Fires out West

[Roadkill]

These fires are destroying habitat so quickly.  The smoke is such that has visibility down to half mile, and that fire is in Sacramento, Ca.  We are over the mountain in Reno. The damage done to habitat is nothing compared to the instantaneous loss of all that some folks had worked a lifetime to obtain.  Sad state of affairs

[beendare]

We drove through that smoke coming back from Wyoming on 80 from just past stateline to about Colfax. It was so bad in some spots you couldn't see 200 yds on the freeway- terrible.

The good news was no CHP's in that bad section....

[Jerry Jeffer]

natures way of re-newal. If we had not suppressed fire for so many years, habitat would be a lot better than it is now.

[snag]

Yes, fires do "re-new" the habitat IF it is a natural setting. Here in Oregon they have stopped fires for so many years the fuel build up is trememdously "unnatural". So the fires are extremely hot and sterilize the soil. What grows back in not the best habitat for all wildlife. This is what I've noticed here. Not the same for all states of course.

[Roadkill]

The cheat grass that grows after a fire is just another rapid burning fuel for the next spark.They used to reseed specific areas with natural sage, but I heard the sage farm was down for the last few years.  so we get cheat grass.  Those hills are then suspectible to really rapid erosion or mudslides
the critters that can, evacuate, others get confused and die in the infernal.  Houses disappear in a couple of minutes.

[old_goat2]

Yeah, most of these fires are burning so hot it actually burns the soil or loam I believe is a better descriptor. Just leaves decomposing granite, it's not like fires in river bottom or prairie settings.

[Paul_R]

Not to minimize the magnitude but the fires aren't in Sacramento (I live here) they're about an hour east. There was this gigantic cloud above the affected area the other day that looked for all the world like the biggest mushroom cloud ever or a volcanic eruption. Honestly it was an awesome spectacle. I learned the next day it was a "pyrocumulus" cloud fed by the fire. I hadn't seen or heard of one of those before.

[neuse]

It does appear that we humans have made things alot worse where fire is concened.
How many years now have there been large scale fires in the west?
Seems like 4 or 5 five years in a row.

[Roger Norris]

My son is a Federal Wildlife Firefighter. Attached to the Mesa Hotshots....he was in in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah this summer. California creates some of their own problems, by not allowing other fire crews in to help (unless it is way beyond an emergency). Visiting with him last week, he told me that the sad part is they put them on EVERY fire...meaning some of the stuff that they should just let burn....they don't. So they are basically preserving old growth tinder boxes so they can burn again.

We hiked (partially) in to some of the remote fire areas he was in this year. Places that posed ZERO threat to anyone if they burned....and would have benefited from renewal. Instead we put BILLIONS of dollars into it, and risk young mens lives in putting it out. Ridiculous. I'm lobbying hard to get my son to change careers. We never hear about it, but it is dangerous beyond belief. And expensive.

Keep the fires away from the homes. Period.