And researchers say it's part of a troubling trend.
Thursday, November 14, 2024
How the Mountain Fire was fueled by an "environmental recipe" leading to disaster
California wildfires have gotten much worse over the last two decades, researchers say. But certain conditions came together in what one expert described as an "environmental recipe" that fueled the devastating Mountain Fire in Ventura County.
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Gee, if only all the reservoirs were full and more reservoirs were created, maybe this could have been... wait... no, it's California, where every decision by their leaders leads to death and woe.
ReplyDeleteThe Camp Fire (Paradise, CA, 2018) says "Hold My Beer".
ReplyDeleteAnother catastrophic wildfire brought to you by your friends at PG&E.
Wrong villain. PG&E is a regulated utility; they spend money on things on which the Calif PUC allows them to spend money.
DeleteElmo, in my area there was a wild fire of over 100,000 acres. It burned for months. But it hardly made the news probably because it was in a rural area. That was in the 1980s.
DeleteSure put a lot of people to work. A friend was getting ready to sell his D8 and other tractors. The fire pulled him back from bankruptcy. His own home was almost burned out. He saved a lot of ranch homes in the area.
The Camp Fire was started by a broken hook that supported an insulator on a 115 kV transmission line which then dropped onto the steel tower it was hanging from. The broken hook and the bracket it was hanging from were both 93 years old, originally installed when the transmission line was first built in the 1920s, in a canyon notorious for its extremely high winds in the fall. PG&E's lack of maintenance was solely to blame for the Camp Fire.
DeleteI'm glad you have so much confidence in CA PUC's ability to 'regulate' and prevent PG&E's history of failure to protect public safety in California. I don't share your confidence in either organization.
Elmo, do you remember the California legislature "deregulating" the electrical grid in California. They formed the California Independent Operator (Cal-ISO) some time in the late 1990's. The legislature capped the retail price of electricity but not the whole sale price. So companies like Enron played games like overloading "line 15" which transferred power from north to south creating a "shortage" of power. It nearly bankrupted PG&E. So what does your company do to save money? Why you cut back on maintenance. PG&E was a fairly well run company until then. I worked for a lab that tested the oil in their oil in the transformers.
DeleteUncle Dave
California's regulatory agencies stopped any real maintenance of PG&E's lines, especially in 'environmentally sensitive' areas. PG&E had been, for years and years, decades, screaming in the trade magazines about all the things they weren't allowed to do and what the consequences would be.
DeleteFlorida's utilities and forestry regulations got taken over by leftist environmentalists back in the 80's, things like no clear cutting utility lines and bans on preventative burns. Which led to the Florida Firestorms of 1998. Which the Florida government jumped onto 'Thou Shalt Clearcut Utility Lines or ELSE!' and 'Thou Shalt Do Proscribed Burns or ELSE!!!"
It took over 10 years for some sections of the Ocala National Forest to become reasonably covered in vegetation. The storms were so bad they literally sterilized the land even to burning out palmettos, which are notoriously difficult to stop growing even by burning them.
Other factors that contributed to the Cali Fires were and are things like homeowners not able to remove vegetation from around their homes because of some supposedly endangered rodents (that also carry Hanta and Black Plague) and building codes that require... wood shingle roofs and other regulations not allowing homeowners to sweep up tree litter, like pine needles, from their property.
Homeowners who did things like sweeping up debris and clearing vegetation away from their homes were the ones that had homes survive, only to be sued by California for damaging the natural environment.
Again, various forestry trade magazines were shouting out loud about how these regulations were setting up areas for horrible firestorms.
Seriously, wood shingles and pine needles everywhere in fire country? Not able to remove potentially troublesome dead trees and dangerous trees from around powerlines? Is California stupid? (Yes, yes it is, as a conglomerate of people, California is only as smart as the dumbest voter.)
Uncle Dave- Let's take a timeline trip down memory lane:
Delete'94- PG&E burned my house down in the Trauner Fire.
Next, from PG&E's Wikipedia page - 'On June 19, 1997, a Nevada County jury found PG&E guilty of "a pattern of tree-trimming violations" that sparked a devastating 1994 wildfire (the Trauner Fire) in the Sierra. PG&E was convicted of 739 counts of criminal negligence for failing to trim trees near its power lines—the biggest criminal conviction ever against the state's largest utility.'
At trial it was proven that PG&E had a history of starting fires and had used the $77 million saved from not doing the required tree work (money granted to PG&E by the CA PUC for vegetation management) to pay executive bonuses and return ill-gotten profits to shareholders.
'98- Cal ISO was created.
My point being that PG&E has always played fast and loose with their legally required responsibly to safely provide power to their customers in exchange for being given a monopoly to provide that power by the people who regulate them and the people of Northen California.
This climate change thingy must be real strong juju.
ReplyDelete"The general climate change angle of things getting hotter and drier, but also, remember now, we just came off a really wet winter also related to climate change. "
Bill From The Bush
"Climate change". Bah, humbug. Handy way of shifting blame from govt policies to unspecified others. How about environmentalists not allowing management of the underbrush, excessive development in areas susceptible for fire, poor management of water resources, utility lines poorly maintained? And I could suggest other potential reasons but I'm not on-site to observe. For what it's worth, I was a wildland firefighter for 8 years
ReplyDeleteBah! What do YOU know?
DeleteJust because you experienced this first hand and saw what mismanagement and poorly throughout or researched regulation causes. /S
The article quotes two experts. One, the 'fire behavior analyst's, says the last several years have featured wet winters. The other, a professor of geography, says less rain due to climate change.
ReplyDeleteHere is a fine display of compartmentalized thinking. Experts know what they know, or think, but without looking at the broader picture.
Anyway.
There are areas sof such incredibly rugged terrain that to contain the spread is best case. The fire will extinguish itself.
That area of eastern Ventura, Northwestern Los Angeles counties is one such area. It burns massively every couple of years.
The western and northern portions of SoCal had long been named the valley of smokes. Even before industrial age it was so named.
Talking about rugged terrain. One can go not more than ten miles north to west from the LA metropolis to be in very remote wilderness. The home of the creosote bush. It catches fire easily and burns very hot The wet/dry cycle has gone on for millennia. Add the dry foehn winds (locally called Santa Ana), plus more people, more structures. VoilĂ , more headline news.
The recent Mountain fire wasn't even large or difficult relative to CA fires. That it was proximate to population centers made the headline.
ReplyDeleteIt will happen again. And again. In the same area.
Sad that the wild fires do not burn places that California could do without. The State House, for example.
ReplyDeleteThe fire weenies in SoCal only have two scripts: "It was a dry winter so we have Extreme Fire Hazard conditions" or "It was a wet winter and all the new growth makes it so we have Extreme Fire Hazard conditions".
ReplyDeleteY'all are lost in the weeds of "Distraction Bureaucracy", the end game, by ALL MEANS, is to force people off the land and into the 15 cities. The more death, devastation, misery and impoverishment, the better. The WEF, NWO, WHO, Soros Foundation, ad infinitum, have been telling us for decades (((Their))) PLANS for a "Sustainable", "Green" (Soylent), Utopia to reign over the land...and you will own nothing and like it...after the dystopian, destructive, environmental, social, economic, civil, shit show (((They))) and their minions induce. We'll be SO grateful to be SAVED from the cold, hungry, horrors.
ReplyDelete