LA Times: Forest thinning spared homes
Two days ago, I noted the value of forest thinning in preventing and alleviating SoCal wildfires–and the harmful obstructionism of environmental groups standing in the way.
Now, here’s the LA Times: Forest thinning helps spare some homes – A federal effort to clear brush and remove trees in the Arrowhead area is controversial but makes a difference:
As flames ravage surrounding communities, this resort town high in the San Bernardino Mountains emerged largely unscathed, an island in a sea of destruction.
The credit for that isolated victory, federal officials say, should go to firefighting tactics, shifting winds and favorable terrain — and a sometimes controversial U.S. Forest Service effort to eliminate the tinder that fuels forest fires.
Since 2002, the Forest Service has removed millions of trees, thinned brush and cut low-hanging branches, creating fuel breaks around almost 80% of the community. Fires don’t spread quickly or easily through such areas, instead burning lower to the ground and with less intensity.
“The fuel breaks saved Lake Arrowhead,” said Randall Clauson, the Forest Service’s division chief for the San Bernardino National Forest and incident commander earlier this week on the two biggest wildfires still burning in the mountains.
He said he believes that, without the breaks, “the fire would have run right through Lake Arrowhead and gone to Highway 18, cutting off the evacuation route and probably resulting in the loss of hundreds of lives.”
But not everyone was convinced that forest-thinning itself played such a pivotal role.
“Thinning and cleanup of surface fuels really does help,” said Ken Larson, a fire behavior analyst with the Forest Service, stationed at the fire command post in the San Bernardino Mountains. “But there are many variables at play. Even that may not save structures in the face of extreme winds and extreme conditions.”
Still, evidence was dramatic in the thinned forest areas. In one cluster of Lake Arrowhead neighborhoods protected by fuel breaks, only a few stumps were burning and no trees were lost. Hundreds of surrounding homes were untouched.
Some of the worst-hit areas like Running Springs don’t have fuel breaks. Just 20% of Big Bear is protected by breaks, fire officials said.
But I’m just a Big Stupid Meanie for saying it.
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Stop the press!!! No literally, stop the press!!!
Read some of those stupid comments over there. As usual, they were a lot worse than “Big Stupid Meanie”. Not a clue in any of the posts I saw.
Amazing really.
L.A. Times of Mexico printed that? WOW, the smoke in the air must be messing with them.
Even were they to admit that it was effective, their next argument will be that the Feds only clear brush in rich, white-people forests…
in 24 hours, M6_4 will rise up, inform them how wrong they are, and then have his comment deleted and then be banned.
I will consider it a worth-while sacrifice.
Nah, you be right on Michelle I grew up in Arrowhead and it’s a no brainer what needs to be done and MOST people up there do also.
Once again, Michelle leads the way.
Nice job!!!
File this under ‘Duh!’
It is a no brainer to anyone who owns a house. In front of my house is an old oak tree, obviously was planted when the house was built (1955), and it is about 75 feet tall…old twigs and small branches continually fall off of it, not to mention the leaves, so it requires me to go out and clear out that dead wood, in order keep the yard clean. And yes, I have placed calls to have some tree folks come in and trim it up…taking bids on it as I type.
The same goes with general yard work and gardening…clear out the old stuff in order to plant the new stuff. If you want to reuse the old stuff…ummm…hello…compost pile.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the more old, dead, dried out twigs, wood, brush, you leave around, the more fuel you add to a fire.
But then again, I am not a enviro-wacko intent on saving the “North American 4 legged spotted horned ear guppy eating spider” at the expense of humans and their homes.
Call me insensitive
and dont forget the mojave fringe toed lizard… out here you would think its the last blue whale in the ocean. sheesh.
The utter stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me. Forest management is important. It makes for a healthier woods, better environment for wildlife and a safer neighbor for humans. So much of the destruction here could have been avoided but isn’t due to radical leftist morons who don’t know what the hell they are talking about.
Michelle, do you ever get tired of being right?
Liberals have no sense of logic. Which is why they scream for “ALTERNATIVE ENERGY” but fight tooth and nail to block the building of nuclear power, hydroelectric damns, and wind power.
You’re not a meanie, Michelle. It’s just liberal projection. Yet again.
they should bill the Sierra club and all the other tree-huggers for all the costs of fighting the fires … they are the ones that have kept challenging just about every single attempt at clearing the underbrush and dead trees throughout the country … by keeping the programs tied up in the courts they not only cost taxpayers time and money they contribute to the loss of property and in some cases lives when these fires hit every year because the clearing operations weren’t done …
Alan Colmes just equated those on the right who are calling anti-clearing enviro-whackos “anti-clearing enviro-whackos,” with those on the left who are blaming Bush for a lack of deployable nat. guards in Cali.
Well, it now seems that those on the right have the US Forest Service to strengthen their argument…and those on the left still have the annoyingly-refutable Barbara Boxer.
There’s no convincing these people.
Ratface Colmes is an idiot. The enviro wackos are idiots………….hell look at the piping plover
One Big Bear resident claimed that the fire was started because an old fire was contained but not out, and the enviros fought against dozers going in to extinguish it.
The weather took a bad turn, ignited an ember, and the rest is as you see on TV.
emphasis mine
ahahahahahhhhahahahahahhahahah!!! OMG is that funny!
Even when the facts are in print and in front of their eyes they can’t see the forest for the trees.
#16, funny. Those fires in the rain forest throw up so much steam you can hardly see the smoke.
#16 SteveP
Holy crap that’s funny.
IOW: “What I want to be true is true. I have no proof, but that doesn’t matter.”
Yep, that pretty much sums up liberalism.
Yes, they are, but they’re not nearly as dense as HypnoToad.
I’m all over using convict labor (as they already do) for this.
The more the better
One of those posters “over there” asked how we would thin hundreds of thousands of acres. May I suggest each illegal thins one acre before going home? That would be 20 million acres.
Some of the densest forest in the world is chaparral.
I’ve seen flames blow across 300 ft wide fuel breaks.
I’ve seen winds push flames through areas that burned only five years before.
So wind, dry fuels and low humidities will always make Southern California dangerous this time of year.
Oh yeah.
Stop licking the toad
Talking to Lefty Moon Loons and enviroNazis about responsible woodland management is like showing a hog a watch.
In my wild land fire training we learned about the fire triangle. It’s made up of fuel, oxygen and heat. If you take one of the components out, the triangle will collapse. After the fire triangle collapses the fire will stop. Question for Moonbats: Guess, which part of the triangle dead trees falls under? Answer: Trees are fuel for the fire.
Interestingly, the 2000 fire that almost destroyed Los Alamos never made it through the woods that I cut and thinned as part of my Eagle Badge.
And if this person had watched the news recently they would have seen that 2.5 million acres of south american rain forest burned down in Paraguay last month. It would have been more, but it rained.
Funny that.
Yay, Geraldope is out of Cal. Boo, he’s on Fox and Friends.
I’m not not licking toads!
I just fanned through some of the comments on the big meanie link, those folks need to buy a clue and a bar of soap for their ignorant foul mouths. They have absolutely no idea of whats going on in Arrowhead and the thinning of the dead and bark beatle trees works. I suggest after this all clears they take time to actually go there and see the truth of the matter for themselves instead of just saying F.. you and talking out their asses. They seem to be consumed by hatred and have the intellect of a 5 year old.
Isn’t this about like saying, “during a tornado warning, going to a shelter really does help, but in the case of a direct hit from a tornado the shelter may not help you survive.”
Pretty much Dave, some things are inevitable. Better safe than sorry though.
First line in the comment. Do you need to go any further?
lol, that paints a nice picture pxy.
Folks – the issue here is typical liberal logic. Remember that to a liberal, every event is separated from every other event – there is never any connection. It was way too complicated when josetheguerilla explained that there is a fire triangle. In their way – the fire is separate from fuel, heat, oxygen. How come those three can’t just get along? All we are saying is give peace a chance. Save the lemming
oh – I forgot – stop being mean – it’s for the children
We have known that forest fires are fueled by dead undergrowth that is the result of the old Smokey the Bear strategy of putting out every fire. This results in excess dead dry undergrowth that makes a normal fire into an inferno. This is what caused the disastrous Yellowstone Fires.
My question is, “Does the Sierra Club bill the US Government for their legal bills to sue the US Government?” This is what the ACLU does when they file frivolous lawsuits. Are we taxpayers paying the EnviroWackos to sue us and prevent these kinds of disasters?
My guess is yes, most likely they do.. a non-profit organization is capable of getting US Government $$. We need to stop this madness. Any suggestions?
Went over to read the comments, amazing that a liberal would read that and think they were pearls of wisdom from intellectuals. And they call the conservatives stupid. brother…
Yesterday I suggested suing them, tort suit, Joint and Several Liability. Not for the cost of fighting the fires, but for the property damage.
I still think a lawsuit would be the best venue to resolve this. The enviros love to use lawsuits, so it would be poetic justice as well.
It’s a different kind of smoke than normal.
Special Bulletin to Liberal-Enviro-flakes…
WOOD BURNS!
At least you’re not a “Blue Meanie” like in the Beatles movies. Wait, does that make you a “Red Meanie?”
Since I left California over a year ago, my life has been much calmer.
Except for the Halliburton/Blackwater connection to every event on earth…
Good article. The fuel breaks DO make a difference, and it would also help if there were better land-use planning, like not building your house in the middle of a woodlot, but on the edge.
What’s needed here is balance: Michelle’s report had someone saying the breaks AROUND the area where people lived–clearly THAT is where the clearing needs to be more vigorous.
I’m an environmental scientist.