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Forest Service officials close all California national forests

latimes.com

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Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#171

Post by zzt123 »

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.

Drive through Canada into Alaska. The Yukon was a bit prickly on getting your read end in and out of province within 24 hours due to covid, but that’s easily doable. Don’t know if that policy is still in effect.

Once in Alaska, there’s plenty of off grid things to do. If you head to Anchorage you can grab a plane to some bush areas, or drive to Denali, or whatever floats your boat.

That spot in the river where the water flows down a ledge and there’s copious bears feeding on fish? That’s there, and so are the bears right now.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#172

Post by lovecg »

nradov wrote: post #131
s5300 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, I could've sworn it was by all meaningful metrics, one of the most productive states in the USA. Are you attempting to say it could be doing even better than it already is and make the bottom half of productive states look even worse than they already are? I guess I could perhaps agree with that.

In terms of productivity, California has the 4th highest GDP per capita. But despite that, there has been a significant net migration out of California to other states because the quality of life has deteriorated so much. People are voting with their feet. https://www.ppic.org/blog/californias-stalled-population-gro...

> because the quality of life has deteriorated so much

The data does show a net outflow but says nothing about the reason. I’m willing to believe the quality of life has something to do with it, but would be interesting to see the breakdown of who’s exactly leaving by county/age/income.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#173

Post by benplumley »

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…

Don't forget that most of the water you sprinkle onto the roof will collect in the gutters which can feed immediately back into the tank, so you only need enough water for a few cycles plus 24 hours of evaporation loss - still a decent amount of water, but a lot more like a large garden water-butt than an industrial tank.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#174

Post by magicalist »

olivermarks wrote: post #128
mistrial9 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

It's sadly very accurate and apologies were made. https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/06/23/newsom-misled-t...

this is the same thing as the OP, interviews and all. Scott Rodd from CapRadio interviewed on NPR

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#175

Post by mrjangles »

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…

The explanation is that ideology can make good people do really evil things.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#176

Post by mym1990 »

hi_hello wrote: post #126
Johnny555 wrote: post #7

And they just evacuated the entire town of South Lake Tahoe. I hope the town survives. https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/more-evacuation-order... https://www.tahoedailytribune.com/news/lake-tahoe-residents-... https://www.sfgate.com/california-wildfires/article/Caldor-F...

Time lapses generated from two webcams around Tahoe: https://tahoesouth.com/things-to-do/lake-tahoe-webcams/

“ bluer-than-blue Lake Tahoe, majestic mountains, more fun, sun, sand, snow, well, more of just about anything you’d want in your destination vacation.”

I guess fire can be added to that now as well :(

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#177

Post by swlkr »

zzt123 wrote: post #171
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.

Drive through Canada into Alaska. The Yukon was a bit prickly on getting your read end in and out of province within 24 hours due to covid, but that’s easily doable. Don’t know if that policy is still in effect. Once in Alaska, there’s plenty of off grid things to do. If you head to Anchorage you can grab a plane to some bush areas, or drive to Denali, or whatever floats your boat. That spot in the river where the wa…

katmai national park has the bears eating the fish

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#178

Post by ddp26 »

anm89 wrote: post #42

Does anyone know, with the scope of fires over the last couple years, is California on track to naturally normalize by burning through the most vulnerable forests or is this still not on that scale?

Roughly 4.3M acres burned in 2020 [1]. I've seen estimates that CA has 15M - 20M acres of overgrowth above equilibrium due to fire suppression and a slowdown of old fire prevention techniques.

So, in roughly ~5 years, if we continue having massive fire seasons like 2020 and 2021. Though even at previous forest levels, hotter, drier summers could still lead to more fires than the historical average.

Also this strategy may involve sacrificing a few not-so-small towns.

[1] https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2020/

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#179

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

boc wrote: post #124
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FS is not likely to try to actively patrol any and all access points to FS land. But they will put up barriers and signs, close facilities and so forth. If you are determined, I am sure you could get into most parts of most forests, but "forest closure" was never meant to imply otherwise.

And if you start a fire due to negligence in a "closed" federal forest you're in for an absolute world of hurt.

It's probably not going to feel so great if you're caught just being in the forests.

Re: Forest Service officials close all California national forests

#180

Post by LurkingPenguin »

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #105
LurkingPenguin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I for one am not a defeatist that will let global warming beat me. Thinking about it in terms of victory and defeat isn't very helpful IMO. The reality is pretty clear: humans need to adapt to climate change. We are already past the point of no return, and in places like California the effects of climate change are mounting at a faster rate than we can realistically mitigate them. > We need to think of solutions to…

Humans have the technology to build structures that can withstand wildfires. It's like saying we should not live in cold climates before we had good insulation. I can build a concrete or metal structure that would be fine in a wildfire. Mountains have access to tons of water during the winter. They just need to retain that water for wildfire season.

Since you're a software engineer in SF, I wouldn't be surprised if you have the financial ability to pay a homebuilder to build a concrete home in a rural, high-risk area.

But even putting the costs aside (which are out of the reach of many/most California rural homeowners) do you have the ability (expertise, materials, LABOR) to demolish and rebuild thousands upon thousands of homes scattered throughout California?

It's simply not as easy as having the "technology" and snapping your fingers. Forget building houses. Even finding someone to drill a well for you on short notice these days is next to impossible.

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