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Thread: Which is more expensive:brush removal or prescribed burn?

  1. #16
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    Landenberg, Pa
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    This is all well and good for a homeowner. But it is functionally impossible to apply to the whole forest.

    There's no management that will compensate for what, a 10+ year drought? Despite what anyone says - the fire problem is not fixable by raking up anything.

    Quote Originally Posted by Thomas McCurnin View Post
    I have a wilderness cabin in California and yes it is the fire area.

    Forest Management is an entire four year course at Agricultural Colleges. There are a lot of theories, the most recent, and I believe the best, is cutting down small trees and letting the larger ones grow. I forget what the spacing is but it is something like 20-30 feet between trees. Another good practice is limbing or skinning the trees, which is cutting down small limbs below 12'. So even if there is a fire, it will burn the needles and brush and not catch the trees on fire with small limbs. The larger trees with thick bark are actually quite fire resistant, evidenced by controlled burns. I use a 12' Stihl power pole pruner (chain saw on a stick) to limb trees within 20-30 radius around the cabin.

    We use a McLeoud type rake to yes, rake the forest, as stupid as that sounds, to rake up and remove pine needles in a 20-30 circle around homes. The needles and brush are thrown into canyons and dry creek beds for erosion control. I think the cabin owners around my immediate area dumped nearly 25 pickup truck loads of pine needles this way. I do this once a year. Others are no so diligent.

    All trees which are under 16" in diameter are cleared from around the cabin, in a 20-30 foot radius.

    All pine needles are removed from the roof. All combustible products (firewood, chairs, etc) are removed from outside the cabin and kept, you guessed it, 20-30 feet away from the cabin.

    The above are requirements from our insurer and requests by the US Forest Service.

    Controlled burns are no longer an acceptable way in our forest--there are just too many ways they can get out of hand.

  2. #17
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    Almost two decades of drought. This will just become the norm I suspect.
    ~mike

    happy in my mud hut

  3. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by mike stenson View Post
    Almost two decades of drought. This will just become the norm I suspect.
    Mike, due to GHG emissions this will just be the beginning.

    A 10 year drought, hard to imagine for me..........Regards, Rod.

  4. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rod Sheridan View Post
    Mike, due to GHG emissions this will just be the beginning.

    A 10 year drought, hard to imagine for me..........Regards, Rod.
    Rod,

    I keep telling my wife she's never seen a 'normal' monsoon season in Arizona (she's been here for 20 years now).
    ~mike

    happy in my mud hut

  5. #20
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    Lake Gaston, Henrico, NC
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    I manage a few hundred acres of timber, on relatively flat land. There is no way there would be a forest here, of any kind, if we didn't get periodic rains. We get some dry spells once in a while, which always raise the worry, and it's a great relief when we get the next rain. It's just plain stupid to think you can keep forest land raked. Just look down when you're in an airplane, and see how much space forest land takes up. Even large trees with a lot of space around them are always dropping stuff that will dry, and burn.

    It seems like even the Sahara was not always a desert. No forest management plan would have changed that.

  6. #21
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    Yeah, a big fire was started when they set off a pink/blue smoke bomb. I’m really naive about the dry brush situation but I don’t see how they did it. Maybe they had too many mimosas and didn’t notice something smoldering?

  7. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Roger Feeley View Post
    Yeah, a big fire was started when they set off a pink/blue smoke bomb. I’m really naive about the dry brush situation but I don’t see how they did it. Maybe they had too many mimosas and didn’t notice something smoldering?
    Dry grass will literally take seconds to get out of control. It's actually better tinder than newspaper for starting a fire.
    ~mike

    happy in my mud hut

  8. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by mike stenson View Post
    Dry grass will literally take seconds to get out of control. It's actually better tinder than newspaper for starting a fire.
    i guess I was just raised differently. Any time we shot off fireworks, the first thing we had to have handy was a hose to pre-wet the ground and a bucket of water for the duds. If we were out in the country, my dad wouldn’t let us shoot anything unless it had rained. Often, that meant waiting for the next weekend. Sometimes it meant going to a lake and shooting over the water. But we were always aware of where the fireworks were going to go.

    hmmm... maybe the safety rules for fireworks aren’t all that different from using tools and machines. I never thought of it that way.

  9. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Roger Feeley View Post
    i guess I was just raised differently. Any time we shot off fireworks, the first thing we had to have handy was a hose to pre-wet the ground and a bucket of water for the duds. If we were out in the country, my dad wouldn’t let us shoot anything unless it had rained. Often, that meant waiting for the next weekend. Sometimes it meant going to a lake and shooting over the water. But we were always aware of where the fireworks were going to go.

    hmmm... maybe the safety rules for fireworks aren’t all that different from using tools and machines. I never thought of it that way.

    Yea, this to me would have been considered 'common sense'.. but we've had a forest fire here that was caused by a trained federal agent using reactive targets for a gender reveal, in the middle of dry grass, too. So, I guess that sense isn't so common. Either way, I don't see this drought ending any time soon (we've had a complete bust of a monsoon season this year). So the west is going to suffer from these fires more often.
    ~mike

    happy in my mud hut

  10. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by Rod Sheridan View Post
    Mike, due to GHG emissions this will just be the beginning.

    A 10 year drought, hard to imagine for me..........Regards, Rod.
    From the NYT in 1994:

    "BEGINNING about 1,100 years ago, what is now California baked in two droughts, the first lasting 220 years and the second 140 years. Each was much more intense than the mere six-year dry spells that afflict modern California from time to time, new studies of past climates show. The findings suggest, in fact, that relatively wet periods like the 20th century have been the exception rather than the rule in California for at least the last 3,500 years, and that mega-droughts are likely to recur."

    https://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/19/s...alifornia.html

  11. #26
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    Controlled burns can be used but have to be done very carefully under very specific weather conditions to prevent the burns from getting out of control. It's not just a matter of lighting a match and see what happens. I was involved for a few years with several sportsman organizations and had the opportunity to tour a couple national forests with the crews maintaining those forests. In one case, the FS supervisor had about 30 of us tour the forest with his crew as he was out of the country teaching controlled burns.
    Ken

    So much to learn, so little time.....

  12. #27
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    Not an expert in wildfire management but gotta think the extremely rough terrain combined with extremely dry conditions makes both of the options mission impossible. Also too many of these fires are started by incredibly negligent acts like gender reveal pyrotechnics.

  13. #28
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    People from the Midwest and east do not understand California climate. There is a so called average rainfall. In a normal season California will receive 50% or 150% of that number. Very seldom does it come close to the so called average. We are hoping to get a little rain by the end of the week. It does not rain in summer in California except in the highest mountains. Normal dry season is about April to October or November.
    Bil lD.
    Last edited by Lee Schierer; 09-15-2020 at 12:47 PM. Reason: political

  14. #29
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    Note also that the weather in Norway which he likes to compare to is totally different from California. Maximum temperature rarely exceeds 80 F while California often exceeds 100F.

  15. #30
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    Mar 2019
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    Los Angeles, California
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    Raking only occurs around structures. But the US Forest Service and my Insurer both require it. It is sound policy.
    Regards,

    Tom

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