[env-trinity] The Mercury News: The reason that California wildfires are worse than ever

[Kier Associates]

Trinity environmental list-ers

 

For what it’s worth State gov’t leadership has been trying to discourage this building in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) for well more than 50 years. 

 

We had some very dry winters in the early ‘60s and some terrible wildfires immediately thereafter. When I joined what is now the CA Natural Resources Agency in early 1964 we were going around to various local gov’ts, groups, etc., with a film that showed, for example, homes built at the top of canyons in the Santa Monica Mtns, with huge jutting redwood decks from which to view to the ocean, catching the 1,000 degree F.-plus canyon updraft and literally exploding.

 

There’s been a too-subdued policy discussion for decades about the ‘State Responsibility Lands’, those not served directly by a local fire agency or federal land mgt agency. 

 

As the cost for serving these lands with State fire protection grew over time the State finally instituted a modest annual fee (like $150) on property-owners to help support fire prevention/ suppression on these so-called ‘State Responsibility Lands’

 

This fee has become, not surprisingly, a whipping-boy for CA’s mostly-rural conservative politicians – it’s playing heavily into the current legislative discussions about the 2017 wildfires and into the 2018 election cycle

 

For those of us living in urban areas who are paying what we hope is our fair share for fire prevention and suppression services, we – I, anyway – find ourselves 1- aghast at and saddened by the enormity of the Carr Fire; and 2- wondering when the cost of unbridled residential incursion into the WUI is going to become a sufficient issue in California that the rest of us may see some relief from subsidizing it.

 

‘Best,

 

Bill Kier

Kier Associates, Fisheries and Watershed Professionals

15 Junipero Serra Avenue

San Rafael, CA 94901

Office:  415.721.7548

Mobile: 415.306.6123  

 <mailto:kierassociates at att.net> kierassociates at att.net 

 <http://www.kierassociates.net/> www.kierassociates.net

GSA Contractor GS10F0124U

 

 

 

 

From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Denise Boggs
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2018 6:26 PM
To: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us
Subject: [env-trinity] The Mercury News: The reason that California wildfires are worse than ever

 

The National Forests aren’t the problem. It’s people living in areas they shouldn’t be. Interesting stats on CA and the wildfires throughout the state over time. Some of these areas have burned multiple times and people keep rebuilding in the same place. The state’s landscape is prone to fires and they are going burn regardless. Climate change only makes it worse.

 

“The Carr Fire burning in Shasta County was started by a single spark from a towed trailer on a road in Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. It then quickly raced into high-end new residential subdivisions such as Lake Redding Estates, where it destroyed 65 upscale homes.”

The reason that California wildfires are worse than ever
The Mercury News

As California grows, people are moving into the rural edges of cities where we weren't before -- creating an "expanding bull’s eye’ effect" of higher wildfire risk, according to a new study by geographer Stephen M. Strader of Villanova University. Read the full story <https://apple.news/AO3JyVOhZQvS4W7C_ou3raQ> 

Denise Boggs

Www.conservationcongress-ca.org

 

"Some of them were angry at the way the Earth was abused; By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power; And they struggled to protect her from them, only to be confused; By the magnitude of the fury in the final hour."

'Before the Deluge' Jackson Browne

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