Smoke. We’ve not had as bad fire seasons as in 2000-2007. But it’s been dry, as aforementioned, and the fires are what you get in the PNW the way you get tornadoes to cope with in the south. Unlike tornadoes, however, you do get to choose whether to live in the piney woods or not…and not is best, really, because if fire gets started in a canyon, it can be up the slope incredibly fast. We’ve seen the choppers working fires, scooping up water and dumping it, right beside I-90. And you always feel sad for the wildlife, though by this season most of the babies are flying or running as fast as the adults. And for the people who’ve been unlucky. Unlike tornadoes, which have a lot of unpeopled land to spread out their statistics—so that a strike in populated areas is rarer than tornadoes themselves are—with fires, they happen along highways where people are thoughtless with cigarettes, and around scenic areas, where there are people careless with cigarettes, and of course if you think you’re going to get rain—you may instead get lightning, which is the OTHER really frequent cause.
So here we go. We keep the windows shut and rely on our air purifiers and hope that the promised rain is really rain and not a lightning storm with no rain at all.
I forget where I got this tip, but using a fan to blow at a wet terrycloth towel will drop ash onto the towel. Of course, the towel gets sooty, so use an old towel.
OT: http://ideas.time.com/2013/06/03/why-we-should-read-literature/
I’ve been extremely impressed by Annie Murphy Paul’s columns.
Anent this one, I read a lot of ebooks on computer, and indeed the experience is different when I disrupt my reading by searching references or allusions while I’m reading instead of just reading intensely.
Husband — who fought wildland fires for thirty years — has said that contrary to popular belief cigarettes are pretty rare as a firestarter. Oh they can and smoldering in your furniture is a big problem, but in the woods its pretty difficult. Along the highways the most common starts are hot breaks (semis especially) or dragging chains from someone’s trailer. Depending on which part of the country you’re in, when it comes to the woods it’s abandoned campfires. People think they’re put and they aren’t! It’s pour water, stir, more water and stir and then dig your hands in it to check the temperature. I kinda think only firefighters do this. The other culprit are folk using their burn barrels.
Sorry having issues with auto-correct. And lightning is a definite. Can’t remember the stats tor most places, but in the SW its about 50/50 people and natural. In the South it’s something like 90+/-10 people versus natural. I’ve known highway mowers starting them by the blades sparking off of chert nodules (basically flint) here in Arizona. But it’s still a good idea to not toss your butts. They could start a fire, wildlife will try to eat them and they take forever to decompose. If you do smoke, field strip them when done (pull off the paper part — snuff that out on mineral soil) and shove the filtered end in your trash or pocket and throw away properly later.
People who don’t realize that red-flag conditions mean that no, you can’t take your portable grill out to the campground for your picnic.
My parents had a cabin east of Placerville, right next to the national forest. You had to have a fire permit every summer, in order to have any kind of fire, including in a fireplace with a screened flue. And a hose and a shovel at hand.
Familiar with “Old Hangtown”. A lady of my acquaintance was known at Tortilla Flats. Interesting place, for the canyons, you can be a mile from a place as the crow flies, but takes three miles to get there.
Over here on the wet side of the coast range, we rarely have issues with forest fires. The Biscuit fire a few years back (yikes, 11 years!) was scary close, but we have another complex of fires going thats putting out a LOT of smoke. Joy. At least its just blowing this way occasionally…
Most of the fires around here are the result of lightning…
True so far as it goes, but they need not be so fearful. The reason for the destructive ones like the Biscuit Fire is primarily an overly simplistic fire suppression policy. As Einstein said, “As simple as possible, but no simpler.”
We have some &^%*&!! idiots around here who, for the past several years, think it’s good fun to go around and set brush fires; they have also torched broken-down cars. One burned 87 acres in a mostly uninhabited part of the county, but a few have burned fields before they were ready for harvest. If a fire gets established in the inaccessible ridges over the highway, they can cut off part of the island; bad news in a medical emergency. If these gods-rotted firebugs get caught by a certain segment of the population, they may get kneecapped, and possibly left behind to deal with the fire they started.
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we have had unusually high elevated pollution due to fires.
The Air Quality Index for the central bay area on Monday was 112. I can only recall it getting over 100 once in the past decade, and then it was due to fires.
“Macavity’s not there!”
I remember the big wildfire in the Cleveland National Forest in San Diego County was set by a hunter who got lost. He decided to do the old “Boy Scout” trick of setting a smoky fire so someone would see the smoke and come get him. Unfortunately, he didn’t do the old trick correctly, and his fire got out of control, and probably either sparked onto a dry bed of fuel, or else he didn’t make a big enough clearing for his fire. There was some pretty country that got burned up because of this idiot.
For those people in Chondrite’s area who think it’s funny to torch old cars or to set brush fires, they might end up punishing themselves if they get caught in between fires. Then of course, someone has to risk their life to come and rescue the idiots, rather than letting Darwinism take its course. I have more sympathy for the lost hunter, at least he had a reason for the fire, but people who set fires for the sole purpose of watching something be destroyed senselessly, well, spit on the flames, boy, that’ll work.
All the rare, beautiful flora and fauna on the Hawaiian Islands, nowhere else on the planet, and some idiots think it’s fun to set fires?
I think I have a solution: Ship the firebugs to Easter Island. (Or more preferably, someplace uninhabited. Antarctica is brisk this time of year….)
Unconscionable, to risk people and landmarks, rare and unique flora and fauna like that.
I belonged to what was then the Campfire Girls, which has since mutated into Campfire USA youth organization…and we learned woodcraft. We learned how to un-lose ourselves if we had gotten lost, when not to leave your car, how to build a shelter, how survive the night in cold, how to light a fire on one match in a driving rain, how to determine north, where to site a latrine, how to bridge a stream, how to build a fire, where to build a fire (not under overhanging branches, for starters,) and how to be sure it was really, truly out—as in, yes, put your hand into the firebed. These things seem so common-sense and basic to me I’m always floored when somebody does something like build a fire under a tree, or without clearing the area. Here, everywhere you’re allowed to day-camp has a prebuilt firepit; but I don’t doubt some people can manage to spread burning embers from one of those.
We’ve had fires start because some idiot draped a log partially in a campfire ring, get it burning and decided to go home. Log keeps burning, rolls downhill and life gets exciting. Idiot hunters from Phoenix drinking beer and having fun without a clue. We’ve had a few started by someone wanting to get rescued — Rodeo-Chediski was one and a much smaller one on Thanksgiving one year by an 83 year old hunter who had fallen and broke his leg. But when the crews started fighting the fire he never spoke up and they basically tripped over him. But if someone gets caught having abandoned a campfire (or had one under restrictions) and it starts a fire they can be held liable for the cost of suppression. And that can get expensive very quickly.
Two year anniversary of the Monument Fire which came too close to our home for safety is this week. The same firefighters that got killed in the Yarnell fire were here for us then and there is a lot of sympathy in the area and support for the surviving families. Unfortunately in our area a lot of the fires are caused by illegals coming through the area on foot, and then being frightened away from their sites when the Border Patrol conducts their periodic sweeps. Lightning does spark a fair percentage of the fires, but human mistakes are responsible for the majority.
One of the Granite Mountain kids was on the Payson Hot Shots for the previous 4 years and most of us knew him at least a little. The Hot Shot Superintendent, Marsh worked on our forest for several years, both on engines and the Globe Hot Shots (different districts) and many knew him as well. This has been really hard on all of here — my husband fought fire for 20 of his 30 years on the Prescott National Forest, I worked there for 5 years. We know the area well, and we know the dangers very well. In a lot of ways, we’re a very small group and Bob fought several fires over the years near Yarnell. From what Law Enforcement has told us regarding fires down by the Mexican border, most are started by cartel and drug runners as diversions, although some are definitely accidents. Very scary fighting fires down by the border. One of the guys I work with went for a walk from camp one night (I think it was on the Horseshoe II Fire Ready4more, another one in your general area) to wind down and damn near stumbled into a drug drop. of course, it gets scary around here to in Central Arizona. For a while we were #1 for illegal pot gardens in the forest, and not all of there were small. It’s not like it was on Lassie when I was a kid.
There are places in Oklahoma, too, where tornado spotters and pot growers have had encounters.
So sad about the firefighters…those guys fight an enemy that can be behind you, sealing off retreat, literally on a gust of wind.