I WAS WRONG


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They DID update the perimeter map.
Branch VI: Continue preparing contingency line along 170 road and Peavine Ridge roads utilizing mechanized equipment. Maintain coordination with Curry County Sheriff regarding evacuation levels. Utilize aircraft for reconnaissance and to check fire spread when smoke and fog conditions allow.

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Slightly cooler temperatures prevailed over the fire area today, but drier air aloft allowed for lower humidities than on Tuesday. Winds continued to primarily be tied to terrain influences with speeds under 10 mph. A dry cold front will move across the fire on Thursday and produce gusty winds along the ridges in the afternoon. Temperatures will continue on their slight downward trend but little change in humidities are expected. On Friday there will be a brief trend toward slightly warmer temperatures and slightly lower humidities. Saturday will transition back to cooler temperatures and higher humidities as more clouds move into the area. Areas of smoke will continue within the fire area, especially during the morning hours for the rest of this week into the first part of the weekend.
In one corner.

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Local Headline: BUCK FIRE IN TRINITY COUNTY BALLOONS FROM 50 TO 500 ACRES OVERNIGHT SENDING UP HUGE SMOKE COLUMN THAT CAN BE SEEN FROM SOHUM

So, remembering that the Chetco Bar fire was 5,300 acres after a month, and now 200,000 after two more months, with intermittent slowing according to relative humidity, you maybe can tell why I'm so fucking mad.

I blasted their information officer pretty good, and then added about MULCHING the fuels they're trying to get rid of instead of burning down the planet. They even hire crews to go thin the fuel, but they leave it there. Leaving it there would be good if no fires come along, but chipping it and blowing it back onto the ground mulches the ever depleting soils from a couple centuries of logging... and then decades of putting out fires until they realized this increases the fuels problem something crazy.

Did they listen to the indians who've lived here for 12,000 years? No. Of course, the indians were dealing with healthy and mature conifer forest that could withstand annual floor burns to keep the shit from making it impenetrable and able to burn everyone for miles around to crisps so crispy you couldn't even find their bones afterward.

I didn't just start bitching to forest management and firefighting types about this. I've been doing it for at least twenty years, and they UNERRINGLY respond that this costs too much, that they don't have the funding, that it's outright not cost effective, and I'm forever hopping up and down about how we — humans — have enough brains to acceptably deal with such crises of environment with minimal negative impact and eventual restoration of the forests and the watersheds back to booming health... AS we continue logging.

Greed and pusillanimity UNERRINGLY win out over brains.

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I mean, picture if you will, just for a moment, a delegation of burly firemen and loggers converging on a Congressional Committee and demanding a few billion get shaved off our "defense" budget so we can fix our wildfire problem and put timber production back on a healthy footing. Think of them there not going to take no for an answer.


pipe up any time....