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

[Kelley Lincoln]

I urge us not to start pointing fingers. Alot of people are really hurting
right now. My grandparents lived in Lake County the last thirty years of
their lives. Many places lost to fire there in the last few years were not
out in the hinterlands other than being small towns. The maps I've seen of
Redding suggest many suburban neighborhood people lost homes.  Santa Rosa
last year had suburban neighborhoods with streets and fire protection wiped
out.  Blue Lake CA almost went up that same night that the Santa Rosa fire
started.  It was an heroic effort that kept that little town from burning.

Where is the line after which People may not use or develop the property
they have? I know those decisions are left with the local government
because of a sense of democracy and local control.
That's what county general plans are all about.

Legalization of marijuana is going to do a lot to reduce the outward
population pressures so that's a relief.  And these fires are also pushing
People out of California and back toward urban centers.

But in all of the blaming I've seen in the last day or two, from the White
House down, I see little that talks about the things that make the most
sense to me: fire fuel reduction and prescription burns to counteract a
century of well-meaning, government subsidized, yet altogether misguided
fire suppression.

And prescription burns have the added benefit of being part of the cycle of
life that many plants are evolved around.

Kelley

On Sun, Aug 5, 2018, 6:26 PM Denise Boggs <
denise at conservationcongress-ca.org> wrote:

> 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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