Fires in the West

[Finding God in the garden]

when you don't let fires burn you're going to end up with worse eventually later.

wild life needs wild spaces. the National Parks shouldn't be used for grazing farm animals.

Not sure where the fires are right now but another part of the wildfire problem in general is that a huge amount Southern California's rain gets funneled out to the ocean instead of into reservoirs and lakes that can be used to fight fires that get out of control.

 

[Carol Dee]

Thank you Carol, his crew is headed out of state again for 2 weeks. I don't know where yet.

My son is Fire Chief for the Long Grove Volunteer dept. I hate hearing and seeing trucks go out especially in bad weather or wee hours of the morning. (But I tend to worry/over think about everyone and everything.) *sigh*

 

[bobm]

Not sure where the fires are right now but another part of the wildfire problem in general is that a huge amount Southern California's rain gets funneled out to the ocean instead of into reservoirs and lakes that can be used to fight fires that get out of control.

Case in point ... My son's father in law was the lead lawyer to defend against the law suit filed in Federal Court by environmentalists to restore the salmon run in the San oquin River that has been dry for over 70 years. The snow melt was held back in a large reservore to provide irrigation water for millions of acres of orchards, vinyards, and row crops. The farmers lost this case and the water was used to restore the flow of the river. Here came the years long drought and the reservor water levels dropped and precious little water was allowed to flow into the river channel and very little water went less than 50 miles before seeping into the ground and not a drop reached for the salmon to return. Farmers lost their canal water rights, so they had to drill much deeper water wells that their current wells have been going dry. The water table is dropping every year and the land is dropping in elevation to fill in the empty space held by ground water. Then many had to abandon their crops, then their farms due to lack of irrigation water. many years have now passed ... no water in the river, no salmon run, no irrigation water, abandoned farms so no income , no work for farm laborers so many are on welfare or moved out of state, property values plumeted ( I lost half a million in property value ) , many homes in small farm towns were foreclosed upon and still stay vacant, very little water from lakes or streams is available to fight fires, all in all everyone lost and for what ?

 

[flowerbug]

Not sure where the fires are right now but another part of the wildfire problem in general is that a huge amount Southern California's rain gets funneled out to the ocean instead of into reservoirs and lakes that can be used to fight fires that get out of control.

this is very much a sign of the past practices of many places that were built along rivers that had seasonal flooding. instead of capturing flood waters and soaking them in they built drains and then lined them with cement so that the water was even more rapidly moved out.

in an arid climate this is a sign of severe brain damage (IMO of course ).

in recent years you can observe the many projects where they are now recognizing the error of their ways and are now learning how to capture and soak in water to recharge their severely depleted acquifers, but there is a long-long ways to go.

as for how much runoff makes it to the oceans. it wouldn't matter how much you wanted to try to capture they just don't have that sort of capacity or energy for pumping that much water at a time. there are a lot of places they could take exess water for great benefits (the Salton Sea is very low and could gladly use any amount of fresh water that was sent that ways, they just don't have the infrastructure to move it - the same for Owens Lake (now non-existant except for very tiny patches of maintained wetlands))... etc...

and wild streams need rains to flush things out (including juvenile fish). if it gets too hot in those rivers/streams the fry will fry.

 

[flowerbug]

Case in point ... My son's father in law was the lead lawyer to defend against the law suit filed in Federal Court by environmentalists to restore the salmon run in the San oquin River that has been dry for over 70 years. The snow melt was held back in a large reservore to provide irrigation water for millions of acres of orchards, vinyards, and row crops. The farmers lost this case and the water was used to restore the flow of the river. Here came the years long drought and the reservor water levels dropped and precious little water was allowed to flow into the river channel and very little water went less than 50 miles before seeping into the ground and not a drop reached for the salmon to return. Farmers lost their canal water rights, so they had to drill much deeper water wells that their current wells have been going dry. The water table is dropping every year and the land is dropping in elevation to fill in the empty space held by ground water. Then many had to abandon their crops, then their farms due to lack of irrigation water. many years have now passed ... no water in the river, no salmon run, no irrigation water, abandoned farms so no income , no work for farm laborers so many are on welfare or moved out of state, property values plumeted ( I lost half a million in property value ) , many homes in small farm towns were foreclosed upon and still stay vacant, very little water from lakes or streams is available to fight fires, all in all everyone lost and for what ?

when people abuse the environment (use it in an unsustainable manner) you can be sure eventually it's going to catch up to them somehow... there is no such thing as a free lunch.

the farmers who overpumped their groundwater, that is the fault of them and them alone. you want to blame it on "evironmentalists" but they are just standing up for what little is left of the wild world which is what sustains all life on this planet. keep abusing it and you'll not only lose $ you'll lose your life (or your children or grandchildren). put your own greed above the common sense of living within what is sustainable and then don't cry when those dead chickens come home to roost.

 

[Nyboy]

Wow Bob $500,000 loss sorry. last year I had a scare my nephew very casually mentioned the house had no water My first thought was well ran dry. Turned out well pump went bad. The well repairman told me I never had to worry about well running dry, I had so much water

 

[bobm]

when people abuse the environment (use it in an unsustainable manner) you can be sure eventually it's going to catch up to them somehow... there is no such thing as a free lunch.

the farmers who overpumped their groundwater, that is the fault of them and them alone. you want to blame it on "evironmentalists" but they are just standing up for what little is left of the wild world which is what sustains all life on this planet. keep abusing it and you'll not only lose $ you'll lose your life (or your children or grandchildren). put your own greed above the common sense of living within what is sustainable and then don't cry when those dead chickens come home to roost.

look at it this way ... your city puts in water line in your town, you put in your garden and some fruit trees since now you can grow your own. Suddenly the city says you can not water your garden and your trees that you rely upon to feed you and yours for some vague reason. Just would you do ???? Some people have foot in mouth disease. The project that created the water storage lake in the Sierra Nevada mountains as well as the water delivery canals made millions of acres bloom and provided employment and affordable food to millions of people that boosted the economy of Cal. to be the 6th largest economy in the world. Look at the remains of this environmental disaster that was the result of this lawsuit now. Dead and dieing orchards and vinyards, now fallow vegetable fields that are returning to tumbleweeds, erosion of topsoil, lack of river, lake and stream water to fight raging forest and grass land range fires ( both naturally caused as well as many firebugs as well as eco- terrorists ). The lands that created employment to many people has dried up and most of them are collecting welfare checks that come out of ever increasing tax bills to the rest of the population . Peaple are moving out of Cal. in droves. It is high time to stand up to the so called and misguided " environmentalists " that advocate a world order that only exists in their own minds but not in the real world of 2018.

 

[Carol Dee]

 

[valley ranch]

I fought fire ~ one season ~ a friend was going to be on a crew and I got the feeling ~ if I wasn't there he wouldn't come back safe ~ turned out we weren't even on the same crew ~ we hiked in ~ or up to fight the Luther Pass fire ~ and stayed up in the fire ( in the Black ) at night in these paper sleeping bags ~ freezing ~ it was great not the freezing nights ~ but being part of the army ~ fighting the enemy that was big and bad and against us all ``` I didn't know the volunteer firefighters got paid ~ until I received a check in the mail ~ we were paid 24 hours a day ~ when we slept up in the burn ```

A copter brought our evening meal in ```

We climbed the mountain cutting a break to the top ~ south side of the fire ~ we were told the hot shot team was cutting up on the north ~ but at the top there was no one ~ and the story was the hot shots cut to the top and went back down before we got there ~ that was Bull ship ~ so we went down the north widening the break that the Hot Shots had cut ~ my friend believed the story ~ but ~ what had happened was they dropped the Hot Shots in by copter and the cut their skinny Break down the mountain rather than up ~ and were at the forestry camp drinking coke while we were cutting up then down after them fixing the Break they poorly made ~ But Jimmy stilled believed they were supermen ~ there was a couple places where their break stopped at the top of a rock ledge and began again below the ledge ~ so I asked " So these Hot Shots cut the break to the bottom of the ledge and jumped up here and continued on to the top ~ and down again before we cut our way to meet them? "

Well, you hada been there ```

 

[valley ranch]

Fires can be bad ~ can be hell ~ you heard of the fire in Greece ~ all those people killed ~ and this on in California ~ terrible ```