do controlled burns? Mother of God: https://www.quora.com/Why-does-California-not-institute-a-controlled-burn-policy-to-minimize-forest-and-brush-fires https://www.quora.com/Why-does-California-not-institute-a-co... I find this _unfathomable_. I'm from a desert state where during dry times it was illegal to light fires and we absolutely did controlled burns. California's plan is to let everything burn down and then blame a utility (true or not is irrelevant) and try to collect $20B they definitely don't have? This is unbelievable.

twtw 8y ago
> I find this _unfathomable_. I'm from a desert state where during dry times it was illegal to light fires and we absolutely did controlled burns. Many of the answers on that quora link seem to indicate that ca does in fact do controlled burns?
- kryogen1c 8y ago
  Some of the comments indicate they try to burn as much as they can. The ambivalent, uncertain language is a sign the game is already lost. If you ask you car mechanic if the lugs on your tire are tight, the answer is yes; the answer is not some lugs are federally owned so we did the best we could. This is a serious public safety issue which if left alone is guaranteed to end in widespread death and destruction.
  - Johnny555 8y ago
    I think it's more like if you ask your neighborhood mechanic to inspect the brake system, and he said "I inspected everything I could, but the master cylinder is leaking and sealed and only the dealer has the tools and knowledge to open it up" so you have to go to the dealer. California shouldn't be expected to maintain forests on someone else's property.
sp332 8y ago
Snark218 over on Ars Technica claims to be involved in land management decisions, and has some details about why it's not feasible across the state. E.g. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/what-is-going-on-with-californias-horrific-fires/?comments=1&post=36360983#comment-36360983 https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/what-is-going-on-wit... And like I keep saying: these fires are not burning in forests. They are burning in suburbs, exurbs, and dense residential areas. In towns. Up steep canyons that are treacherous to hike up, let alone tote a pulaski and mattock. In many of the pictures, it's obvious that trees are damaged but survive. It's shrubs, grasses, brush, and chaparral that's burning. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/what-is-going-on-with-californias-horrific-fires/?comments=1&post=36360577#comment-36360577 https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/what-is-going-on-wit... I mean, yeah, we can intensively thin and manage forests to protect high-value, critical areas. We can encourage landowners to pursue defensible space treatments, and maybe save their home, if not their neighbors'. But honestly, I don't see any practicable way to prevent fires like the Camp Fire. Or the Thomas. Or Carr and Mendocino and Ferguson and County and Delta and Hirz and the other 7,579 fires that have burned in California this season. I wish I could claim otherwise.
- Amezarak 8y ago
  All I can say to that is in the southeast we do prescribed burns even in residential areas, and even in rough terrain.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    All I can say is that in the southeast, your trees are wet, and controlled burns do not burn far past the controlled area. In California, everything is dry enough that even a tiny ember escaping the burn area can turn a controlled burn into a massive fire. In fact, excluding the massive fires of the past 3 years, some of California's biggest blazes were controlled burns that got out of control.
s0rce 8y ago
Yah, I'm not sure where that information is from, I've run into controlled burns frequently in the Sierra. I called the FD once in South Lake Tahoe as I hiked right up to the fire but missed the signage on the road.
gamblor956 8y ago
California has millions of dry, dead trees owing to a bark beetle infestation and multiple, 100-degree+ heat waves. Do you know how hot that wood burns? More than a few trees together, and it burns hot enough to spontaneously combust trees up to a few dozen feet away. Without wind. California's forests are dense. They're dense enough that fires, even controlled burns, can and have generate firestorms--where the heat of the fire generates its own atmospheric wind system that feeds the fire. Do you know what sort of embers these sorts of fires generate? The kind that fly hundreds of feet, retaining enough heat to light structures on fire when they land. Take a look at the shots of the Malibu portion of the Hill/Woolsey fire: there are structures that burned almost a quarter of a mile away from the closest flora. So the reason that California cut back on controlled burns? Because due to the factors described above, controlled burns very quickly become massive, uncontrolled conflagrations. Controlled burns are something you can do when the trees and climate is relatively wet, since only the stuff you set on fire burns, or where flora is far enough apart and weather patterns mild enough that the fire can't spread on its own. But you know what's really unbelievable? Someone who doesn't know diddly squat about what they're talking about who thinks they know better than the people who actually have to deal with this on a regular basis.
- Amezarak 8y ago
  Let's assume everything in this comment is perfectly true. The past century has been unusually wet in California. Your choice is to burn now, or burn later when its even drier and hotter. Meanwhile, California apparently agrees with hs, because they plan on increasing the number of prescribed burns.
- kryogen1c 8y ago
  > So the reason that California cut back on controlled burns? Because due to the factors described above, controlled burns very quickly become massive, uncontrolled conflagrations. Yeah what a disaster a massive, uncontrolled burn would be. > But you know what's really unbelievable? Someone who doesn't know diddly squat about what they're talking about who thinks they know better than the people who actually have to deal with this on a regular basis. Your righteous indignation falls pretty flat when there is plain evidence that they are doing a bad job. Here is a list of the 20 largest CA fires https://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/Top20_Acres.pdf https://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets... 19 are from the last 50 years, 16 in the last 20. How many more hundreds of thousands of acres have to burn before the approach is changed?
zgramana 8y ago
If you live on the East Coast then you take the wind for granted. On the Pacific Coast, the winds blow fast and furious, especially as you go up in altitude. Its very hard to control a burn here on most days, especially given the water cycle here. There is vastly more fuel in October and November than earlier in the year as the last rains are about 6 months past. Controlled burns are probably done best during a short 1-2 month window when ground cover is dry enough, but those are also typically high wind months. To have any control of a burn here you need to be lucky (low winds for a few days), it needs to be a very small prescribed area, and probably needs to be at less than peak fuel. This all amounts to a very small window for doing a prescribed burn. Given how big many of the forests are, and how much of the state is covered with them, I don’t see how you can have much of any control over a prescribed fire started there. Certainly not without the heroic effort it takes to put out wildfires. I don’t know how we can ask firefighters to risk their life for a prescribed burn.
- sharkmerry 8y ago
  the winds look slightly worse on the west coast, but not to a degree that they cant be doing burns like on the east coast https://windexchange.energy.gov/maps-data/325 https://windexchange.energy.gov/maps-data/325
  - zgramana 8y ago
    The problem with that map is that the annual average obscures the wide seasonal variation, which was the main thrust of my comment. The high winds come during the dry season, then die down during the bulk of the wet season.

twtw 8y ago

> I find this _unfathomable_. I'm from a desert state where during dry times it was illegal to light fires and we absolutely did controlled burns. Many of the answers on that quora link seem to indicate that ca does in fact do controlled burns?

kryogen1c 8y ago
Some of the comments indicate they try to burn as much as they can. The ambivalent, uncertain language is a sign the game is already lost. If you ask you car mechanic if the lugs on your tire are tight, the answer is yes; the answer is not some lugs are federally owned so we did the best we could. This is a serious public safety issue which if left alone is guaranteed to end in widespread death and destruction.
- Johnny555 8y ago
  I think it's more like if you ask your neighborhood mechanic to inspect the brake system, and he said "I inspected everything I could, but the master cylinder is leaking and sealed and only the dealer has the tools and knowledge to open it up" so you have to go to the dealer. California shouldn't be expected to maintain forests on someone else's property.

sp332 8y ago

Snark218 over on Ars Technica claims to be involved in land management decisions, and has some details about why it's not feasible across the state. E.g. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/what-is-going-on-with-californias-horrific-fires/?comments=1&post=36360983#comment-36360983 https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/what-is-going-on-wit... And like I keep saying: these fires are not burning in forests. They are burning in suburbs, exurbs, and dense residential areas. In towns. Up steep canyons that are treacherous to hike up, let alone tote a pulaski and mattock. In many of the pictures, it's obvious that trees are damaged but survive. It's shrubs, grasses, brush, and chaparral that's burning. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/what-is-going-on-with-californias-horrific-fires/?comments=1&post=36360577#comment-36360577 https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/11/what-is-going-on-wit... I mean, yeah, we can intensively thin and manage forests to protect high-value, critical areas. We can encourage landowners to pursue defensible space treatments, and maybe save their home, if not their neighbors'. But honestly, I don't see any practicable way to prevent fires like the Camp Fire. Or the Thomas. Or Carr and Mendocino and Ferguson and County and Delta and Hirz and the other 7,579 fires that have burned in California this season. I wish I could claim otherwise.

Amezarak 8y ago
All I can say to that is in the southeast we do prescribed burns even in residential areas, and even in rough terrain.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  All I can say is that in the southeast, your trees are wet, and controlled burns do not burn far past the controlled area. In California, everything is dry enough that even a tiny ember escaping the burn area can turn a controlled burn into a massive fire. In fact, excluding the massive fires of the past 3 years, some of California's biggest blazes were controlled burns that got out of control.

s0rce 8y ago

Yah, I'm not sure where that information is from, I've run into controlled burns frequently in the Sierra. I called the FD once in South Lake Tahoe as I hiked right up to the fire but missed the signage on the road.

gamblor956 8y ago

California has millions of dry, dead trees owing to a bark beetle infestation and multiple, 100-degree+ heat waves. Do you know how hot that wood burns? More than a few trees together, and it burns hot enough to spontaneously combust trees up to a few dozen feet away. Without wind. California's forests are dense. They're dense enough that fires, even controlled burns, can and have generate firestorms--where the heat of the fire generates its own atmospheric wind system that feeds the fire. Do you know what sort of embers these sorts of fires generate? The kind that fly hundreds of feet, retaining enough heat to light structures on fire when they land. Take a look at the shots of the Malibu portion of the Hill/Woolsey fire: there are structures that burned almost a quarter of a mile away from the closest flora. So the reason that California cut back on controlled burns? Because due to the factors described above, controlled burns very quickly become massive, uncontrolled conflagrations. Controlled burns are something you can do when the trees and climate is relatively wet, since only the stuff you set on fire burns, or where flora is far enough apart and weather patterns mild enough that the fire can't spread on its own. But you know what's really unbelievable? Someone who doesn't know diddly squat about what they're talking about who thinks they know better than the people who actually have to deal with this on a regular basis.

Amezarak 8y ago
Let's assume everything in this comment is perfectly true. The past century has been unusually wet in California. Your choice is to burn now, or burn later when its even drier and hotter. Meanwhile, California apparently agrees with hs, because they plan on increasing the number of prescribed burns.
kryogen1c 8y ago
> So the reason that California cut back on controlled burns? Because due to the factors described above, controlled burns very quickly become massive, uncontrolled conflagrations. Yeah what a disaster a massive, uncontrolled burn would be. > But you know what's really unbelievable? Someone who doesn't know diddly squat about what they're talking about who thinks they know better than the people who actually have to deal with this on a regular basis. Your righteous indignation falls pretty flat when there is plain evidence that they are doing a bad job. Here is a list of the 20 largest CA fires https://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets/Top20_Acres.pdf https://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/fact_sheets... 19 are from the last 50 years, 16 in the last 20. How many more hundreds of thousands of acres have to burn before the approach is changed?

zgramana 8y ago

If you live on the East Coast then you take the wind for granted. On the Pacific Coast, the winds blow fast and furious, especially as you go up in altitude. Its very hard to control a burn here on most days, especially given the water cycle here. There is vastly more fuel in October and November than earlier in the year as the last rains are about 6 months past. Controlled burns are probably done best during a short 1-2 month window when ground cover is dry enough, but those are also typically high wind months. To have any control of a burn here you need to be lucky (low winds for a few days), it needs to be a very small prescribed area, and probably needs to be at less than peak fuel. This all amounts to a very small window for doing a prescribed burn. Given how big many of the forests are, and how much of the state is covered with them, I don’t see how you can have much of any control over a prescribed fire started there. Certainly not without the heroic effort it takes to put out wildfires. I don’t know how we can ask firefighters to risk their life for a prescribed burn.

sharkmerry 8y ago
the winds look slightly worse on the west coast, but not to a degree that they cant be doing burns like on the east coast https://windexchange.energy.gov/maps-data/325 https://windexchange.energy.gov/maps-data/325
- zgramana 8y ago
  The problem with that map is that the annual average obscures the wide seasonal variation, which was the main thrust of my comment. The high winds come during the dry season, then die down during the bulk of the wet season.