Quelling the Infernos

The headlines are burning up with reports of numerous wildfires all over the state.  Today's headline notes that Gov. Brown thinks we are in "uncharted territory".  That's only because he has been ignoring the obvious precedents that have peppered his whole time in office including the Tubb's Fire of last year that should have been a third or fourth wake-up call.  Luckily some state Senator from Orange County that I have never heard of, John Moorlach, has a firm grip on the obvious as noted in this piece in the SF Chronicle.  I'll chop it down to the essence, but you can read through it at your leisure while you ponder the foothills and Mills Canyon as the potential next hotspot while also pondering that the B'game Fire Dept. is doing its part to help up north by sending some of our team elsewhere--just like they did last year.

    3 practical steps to reduce wildfires in California

1. We should revisit Senate Bill 1463, which I authored in 2018 but was killed in committee even though no one testified in opposition to it. Called “Cap and Trees,” it would continuously appropriate 25 percent of state cap-and-trade funds to counties to harden the state’s utility infrastructure and better manage wildlands and our overgrown and drought-weakened forests.
2. We should stop funding the high-speed rail project with cap-and-trade dollars — $621 million this year, according to the analysis of the fiscal 2018-19 budget by the Legislative Analyst’s Office — and divert it to protecting our forests.  Some of this may involve prescribed burns in our forests, as authored this year in Senate Bill 1260 by my Democratic colleague, Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara. 
3. Where such burns are impractical, such as around homes and developed property, we can employ mechanical thinning. 

Moorlach also notes

A single forest fire can release four or five times as much greenhouse gas than are reduced by a year’s worth of government-regulated industry and personal vehicles emission. Oddly, the California Air Resources Board doesn’t even count wildfire greenhouse gases in its carbon-reduction reports.

With the Ferguson fire (Yosemite) nearing 60,0000 acres burned, I'll bet that estimate is way low.  #2 is so obvious that I hope even Gavin Newsom gets it.......

Comments

[Joe]

I will add a #4 to Moorlach's list. Once we stop wasting money on High-speed Fail, put some of it into sensor networks and better satellite imagery analysis tools to find the fires faster. Then put some more saved money into more aircraft, pilots and whatever else CalFire thinks it needs.

[Cassandra]

First step is to vote for Cox who says that the day he is elected, HSR is dead.

[Joe]

Idea #5 from a guy commenting on the SacBee's website:

How about using UAV Drove swarm technology to rapidly create firelines? The Largest super tanker can drop 19,000 gallons of water or fire retardant at a time - and at a high cost. 20,000 UAV's could easily drop the same amount or more and continually repeat the drops to create firebreaks.

[Gerald]

I pass by the Caltrain crew working at Oak Grove and California Drive every morning. There's some dried vegetation under the eucalyptus trees and routinely there's a pickup truck or two parked in the shade below the trees. Is there a chance of a spark from an engine being ignited I wonder?
I'm hoping we don't have a fire problem over there.

[hollyroller@gmailcom]

I am sure "Hillsider" would agree that the foundation of ALL problems effecting the World is the lack of Population Control.
That was a popular topic in the 1950-60's.

[Marti L]

How about changing your Big Environmental policies who cause many of these fires.

Billions are being funneled to failed environmental black holes when we can spend these funds on helping our lower income black, hispanic/latino, and white citizens.

While millions of low income Californians can't afford rent or healthy daily meals, all we get is eight of the USA's 10 most-polluted cities, in terms of ozone pollution, are in California, according to the American Lung Association's

This State and its whacko-left mismanagement is a disgrace.

[Bruce Dickinson]

How exactly do the Big Environmental policies "cause" the fires?

Reminder: Bruce Dickinson wants SPECIFICS!

[Joe]

Here's an update to go with the news that Moonbeam has to go begging in Washington, D.C. for emergency funds. If I were in charge, I would tell him to shut down HSR and use that money...but I ain't in charge
-------

SAN FRANCISCO—No end was in sight for California’s summer of fires as crews battled what officials described as the largest wildfire in the state’s history.

The Mendocino Complex—an inferno combining two fires burning just north of Napa County’s wine-growing region—had scorched more than 283,000 acres as of Monday, said officials with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The fires forced new evacuations over the weekend amid high winds, hot temperatures and low humidity. Thousands of structures remained under threat.

As of Monday, 16 major fires were burning across California, with more than 14,000 firefighters deployed to battle them.
--------
1 of 16 fires has burned more than a quarter million acres and our dear Senators Feinstein and Harris are worried about what the CAFE mileage requirements for cars sold in California should be 30 years from now...we get the government we deserve

[Laura]

This doesn't cause the fires, but definitely fuels the fires. In Tahoe for example, on the Nevada side residents are allowed and required to clean up pine needles around homes. The California side, you would get fined for doing that until just recently. Just recently, they approved and will now allow residents to clean up pine needles ONCE a year in the spring only. This new exception to the law came about due to the fire that happened a few years back. Fire damage was larger on the California side versus the Nevada side due to lack of clean up around homes. Fire departments have been pushing for it and finally got the environmental groups to allow it once a year. One example that I am aware of but have been told it's like that all over the State.

[hillsider]

Governor Nero Brown strikes again!

[hollyroller@gmailcom]

Governor Brown is "The Representative" of the majority of Californians.

He is not just a guy who won a contest.

What is Big Environmentalism anyway?
Is it REI?
There are many reasons the cost of living in CA. is very high. Lots of reasons for high taxes too.
Nevertheless, people from all over the world continue to move here.
How do you explain that?
Obviously, things are not too bad...
In my opinion/observations, people who continually complain about things-as they see it, are living in the past and do not care to move beyond their past.
As time goes by, "The Burlingame Dinosaurs" will be forced to be "enlightened"(Moving out of their Parents/Childhood homes, loss of Prop 13, or Passing)and their POV's will be forgotten, laughed at,and the new will be embraced by their peers..
Things can only get better from learning.

[SPECIFICS Here]

Here are some SPECIFICS

Today, as California burns once again under torrential wildfires, many Californians have been asking why the dramatic increase in wildfires in the last five years… that is everyone except Governor Jerry Brown. Governor Brown claims that year-round, devastating fires are the “new normal” we must accept.

Megan Barth and I reported Monday:
“Supporting Obama-era regulations have resulted in the new normal: an endless and devastating fire season. Obama-era regulations introduced excessive layers of bureaucracy that blocked proper forest management and increased environmentalist litigation and costs—a result of far too many radical environmentalists, bureaucrats, Leftist politicians and judicial activists who would rather let forests burn, than let anyone thin out overgrown trees or let professional loggers harvest usable timber left from beetle infestation, or selectively cut timber.”

Mismanaged, overcrowded forests provide fuel to historic California wildfires, experts say. The 129 million dead trees throughout California’s forests are serving as matchsticks and kindling.

Jerry Brown, busy mulling ways to prevent the end of the world, took the Clinton and Obama-era gross regulations a step even further when he vetoed a bipartisan wildfire management bill in 2016.

At the request of the City Council of Laguna Beach, Sen. John Moorlach (R-Costa Mesa), authored SB 1463 in 2016, a bipartisan bill which would have given local governments more say in fire-prevention efforts through the Public Utilities Commission proceeding making maps of fire hazard areas around utility lines.

California fires produced as much pollution in 2 days as all the state’s cars do in a year

[Bruce Dickinson]

Sorry, guy, this isn't an SNL sketch of "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer". Bruce Dickinson is all for local control of fire suppression policies but saying that approval or lack of approval of such and such bill would have prevented 17 blazes now raging is a preposterous argument! That is such a stretch! How can that even be proven? Couple this with Trump's tweet that somehow water diversion into the Pacific Ocean is making the fires harder to fight makes the whole opposition look bad. Seriously, with straw-man arguments like this, no wonder opponents of Gov Moonbeam have stood zero chance for years. Put your best foot forward and fight like you're going to the Supreme Court instead of the People's Court!

Makes the following argument seem grounded on a far more factual basis: Using B-1s and B-52s from the USAF with thermobaric bombs to put out the fires, or even the B-1's flying low and generating a sonic boom, sending out a shock wave that would effectively blow out fire lines. This was actually tried (and worked) in (Socialist) Sweden.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a22674251/air-force-bomb-forest-fires/

Could you imagine if such a Bill came across the desk of Gov Moonbeam!?!? Maybe we should change his nickname to Gov Moon-shot!!!

How about B-1 Brown!!?

[Joe]

News release from CalFire today:

FELTON – The Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) San Mateo – Santa Cruz Unit, in cooperation with San Francisco Public Utility Commission (SFPUC), will conduct a 5-acre training burn at the San Andreas dam face near Burlingame on June 17, 2019. The burn will be conducted between the hours of 10:00 am and 4:00 pm, during which time smoke may be noticed in the area. This burn is being conducted as a training opportunity for CAL FIRE, local fire protection districts and SFPUC staff to implement wildland fire suppression techniques, firing methods and to observe fire behavior.

[Peter Garrison]

“...observe fire behavior.”

Pfft. Any Aristotelian knows fire reaches upwards to return to the sun, fire’s perfection.