02 May 2013

Natural burns

It is now 94F and under 30% humidity. It rained very little this last "winter". Welcome to burntime in socal. Don't build structures without clearance. Also, some AlQ (tm) pubs recommend forest arson; supposedly there are folks worried about this in europe. Hard to tell though; you'd have to compare to other natural or manmade initiation campaigns. Anyway, burns in the forest or desert are natural, should be allowed. Else you build up huge fuel reserves which do not have the right thermal etc profile to encourage resprouting (and are uncontrollable for humans in the way, too). The forest-gov-ocrats know this recently, and are trying to manage using this knowledge; in the past, it was "all fire bad" without realizing the *unintended consequences*. Smokey, random-periodic fires are good, even if some bears get toasted. The forests that sustain you need it. Besides, Smokey, you're a frickin' federal PR puppet and you need to be taxidermied. You're not the only one, though, and certainly the most handsome.