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

Mon Aug 6 13:31:56 PDT 2018

This conversation highlights how our way of life and infrastructure has been built up with a reliance on stability of the environment around us (e.g. suppressing fire, flooding).  There is risk living in the valley bottom as well as the mountains, as we were reminded of during the winter of 2017 by the averted disaster at Oroville. Stability is an unrealistic expectation if you look at the history of the planet, we are slowly curbing some suppression efforts and embracing disturbance. We must recognize that we are all at risk of disturbance, and not cast blame.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P-N-HA9iS8

The task is to look at where we have over extended ourselves in times of stability and prepare for disturbance (e.g. fire, multi-year drought, mega flood).  There is going to be future disturbance, and the trend is to be reactive instead of proactive.  Can we switch from social safety net to social investment in resiliency?

Thoughts are with those who have been affected, and those who continue to battle the blaze.  Hoping for favorable conditions and a quick return to quasi stability.

Kyle De Juilio

From: env-trinity [mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us] On Behalf Of Trinity Journal
Sent: Monday, August 6, 2018 12:23 PM
To: 'Peggy Berry' <pegberry1 at gmail.com>; 'Kier Associates' <kierassociates at att.net>
Cc: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us
Subject: Re: [env-trinity] The Mercury News: The reason that California wildfires are worse than ever

I don’t know, is it selfish to live in Southern California and strip the Owens Valley and the Colorado River of their rightful water?
Is it selfish to live in the Bay Area crisscrossed by earthquake faults?
As pointed out, Redding and Santa Rosa are cities adjacent to wildlands (as all cities are, unless they lie adjacent to the ocean). So while there is issues to be discussed about WUI, this is not a selfishness issue. Rural towns are needed for a variety of reasons — water, timber, agriculture. How they interface with the adjacent wildlands is worthy of discussion, but you can’t play the blame game for them being there.
-Wayne Agner
P.S. You are welcome for all the water we ship south.

From: env-trinity <env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us<mailto:env-trinity-bounces at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us>> On Behalf Of Peggy Berry
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2018 8:30 AM
To: Kier Associates <kierassociates at att.net<mailto:kierassociates at att.net>>
Cc: env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us<mailto:env-trinity at velocipede.dcn.davis.ca.us>
Subject: Re: [env-trinity] The Mercury News: The reason that California wildfires are worse than ever

Thank you Bill Kier and Denise Boggs for shining the spotlight on the truth:  Humans who demand to build their homes wherever they want  — inaccessible forest lands, ocean cliffs, etc. because they think they are entitled to THEIR OWN wishes.

I mourn the firefighters who are then expected to save them and their homes - and sometimes unselfishly give their lives - so others are able to get what they want  based on selfish desires and demands.

Something besides money and profit need to redefine “entitlements!”

Peggy Berry
On Aug 5, 2018, at 8:25 PM, Kier Associates <kierassociates at att.net<mailto:kierassociates at att.net>> wrote:

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
kierassociates at att.net<mailto:kierassociates at att.net>
www.kierassociates.net<http://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<mailto: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<http://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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