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Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

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Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#131

Post by hutzlibu »

nordsieck wrote: post #124
hutzlibu wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is some middle ground though. I don't want my {critical infrastructure} to "fix things quickly and break things" at a critical moment, where I would have really needed that system. Those things can be scheduled and announced, so I can plan ahead and expect outages at that time.

> There is some middle ground though. Sure. But the problem is that there are incentives to keep pushing the middle ground closer towards eventual system collapse. It's never the right time to see if the backup generators can take the building load. But during real emergencies, it's amazing how common it is for the backup generators to not work for one reason or another.

"It's never the right time to see if the backup generators can take the building load. "

How about a test outside normal working hours?

It is possible, to meassure the power output before and then plug in enough stuff, that draws roughly the same.

But yes, it is more convenient to not do it and continue buisness as usual and hope for the best.

My point is, that in most cases, you can test and fix critical stuff and also fix problems created by your fixes, if you make it an important issue and plan accordingly. However, I did not say it is necessarily easy.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#132

Post by BurningFrog »

anonporridge wrote: post #17

This illustrates a more generic problem with our legal system. When the option for positive action to mitigate a problem exists, we often don't do it because the action creates legal liability for any and all negative externalities of the action, even if the negative externalities as a whole are drastically less than what would happen doing nothing. We resist permitting prescribed burns because when they cause uninte…

There is a strong, mostly unstated, assumption in this era that doing nothing is always safe.

I don't know how to fight that.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#133

Post by pvaldes »

We should put in the air as many CO2 as possible, yep. What could go wrong?. This valuable fertile soil that need 200 years to build and all the CO2 accumulated must be released... because religious thinking.

Or we could try something different and jail the arsonists. Respect the soil and let the forest accumulate water and include thousands of new species.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#134

Post by londons_explore »

Do we have understanding of fire frequency naturally? ie. how many years, on average, between fires on a given bit of land?

If we do, then it seems to make sense to try to maintain the same frequency - that, I assume, would be best for the plants and animals which have adapted to that.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#135

Post by mrangle »

Controlled burns are a single example of the uncountable things that humans have always had to do to maintain what is good for everyone and animals, but which come to be targeted by loud people who see a path to personal gain by making them a political issue. Presenting solutions as problems is explained as being more civilized, but it is less. Animal population management is another example.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#136

Post by kibwen »

h2odragon wrote: post #120
stcroixx wrote: post #12

The only federal regulation I saw referenced in the article were clean air regulations. Otherwise, it appears states and their residents are imposing additional barriers. And public opinion is a local issue of course as well. I don't know if it's really possible to change public ignorance, particularly if the strong opinions are political, so this might be a case where it makes sense for the federal government to ste…

Most of the land West of the Mississippi is Federally owned. You wanna do fire abatement on BLM land, you got a long hard fight ahead of you, before you ever get to a written regulation you can cite. Much less laws voted on by Congress.

Source for obsctruction from the BLM? As far as I can tell, they carry out controlled burns all the time (what they call "prescribed burning"): https://www.nifc.gov/sites/default/files/blm/documents/BLMFi...

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#137

Post by petsfed »

photochemsyn wrote: post #116

Sounds like this is the issue: > "Also included in the prescription are optimal weather conditions, including a minimum temperature for burns in grass and brush of 30 degrees and a maximum of 80 degrees; relative humidity between 5% and 40%; and wind speed between 2 mph and 15 mph. Such conditions are becoming rarer." If you broaden the acceptable range of conditions, you risk more prescribed burns going out of contr…

>Note that prescribed fires aren't the only way of removing excess vegetation, there's mechanized mowing and goat herds for example.

Which works fine for the areas east of the Flatirons (that is, the plains), but that's only half the county. A real problem for wildfire management is that they often happen in areas that we consider undevelopable, which is to say, difficult to get into and out of.

I recall going climbing in Boulder Canyon some decades ago, looking up at some burn scars and thinking "it would be several hundred feet of technical climbing to even reach where that fire occurred". Fighting it would be simply out of the question, and prevention without controlled burns would be just as difficult.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#138

Post by lazide »

username7282919 wrote: post #81
lazide wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) it’s all good until you’re one of the ‘little people’ 2) succession/plan B is always the problem with dictators/dictatorships. If you’re lucky, the interests of those in power are genuinely aligned with your best interests and they’re competent - (Singapore/PAP, at least historically), but nothing lasts forever.

Most people in China actually want to be one of the “little people”. They get compensated way more than what they could make in their lifetime. Doing the same in California would be 10-100x more expensive though, people are just cheaper there.

It’s way easier to tie everyone up in manipulative bullshit court proceedings in the US, and no one has the incentive/interest in stopping it right now.

It isn’t even about 10-100x cost, if it was straightforward cash. It would be resolved in weeks if that was the case. In many of these equivalent situations, it drags out for decades. At that point, it’s a toss up if the project even makes sense anymore, since everyone who needed it when it was voted in/started has moved on (by necessity) to something else.

In China, the courts basically just say ‘which way does the CCP want this to go?’ and voila, that happens. For better or worse.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#139

Post by StrangeATractor »

seadan83 wrote: post #117
anoncow wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the equivalent analogy here is to prevent a big issue from occurring, management creates small issues that it can control. Or do I have it wrong? If you handle small issues, it’s similar to handling small fires and not letting the small fires eat away at a certain portion of the forest.

The analogy might not fully hold. The risk is that the controlled burn gets out of control. IIRC there was a case last year in Nevada where a controlled burn turned into an extremely large fire. A better analogy might be safety drills at Nuclear power plants. Done well, it helps ensure safety protocols are in place that can mitigate a big disaster, done badly, and you have Chernobyl. > not letting the small fires eat…

In many of the burns which I've read about that get out of control, it's because the agency doing it (USFS, usually) had a plan to do it on that date and they didn't consider the actual conditions on the ground before they lit up.

Example: An Oregon sheriff arrested a USFS employee supervising a burn that got out of hand and torched private property. The FS was crying foul and saying it was an act of god, but there were warnings for burning that day because they conditions were so unfavorable (the county may have had an outright burn ban). The only reason the FS employee decided to burn is because that's what he was supposed to do that day. And he was legally okay, since it was federal property, but then it got onto private property next door...

For some reason the FS in particular has this problem. Most of them are alright people but the institution and culture needs serious reform.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#140

Post by throw0101a »

goatlover wrote: post #69
ummonk wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example is how many people advocated for (and how many countries essentially adopted) letting covid spread throughout the population (either like wildfire or via "flatten the curve") to get natural herd immunity because letting a poorly understood (but known to be quite deadly) virus spread through the population was doable but giving out vaccines that hadn't been through phase 2 trials wasn't.

Was preventing the spread of covid throughout the population possible once China failed to contain the virus? Can you name one country that managed to do that? Even China eventually gave up.

> Was preventing the spread of covid throughout the population possible once China failed to contain the virus?

It's not about preventing the spread, but about controlling the rate so that hospitals don't / didn't get overwhelmed.

One of the early countries to get hit was Italy, and the army had to be called in to help with the logistics of taking away the body bags / coffins. A year after the pandemic started there were still refrigeration trucks outside of some morgues because of capacity issues:

* https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/07/us/new-york-coronavirus-victi...

Everyone on the planet will eventually probably get COVID, but as long as it's not at the same time, there are chances for treatment for those more heavily effected (some folks are fortunate enough that it's no worse than the flu; others suffer for months (e.g., Physics Girl)).

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