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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

#141

Post by nradov »

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…

We had a controlled burn near the SF Bay Area get out of control in 2021 which forced some evacuations. Of course controlled burns are still needed to reduce overall fire risk, but incidents like that naturally make local residents a bit leery.

https://www.sfgate.com/california-wildfires/article/Estrada-...

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

#142

Post by hinkley »

motohagiography wrote: post #18

This 'controlled burn' issue is a general principle in risk management as well, where you respond to minor issues so as to not let them pile up into a tinderbox inferno. Risk aversion isn't prudent, ethical, or professional either. It's a source of false conflict whose purpose is to centralize the objector so that they can direct and manage a proposed change. This is from someone who has been working in security for…

I think environmental policy people have a lot to learn from the philosophy and ideas in preventative medicine (and honestly a few ideas could probably flow the other direction as well).

These two groups need to sit down and compare notes.

Stitches suck, but they’re better than dying of cancer, or gangrene.

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

#143

Post by dylan604 »

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…

> I don't know if it's really possible to change public ignorance,

Let me clear that up for you, no, it is not possible. Society is suffering willful ignorance in so many aspects of day-to-day life that this is not going to change in our lifetimes if ever.

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

#144

Post by dylan604 »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #91
wcarron wrote: post #80

Here in Flagstaff and NAZ we've been getting hit hard by huge wildfires. The amount of fuel in these forests is mindblowing, and terrain is often a big challenge, too. Luckily, we had a heavy monsoon season last year and a brutal winter. So much water that roads/levees have broken and lakes that are normally dry beds were overflowing. This has abated the normally horrible winds of April/May. This wet and abnormally c…

Interestingly enough, a large water event before doesn't mean a mild fire season. In more northern areas, a lot of snow and water means a lot of grass, and that grass will dry out by August. It's not kindling, but it's the paper.

Just this week, there was a post here about an invasive plant in the Sonoma desert that has taken off this season because of the extra rain, and this is one of their concerns outside of it being invasive. It's just going to be fuel for any fires that might start.

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

#145

Post by joe_the_user »

The fundamental problem that controlled burns face today is that there has been a huge and irresponsible increase in development on "Urban-wildland border". Here in the California Sierras, you have a uniform peppering of (often luxury) houses outside of the various small urban areas. Those forests naturally burn on a regular basis but with this situation, any controlled burn is going to threaten some number of houses.

Of course, the regular fires threaten and destroy these areas too. We've seen the destruction of Paradise, Berry Creek, Greenville, and Grizzly Flats in the last few years (just reading from Wikipedia).

Edit: Always need to mention that global-warming/climate-change makes this worse even if it was caused by local irresponsible behavior. Of course what climate hits first are areas where the local ecology already had problems (In before "It's not [Local bad behavior], it's climate change" or the opposite).

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

#146

Post by Symmetry »

renewiltord wrote: post #66
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…

That's right. The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics is baked into our legal framework.

The original "Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics" blog post: https://web.archive.org/web/20220705105128/https://blog.jaib...

It's nice to have a handy phrase for this effect.

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

#147

Post by eftychis »

motohagiography wrote: post #18

This 'controlled burn' issue is a general principle in risk management as well, where you respond to minor issues so as to not let them pile up into a tinderbox inferno. Risk aversion isn't prudent, ethical, or professional either. It's a source of false conflict whose purpose is to centralize the objector so that they can direct and manage a proposed change. This is from someone who has been working in security for…

Disagree partly. Here we are preventing actively the natural circles of small fires in the lifecycle of a forest. We bring up that we need to introduce them at least in a controlled manner. Some people say no because xyz. Well these people need to cover the incalculable sometime damages that causes.

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

#148

Post by pvaldes »

everythingfine wrote: post #43

I'd like to point out that this problem can technically be solved by a well-meaning arsonist who's willing to break the law. Simply send a public message to fire departments naming the date and location that a forest fire will start, let the fire departments prepare like they would for a controlled burn, and then set off the blaze. There's some difficulty involved with establishing sufficient credibility for this to…

This is the general message, and is extremely poisonous and insidious. "Arsonists are heros"

Thousands of puppets ear-whispered to break the laws. Then there came the consequences, the dry, the mud flood, the people killed and the houses burnt. The best joke is to blame the green and the hippies.

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

#149

Post by jdminhbg »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #97
goatlover wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, it was possible, but like all collective action problems it involves people organizing for the general good at a cost to themselves. Everyone in the world masking (with effective masks), distancing a bit, and using standard sanitary practices edit to add, because I forgot - for two months , and a few with immune compromises spending some more months isolated, would eliminate a significant chunk of all contagious…

> Everyone in the world masking (with effective masks), distancing a bit, and using standard sanitary practices edit to add, because I forgot - for two months, and a few with immune compromises spending some more months isolated, would eliminate a significant chunk of all contagious respiratory illnesses, not just have stopped this single one from spreading.

This is delusional. China did far more than this and still was not able to control Covid. And even in a fantasy world where you could actually stop all human-to-human contagion, many respiratory viruses have animal reservoirs, making the entire exercise pointless.

It's comforting to think that it's all just a collective action problem and if people could be a little more self-sacrificing, we could make it go away, but it's simply not the case.

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

#150

Post by m463 »

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…

It's been said that if the automobile or airplane was invented in the present day, regulations would prevent them from coming to market.
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