Forest Service officials close all California national forests • Hacker News Board

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#181

Post by mym1990 » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:35 AM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #57

burlesona wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a thought experiment, I wonder what it would cost to build a European village scale town for 22k people (the population of SLT) and then literally build a moat around it as a firebreak.

Winds can carry burning debris hundreds of feet through the air, so it'd need to be more like a village in the middle of a lake. Though it wouldn't have to be a lake, just a barren field that has no (or limited) combustables. But would still need to be quite large for protection, and buildings would still need to be fire resistant to protect against burning embers.

Can we just build something like a Helms Deep?

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#182

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:39 AM UTC

Johnny555 wrote: post #136

hellbannedguy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A moat is not a horrid idea. When Paradise was burning I was thinking if I lived in a fire prone envionment; I would have sprinklers on roof of my home. It would be a simple 1/2" copper pipe feeding a few sprinkler heads on the roof. Maybe a few mercury switches placed around the property, or remotely controlled through the phone line, wifi, or sat phone enabled? Nothing too elaborate. It wouldn't protect everyone. I…

A small residential fire sprinkler head outputs around 15gpm of water. While keeping a roof wet is different than wetting down a room on fire, a roof is big and you need to be sure it stays wet, so let's say you want to keep it wet with 30gpm. And lets say you have to keep it wet for 24 hours until the fire danger passes. That's around 40,000 gallons of water. Where are you going to get that water? You can't count on…

That sounds like moderately more flow than needed for much longer than needed. Based on some searches for bushfire tanks, you could meet the water storage recommendations for $3k.

And sure, the idea of replacing the fire department is probably not great, but it wouldn't hurt to have a bunch of these around.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#183

Post by mym1990 » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:39 AM UTC

thehappypm wrote: post #31

markdown wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> global warming Calling it that can be a trap. Stick to climate change.

No, we need to stick with global warming. Overwhelmingly the direction is warming.

It’s good to keep in mind that heat won’t be the only fallout of global warming though, it will be more extremes of everything

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#184

Post by noptd » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:41 AM UTC

mistrial9 wrote: post #119

gorwell wrote: post #111

Can anyone explain this? "So early on, Newsom identified some key wildfire prevention projects, and that includes things like forest thinning and prescribed burns, and they were meant to protect some of the most vulnerable communities in California. And he claimed 90,000 acres were treated, but we found that's not true. The state's own data shows that, in reality, it was less than 12,000 acres, so just a fraction of…

"we also found that the state's fire prevention work overall dropped by half last year" that is utterly not true by any stretch of the words .. it is literally political theater hit piece. see for yourselves... https://www.gov.ca.gov/2021/04/13/governor-newsom-signs-land... https://fmtf.fire.ca.gov/press-publications/ the claim is that a particular State of Calif, Dept of Forestry perhaps, program was supposed to thi…

Those links don't refute the parent article's claims at all.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#185

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

olivermarks wrote: post #145

MichaelApproved wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That video is produced by the Epoch Times. From wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epoch_Times > The Epoch Times is a far-right international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement. > The Epoch Media Group's news sites and YouTube channels have spread conspiracy theories such as QAnon and anti-vaccine misinformation. In 2020, The New York Times called it…

So what? The person who is being interviewed is a California forestry expert with years of experience. https://www.nationalforests.org/who-we-are The NYT is owned by the Sulzberger family, Time magazine is owned by Marc Benioff, the Washington Post by Bezos. If you dislike any of those people (some of whom are very closely affiliated with the DNC) does that make you refuse to look at anything they produce?! There is…

> The person who is being interviewed is a California forestry expert with years of experience.

That's not enough to make a video credible. Ever heard of What the Bleep Do We Know!?

Even with a reasonably long single-person interview, it's easy to cut out the parts you don't like if you're a biased editor.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#186

Post by dbcurtis » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:47 AM UTC

gorwell wrote: post #111

Can anyone explain this? "So early on, Newsom identified some key wildfire prevention projects, and that includes things like forest thinning and prescribed burns, and they were meant to protect some of the most vulnerable communities in California. And he claimed 90,000 acres were treated, but we found that's not true. The state's own data shows that, in reality, it was less than 12,000 acres, so just a fraction of…

I have one piece of anectdata. I own some property in the Sierra foothills, and a couple of years ago spent considerable time talking to the California Department Forestry (CDF) fire chief for the area about clearing a fire break through it. It was part of a huge project. We agreed on the path, had the legal paperwork signed... and then...

COVID, and then,

100% of local crews were dispatched to fight last year's fires, and then,

still COVID, and now,

even yet more worse fires...

The fire prevention projects are what they work on when they are not fighting actual fires. And they aren't exactly over-staffed to begin with.

There simply hasn't been any staff to work on the big fire prevention projects. If there is anybody out there that thinks Newsom and the CDF are behind plan and need to move faster, I have several shovels I can loan out so that you can help. Heck, you can borrow my chain saw.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#187

Post by greendave » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:47 AM UTC

COGlory wrote: post #22

larkinrichards wrote: post #16

Was planning to hike the JMT starting tomorrow from cottonwood meadow and ending on the 22nd. Permits canceled at 6pm tonight. Anyone got recommendations for a last minute 20 day off grid vacation? Have car, supplies, ready to go.

Go north. Montana, Idaho, etc. Wind River range is absolutely breathtaking. Just be grizzly aware.

Smoke in Idaho and western Wyoming was awful a few weeks ago. Maybe it’s improved since then, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Maybe central Montana?

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#188

Post by ip26 » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:50 AM UTC

OneEyedRobot wrote: post #155

pbuzbee wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it as a concern because (1) a large portion of wild lands are burning within a short span of time. I would guess (no evidence, just a hunch) that burning was more dispersed in time before modern fire prevention. I also feel that (2) climate change makes these fires much worse, and forests will have a much harder time rebounding.

Don't hold me to it, but I seem to remember seeing a study showing that prehistoric California had roughly 10x the current burn acreage.

Probably, but megafires sterilize the soil. Low intensity fires recover much more quickly. Ideally we'd be able to gradually reduce the burn backlog without letting it all go in a few really, really big years.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#189

Post by 01100011 » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:52 AM UTC

So I'm all for blaming the ineffectual(or worse) govt agencies responsible for dropping the ball on fire prevention work, but are we going to talk about the communities that continue to ignore the CalFire recommendations for defensible space?

I keep seeing footage of structures burning, and every time they are situated too close to fuel sources. I understand it's tough to sacrifice the aesthetics of your mountain community, but fire is a fact of life in CA and preparing for it is flat out irresponsible.

I'm sorry if this comes across as victim blaming. I suppose it can't be anything but that. But people really need to take responsibility for fire prevention if they're going to live in a wilderness zone.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#190

Post by 01100011 » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 4:54 AM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #39

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #21

The US National Forrest and Calfire have been on the losing side of this fire so far. All the technology that produces memes that spread across the globe in seconds and launches and lands orbital rockets flawlessly cannot stop this fire. This has been a dry summer which can be attributed to global warming. I for one am not a defeatist that will let global warming beat me. We need to think of solutions to fires like t…

As a thought experiment, I wonder what it would cost to build a European village scale town for 22k people (the population of SLT) and then literally build a moat around it as a firebreak.

If communities would just follow the damn guidelines(https://www.fire.ca.gov/programs/communications/defensible-s...) they'd be a lot better off.