Posted by MoparNorm on Tuesday, October 23, 2007 at 02:33:50 :
In Reply to: Re: It's so still here I may suffocate from inhaling.. posted by Mark Michaels on Monday, October 22, 2007 at 23:01:27 :
This is "normal" every October to Jan, is our fire season, it's when the Santa Ana winds blow, due to high pressure in Utah.
The drought doesn't have much to do with it, when it rains a lot we have more dead brush to burn.
In the mountains we have millions of bark beetle killed fir and pine. The FS has thinned over a million trees and it hasn't made a dent. 50 years of fire suppression has caused this, too much dead underbrush, and not enough natural fires to keep it cleaned up.
I fought my first fire in 1969, they have been burning like this for centuries, but now we have people living in the forest and up the hillsides, so it's to be expected.
Many of the new homes are surviving due to green belts and no combustible exterior materials.
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