Some information about the ecology here in So Cal

[nadinbrzezinski]

This part of the country is semi arid, and relies on cyclical fire to get some of its plants to sprout

Chiefly the Manzanita Bush. If you have parrots, you are familiar with the wood, since it is popular for bird perches for a good reaosn, it is extremely hard. But it also burns extremely hot and fast.

The plant has a life cycle where it seeds need a very hot fire for the skin to break and for the seeds to sprout. No fire, no manzanita, yes it is that simple insofar as the ecology is concerned

We have been having these fires in SoCal for oh... since before man came around, and I suspect we will continue to have them well after we are gone.

This is why blaming this on Al Qaida belongs in the funnies, as well as fully blaming the Feds for this. Having lived in the area for all my adult life I understand this

What we can blame for worsening conditions is GLOBAL WARMING... the UN report speaks of worsening droughts and longer and hotter fires (I doubt the Manazanita will mind though). and in that sense yes, the boys in DC are responsible for refusing to see what is going on.

The point I'm tryiing to make is that there is a responsibity the Feds have... but not as much as we'd like to ascribe to them

Oh don't worry though, the politicization has started and the local reps will pit san diegan against san diegan... to get the limited pool of federal resources that will come down from DC.

And I expect these fires to get worst as years go by due to GLOBAL WARMING

Oh and having 10K woudl have been nice, but in the early stages... all the fire services do is try to put a brave front, but you spend a lot of time running to safer ground, or trying to save a structure you can save. You want TRAINED and DRILLED fire personnel for this, not backup, hastlly trained crews, for this. Though you will need those crews as soon as this is under any form of control.

Now what will be fun to watch is... as much as people have behaved, as soon as people are allowedin, as some folks stay behind... their nerves will be even more frayed. That is when it gets interesting, from the shelter management standpoint. That is where the marvelous job they did in the initial evacuation can go to hell

Of course the next 18-24 months will be interseting for those who lost their homes, as insurers will do all they can to again, NOT pay out... they did during Cedar, so what tells you they will not now?

I hope this gives you some insights, becuase when they speak of how the smokey the bear campaigns set the stage for this, they have NO CLUE... since these canyons are NOT forests, but brushland...

[hedgehog]

1. Here's what I don't get.

These brush lands must have been catching fire almost annually for centuries. (I say almost because I figure this hill burned this year, that hill burned last year, etc.)

So, why isn't this part of the lore of California? Why didn't we hear about San Diego having smoky autumns until the smoke came from burned houses?

How old are the houses? 5 Years, 10 years, 20 years?

This isn't a disaster until people and their belongings get burned. How did the houses end up being built in the path of the fires?

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. It has been part of Native Ameircan lore for ever

and locally this has been known for decades

October, fires... it is almost a given

As to how old some houes were, well one of the lost propertiesin Ramona (we think, nobody has gone in there yet), goes back to 1888

Potrero and Ramona are OLD, so is Julian... which was founded in 1870s... and was always competing with San Diego to become the County seat.

[haele]

5. What happened before is that you would get spot fires of low-intensity...

burning at most a couple hundred acres before it petered out. Since very few people lived in the rural areas where this would happen, there would not be a lot of noticeable damage, except on the ranches, farms, mines, and government outpost facilities (campgrounds, forestry stations, army forts, etc).
You wouldn't get the high-temperature, high intensity burns very often.
The problem we are running into is the extension of massive amounts of population out into the rural areas and the either for-profit or what I call "disneyfied" (keeping the forest access open for rather clueless general public's pleasure)forestry management practices.

Sure, fires were devastating in the past. But with poor land development, suburban and commuter developments in areas where there shouldn't be a large group of people, it's going to be worse.

Haele

[kestrel91316]

6. ALL homes in SoCal are in the path of fires, so to speak. It's just that

down in the cities ALL the brush has been replaced by buildings and parking lots and lawns.

[hedgehog]

9. So instead of building livable cities centered around plazas in

a place where year round walking is feasible, people continue to move into suburbs becaue that's the only new housing going up.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. And our developers and local power structure

like it just fine

Remember it was the LA developers who got rid of the red lines and built the interstates... back in the fifties

[kestrel91316]

23. Don't blame me. I live in a built-up older suburb, one block from mass transit.

Walking distance to grocery(2), drug store(1), restaurants(TNTC), major hospital with ER(1).

[Warpy]

12. That doesn't make them immune

I've seen one urban conflagration, the Chelsea fire of 1973. I don't ever want to see another one.

Instead of leaping from treetop to treetop, the fires leap from roof to roof. The day was clear and dry, with high winds, and that's all it took for one house fire to burn down almost the whole area. I will never forget the news photo of the day showing people screaming in terror and running as the buildings around them literally exploded into fire. I watched from my rooftop on the top of Beacon Hill.

In such a situation, anything that can burn will burn.

http://www.olgp.net/chs/photos/fire1973/writeup.htm

[kestrel91316]

24. Here in the SF Valley we are all aware that if a big enough earthquake

hits when we are having searing heat and Santa Anas, the whole valley could go up in smoke. That's 1 million residents according to the last census. We need our water supply intact in order to fight fire.

[BrklynLib at work]

2. Thanks for the insight.....

:hi:

[Elspeth]

4. The one thing I would add to this is the new building in the most fire prone areas

Rancho Bernardo has mostly newer homes, as do a lot of the Eastern suburbany areas. THe builders are allowed to put up large, energy guzzling (with a/c needed almost all the time) homes in incredibly dry areas.

I live along the coast where the ocean breezes and marine layer keep things a little more temperate and moist--although nothing can really counteract the Santa Anas. But drive a few miles east, and the climate changes. It is suddenly 10 degrees hotter and much drier. It's total desert. The newer homes are being built in the desert area.

If the city is going to allow builders to build in the fire-prone desert, they need to also provide all the fire protection and prevention possible. They don't. It's all the brunt of the homeowner.

[DesertFlower]

7. good point.

builders/developers are greedy. they don't care about building where they should not or the consequences. they make their money and move on.

i live in another state that has a lot of desert. the developers have ripped up this desert and built houses one on top of each other. then the people who move into these houses complain that the coyotes are attacking their pets. hello, the coyotes were there before you. they're just trying to survive.

i think there's a special place in hell for developers who do this.:mad:

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. That's because our power structure

is red... and does not believe in service fees

That said... you have some responsibility in a disaster... to take care of yourself, and some responsibity is disaster abatement

Sorry... been through that dance as a first responder.

[John Q. Citizen]

11. I live in Montana and we have a semi arid climate in most of the Western

part of the state. The landscape is fire dependant. It's dominated by ponderosa pines and grass lands.

The "Out in 24 hours" Forest Service doctrine started here, after the Great Burn fire in 1908. It was driven by the wood products industry who couldn't stand to see all that money burning up.

That doctrine, and global warming, are the reason we have been having so many more fires and so much more intense fires. It's a combination of the two, where I live.

Of course, our population density is minuscule compared to Southern CA So while every summer for the past 8 years there have been evacuations due to wild fires, the numbers are much more manageable,usually in the low hundreds at most compared with the hundreds of thousands in CA.

I was born in So. Cal and my dad lives in Huntington Beach, so I know something about the area you are in.

You do have forests, in the mountains, such as Lake Arrowhead, up above San Bernardino, in the San Gabriels, and other places, so in those areas the "Out in 24 Hours" doctrine may play a roll. But definitely not in most of San Diego, or in most of the densely inhabited areas of Southern CA for that matter.

I grew up in Northern CA, and places that have been logged over for Red Wood become choked in manzanita and madrone, which both burn very hot and fast. I would suspect that the same has occurred where pine has been logged at higher elevations in Southern CA.

The Forest Service has changed the out in 24 hours policy. Now if a lightning strike ignites a fire in the wilderness, they let it burn, and only attempt to cut line around fires that are threatening structures and people.

Another thing people should realize. Fire fighters do not put out wild fires of any decent size anywhere. They control wild fires. The fire goes out by itself, either after burning itself out, or due to rain or snow. Fire fighters can save structures, they can slow a fire in certain cases, they may be able to prevent the spread of a fire from one area to another, but nobody can put out a wildfire.

edited to add- Also, the main determining factor of whether a home burns or is spared, has to do with the conditions within about 100 feet of the structure. Failing to clean your gutters of leaves or pine needles could cause the loss of your home, for instance. We have a lot of educational literature around here to inform homeowners how to greatly increase the chances of having there house spared fron destruction in the event of a wildfire.

[hedgehog]

13. I've been thinking about this and have another point to offer

up for discussion.

The main problem seems to be the land use model. It is a joke in my family that the Italian Americans who lived near us hated trees. It seemed they all clear cut their lots and used as much concrete as possible. Think about it though; if you lived in an arid place, you would develop a culture that protected homes by keeping fuel away. Think of how the small mountain villages of southern Italy look.

Suburbs rarely work. It's time to start adopting land use models suitable to regional variations. I would guess that Southern California would be better off with small walkable clusters centered around a plaza with public transport connecting the villages. Being surrounded by houses, maybe the plaza could even be a shared green space. People want to live in the mountains for the beauty. Suburbs replace that beauty with a maze of houses. Maybe house clusters is a way to live in th beauty without destroying it.

Some people want to keep horses and live in the mountains. Instead of following the solitary rancher pattern, what if people clustered their houses and shared a barn? It's easier to protect a cluster than 20 individual houses, and by holding the land in common, more contiguous acreage could be kept in a wild state.

There are some models for shared property devoted to special hobbies. I'm thinking of the developments where everyone has a small private plane and the streets serve as taxi ways.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. The problem is that you'd be fighitng

several very powerful groups... in san diego specifically our buildiers and developers who have both the county board and the city in their pocket.

Remember it was the developers that destroyed the public transportation system in LA in the fifties... and they have been encroached since oh the 1920s at least

These fires SHOULD be a wake up call... we need a different kind of development, and damn it, we are in a desert, those green yards are just nuts...

But it will not...

Trust me... it will not

[hedgehog]

17. Here is a chance for some advertisers to redeem themselves.

Suppose someone marketed developments like this as a chance to live in the "real" California as opposed to yet another suburb?


Maybe the developments could be modeled on the early missions?

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. Knowing how the local politics works

they will be killed... they don't accept any deviation...

These folks is the reason why the county and the city in particular seems red...

The games that have gone on since oh... the 1920s are not unlike those in the deep south

What we need is new blood to take over the power structure and the forcing of the changes needed.

Taht said, places like Jamul, has not burned since 1970... so that could be even worst than what we have seen so far

And Jamul, another little town in the middle of nowhere

[John Q. Citizen]

20. The city of Missoula has been zoning to encourage in fill in the city, instead of

sprawl on the outskirts.

This is manly for economic and environmental reason. The argument is that having to provide services on the outskits is much more costly to existing residents, in the form of taxes, than is in-fill.

ALso, it provides more open spaces, ag land and much lower densities outside the urban area.

It's being faught over big time in city politics.

[hedgehog]

21. I suggest that we name this Bonanza syndrome.

Everyone thinks they will move to the Rockies and live on the Ponderosa! It's a variation of the Walter Mitty syndrome. It's the same mechanism by which suburbanites buy 4 wheel drive SUVs and pretend that they live lives of danger. FWIW, I personally drove a 25 year old 1976 Chevette to work for 6 years in Central New York. I never got stuck in the snow, not even once!

[John Q. Citizen]

22. But you aren't relating that to the infill zoning, right? You are speaking of the

-I want to move to move to Monatana, live off the grid, and survive on deer and elk so my life is much simpler mindset,- right?

I have nothing against that. Some people do it, and like it. Some people talk about it and never do it. And some people do it and decide it's not what they thought it would be.

Montana is interesting because, compared to the rest of the lower 48, it's really unpopulated. Especially in the center and the Eastern parts of the state. We are 4/5 the size of CA, with about a million people total in the whole state.

But of course, there is a reason for that.

[hedgehog]

27. I'm speaking of people who are living in a typical suburban tract

superimposed over a natural setting. The kind of tract that boasts of wonderful mountain views but then has problems when the cougars start eating the cats.

Not to be prejudiced against the west. We have somewhat the same thing here in New York when people want to live in a suburb but then complain about the deer eating their exotic greenery.

[Midlodemocrat]

14. You left out the part about it being all rich people who are losing their homes.

:sarcasm:

[nadinbrzezinski]

16. Mea culpa

didn't see them.... hell my sis ain't rich and they staid here for one night

[Midlodemocrat]

19. The people claiming that all of those affected are wealthy haven't a clue about CA real estate.

My brother's house above San Francisco was almost $1million. It's smaller than mine. He bought his first house for $225,000 and within 6 years sold it for over $750,000.

He did nothing to it to increase the value that much. He just got lucky. Something he will freely admit.

[Didereaux]

25. omigawd! Malkin was WRONG? you don't have trees? lol n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

26. Not where most of these fires are running

We have some, at places like the Cleveland National Forest... and in San Bernardino, but where these fires are runnning wild

Nope, hate to tell this to Michelle, we don't