Posted by Keith in Washington on Friday, September 08, 2006 at 11:07AM :
In Reply to: OT Another 14 days, 2,600 miles on the fires so far! posted by Willy-N on Friday, September 08, 2006 at 10:30AM :
Willy;
Sounds as if your working your butt off this summer. Sorry to see so much timber go up in smoke. Smoky the bear did his job way too well. Most of these fires would be much smaller if the land could have burned naturally over the last 100 years. Now we have too dense of forest and unnaturally thick under brush. So now any fire that gets stated has so much fuel it gets big quick. Then the environmentalist will not let you thin the brush or trees at all.
Biggest surprise that I have had in years was in Yosemite National pPark this year. They have gone into many ares and thinned the tress and under brush out and stacked them into piles and burned it. The forests are nicely open now. Who would of thought that the National Park Service would do controlled thinning and burns. I guess Yellowstone going up in flames changed their thinking.
Years ago (early 70's) I was out in the woods in Idaho. I was in the middle of nowhere. I came across an old man who was well into his 90's and out for a short walk from is cabin (hope I am like that in my 90's). We got to talking and he commented that when he was a kid they use to drive their wagons through the forests all the time. He said now they are so thick with trees and under brush it is hard to ride a horse through it. He said they would have occasional natural ground fires that cleaned out the brush and kept the big trees healthy. Now he said if a fire ever got started it would be all over.
Interesting what you can learn from the older generation.
A couple of years ago they passed a law in my county. It makes it illegal to cut trees and brush down. I.e. you can not thin anything you have to let it grow. In fact for a while it was illegal to cut your grass. All that is happening is setting the stage for a major fire. The Fire company in our area bitterly fought the law due to the increased fire danger. But the county is liberal and they had to keep the environmentalist happy. Now they are trying to repeal the law through to voters. Now the environmentalist say that there will be undampend development and everything will be ruined.
Recently a home owner in the area was taken to court and fined $1000 because he did not have a permit to thin his blackberry bushes. You are allowed to cut back 100 square feet with out a permit. (Black berrys will take over everything if allowed to grow).
Power Wagon content. I use my ff PW to haul off all my brush and tree limbs since I can not burn them any more. We can get quite a bit of debris after a good wind.
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