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.
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. Voilà, 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.