Wapsi Square Forum

Most of northern Okanogan County is on fire. The fire threatens the town nine miles north, the county seat. I am loading vehilcles with stuff and going. I will see if I have a home once the dust settles.

The idiots... leadership... on the coast has finally decided to do something about it... they are going to form a committee to assess blame...

If SHTF, I got a buddy in my wildfire-free hometown you might get along with long enough to get your feet back under you. Other than that, good luck.

(I promise John didn't do it, he's well contained)

No way- Shi-town and me is just WRONG! I do not even know how many guns I own... or how much ammo... currently it's all in the Suburban... and the Suburban is bottoming out...

Ow. Serious ow.

Good luck, and don;t overload the 'Burban too much. You might need some of that axle travel depending on what the roads are like (debris).

Got into the middle of a fire in west Texas once - think tinder dry brush all too damn high. Not entertaining. Be safe.

Al

Best of luck, man... here's hoping they manage to get the blaze contained before it walks across your property! Be safe out there on the roads...

It's a bad fire year all across the west. Not as bad yet as during the "blowup of 1910" but there's still a lot of territory burning that hasn't had fire in many decades. Not surprising given the drought conditions, and the amount of fuel built up through decades of fire-suppression policy, but no fun at all for anyone affected.

Sgt. Howard wrote:No way- Shi-town and me is just WRONG! I do not even know how many guns I own... or how much ammo... currently it's all in the Suburban... and the Suburban is bottoming out...

Nah, My hometown is a suburb of a suburb of a middle-sized city. Pickup trucks, corn, and rednecks are all over the place down there.

If you need to deal with road debris, but don't want to leave behind your stuff, I bet you can fashion a plow or something from some 2x4's, some screws, and some heavy-duty zip-ties and rope to attach it to your car. Better than nothing.

The year was 1991, I had a wife and nine month old kid back then and lived two blocks from Oakland's Lake Merritt. (Right behind the now gone Cadillac dealership...).

Up and over the hill (and freeway) was Kaiser Hospital as a landmark and further on in that same line of sight you could see the Oakland Hills.

October 19th, 1991 saw the beginning of the Oakland Hills Firestorm

At night, when it was going full rip, we stood on top of our old address a few blocks over (with greater altitude and field of view) and watched near Biblical and quite literal Pillars of Flame rise up like tornadoes from the fire-yummy Eucalyptus trees and wood shingled homes in it's path.

The thing was alive by now, making it's own weather and generating fire fanning winds of it's own creation-

it marched on down towards the rest of us like Napoleon allied with Genghis Khan and the Roman Legions.

And nobody could stop it.


And then the 65 mile an hour winds sweeping from the Diablo Range just quit.

And 'the tide turned' and the firefighters were able to start containing the perimeter.

And we went and unpacked the car and went to bed.

At some point the previous day, while looking at what looked like a big ol mushroom cloud out over the ridgeline, I found myself out in the middle of the street.
Looking straight overhead I saw something dark and rectangular windmilling it's way to the ground, at my feet

It was a carbonized arm of the common lawn chair. Slightly warped but easily recognizable. Fragile though it was, I kept that thing on the mantle piece for over a year following the events of that weekend.

We, the communal 'we', lost 25 people and near onto three thousand dwellings before it was all over.

It still brings to mind London and Dresden during WWII and those old documentaries.

Sarge, take care of your people man.

The Daily Beast wrote:Three U.S. Forest Service firefighters were killed Wednesday battling one of 15 wildfires in Washington state. “The fire was racing and the winds were blowing in every direction and then it would shift,” said Okanogan County Sheriff Frank Rogers, who called the fire a “hell storm.” As many as four other firefighters were injured. It took more than 200 firefighters and 20 aircraft—with support from Canada— to contain 20 percent of the blaze. More than 235,000 acres of the state have been burnt so far. More than 26,000 firefighters and 200 soldiers are fighting the blazes. The governor has requested President Obama declare a federal emergency.

{Original story at KXLY.com}

Well... they got wyfy here at least...and I'm walking distance from the hospital I'm pulling call for... but this still sucks.

I haven't actually seen a forest fire this year - just the hay fire near Moses Lake about a month ago. However, I did drive I-90 across eastern Washington on Monday (will do it again the other direction on Friday) and it was smoky the entire way. And I-90 isn't that close to the fires.

A couple years ago I actually saw the very-early beginnings of a forest fire, when it was small enough that a trained crew the size of a college football team probably could have dealt with it in a couple hours. Unfortunately that's about six times as many people as the combined fire departments of the entire county. Three days later there were smoke-jumping teams from as far away as Arizona (this was in western Montana) camping about a mile and a quarter from the RV park we were in.

Now in the basement of the Methodist Church in Pateros- previouse situation had to be abandoned. Only contact with internet is through work.
There are three hospitals in this county... North Valley is evacuated, Mid-Valley is in 'bypass mode' (too many people not comming in because they had to evacuate, they do not have staff enough for more patients) so that leaves Three Rivers, where I work, as the only place to go. I am on call until Wednesday... and I don't know if my house is still standing. Cell phone service in Pateros is out- tower burned. I am likely to sleep here at the hospital.

With these wildfires that happen all the time, wouldn't it be cheaper to create some massive fire break or something?

The crux of the issue is we are always trying to prevent fires. Fires are a natural part of a forest cycle. Using controlled burns is about the only permanent solution, as far as I understand.
The longer a forest goes without fire, the bigger and badder the inevitable fire will be.

I completely forgot about control burns. Is there a certain amount of time that needs to pass between those?

Probably, in order for the microbiome in the soil to rejuvenate after being baked... and for the undergrowth and deadwood to accumulate again. Without fuel, there is no fire of any kind, controlled or not. There's a way to do it in a pattern to make sure most of the forest is in a low-fuel but healthy state most of the time.

Native Americans burned out undergrowth through forests routinely before white man showed up- John Smith commented on the "civilized, park-like appearance" of the forrests of the Americas before he understood this was the results of native care

Alkarii wrote:With these wildfires that happen all the time, wouldn't it be cheaper to create some massive fire break or something?

The really bad ("hundred year") fires tend to involve a set of conditions which make firebreaks less than effective. Fuel, plus drought, plus hot dry winds, plus the self-generated winds which create a firestorm, make for a bad combination. Wind can carry burning embers for quite a distance. http://www.californiachaparral.com/bpro ... rhome.html cites an ember-travel range of up to three miles(!). That page also asserts that excessive "clearance distances" (buildings to trees) can make the problem worse... if you cut down the trees, you get grasses growing up, and fire may propagate more readily area of dry grass than through a forest.

Cutting mile-wide firebreaks, and then keeping them grass-free would be extremely expensive, rather ugly, and would have its own set of environmental risks (runoff, etc.).

Large areas with lots of dry grass and dried-out trees (many dead, from drought or beetle kill), high temperatures, dry winds blowing at high speed: when a fire gets going under these conditions, there are real limits to what any amount of human fire-fighting can do. At some point, all you can do is evacuate everyone and everything possible, and maybe try to selectively protect a few valuable resources (defend the towns, but not the widely-distributed rural buildings). Other than that, it's just "stand back at a safe distance and wait until it burns itself out"... you wait for conditions to change.

GlytchMeister wrote:Probably, in order for the microbiome in the soil to rejuvenate after being baked... and for the undergrowth and deadwood to accumulate again. Without fuel, there is no fire of any kind, controlled or not. There's a way to do it in a pattern to make sure most of the forest is in a low-fuel but healthy state most of the time.

There's apparently good evidence that across a lot of North America, many areas were deliberately and periodically burned by the local Native American tribes - every year, to every few years. Sensibly, the burns were rarely done at times when they'd be prone to trigger large-scale wildfires, but in cooler and wetter times of the year.

When the fOREST is relatively empty the inevitable fires that come through don't kill the Trees,
but when there is too much tinder and duff on the ground you get a very hot fire that burns out the treetop canopy,
and can start that traveling embers thing.


Another thing worth mentioning was that right after the fire's passed on through it leaves behind a vegetable oil layer in the topsoil. Makes it hard for the subsequent rain to penetrate.

-edited for typos.

When the first is relatively empty the inevitable fires that come through don't kill the Trees, but when there is too much tinder and duff on the ground turn you get a very a hot fire that burns out the treetop canopy, and can start that traveling embers thing.


Another thing worth mentioning was that right after the fire's passed on through it leaves behind a vegetable oil layer in the topsoil. Makes it hard for the subsequent rain to penetrate.

Be safe.