Gil -
This is an interesting and timely but potentially contentious topic.
Interesting and timely because we ARE right in the midst of some big
fires (recently)... I just drove through the Jemez to see some of the
most recent fire's (Thompson Ridge) damage as well as from two years
ago. Of course, the recent loss of 19 firefighters in AZ was is not a
small reminder of the danger of these fires.
My father worked for the US Forest Service from the 50's through the
80s, and summer was a continuous series of either local fires being
fought nearby or him making long trips off to the really big fires in
the pacific northwest where he often lead crews from Zuni (they were
well known for their skill, tirelessness and cohesiveness). One of my
earliest memories is of my mother driving us out to where they were
trying to stop a fire from crossing the highway near the forest camp we
lived in. We and some other local residents watched (safely) from a few
hundred yards back in a large meadow as flames licked from the
ponderosas on one side of the highway right of way toward the other
side. As I remember it, they did hold the fire there, but only
barely. This was the first of nearly 20 years of fire-stories I got
to hear as they were unfolding. We had a fire-radio in the kitchen
which was on 24/7 and busy throughout the summer.
My father died less than a year ago and while helping my mother sort
through possessions I encountered an outline of the many harrowing
experiences he had in the forest service, starting with the famous Mann
Gulch fire in Montana that took the lives of 13 fire fighters. My
Father had just been accepted to Forestry School in Missoula and was
driving toward there from Kentucky when that fire happened. He arrived
as a fresh young Forestry Student in the aftermath of that very tragic
and defining incident. This story is well documented in the 1992 book
"Young Men and Fire <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Men_and_Fire>".
Another tragic fire incident happened in the mid 1990's on the Storm
King or South Canyon fire. One notable difference from the 1949 tragedy
was that by this time firefighting crews included women... in this case
I think 4 of the 14 killed were women.
Not long after my father began work as a Forest Service Professional in
Northern Arizona, one of his equally fresh colleagues, Billy Buck, was
caught in a bad situation with a group of firefighters who he was able
to save by using a technique similar to that of Wag Dodge of lighting a
"escape fire" which clears the immediate area of combustibles in a
lower-temperature fire, allowing firefighters to potentially survive in
that Island of "pre-burned" area. This was not long after the
Mann-Gulch fire and it helped to validate that Dodge's actions (he was
only 1 of 3 survivors of the fire and the only one who chose to stay
within the escape fire "island" while the others insisted on trying to
outrun the fire to their peril). They huddled together under a tarp
they had wet from their canteens while the fire blew past/over them.
This technique was formalized in the mid 1970's when they started
requiring every fire crew to carry a "fire shelter" which was
essentially a tarp/tent with a reflective (think space blanket)
coating. Suffocation is often a bigger danger even than the heat of the
fire. Buck was credited with rescuing the entire crew with his
forceful style (former marine)despite having no formal authority. My
dad believed it was the only difference between his success and Wag
Dodge's failure (to save more than himself).
May father was appalled at how much building happened in the Pacific
Northwest and even moreso in California, deep in the forested and other
potentially fire-prone areas. In the relatively uninhabited southwest,
even a huge fire would not be that likely to threaten habitation and
when it did, efforts could be focused on the few, relatively small areas
of habitation. In California, they were *always* fighting to protect
habitations, not to stop the fire. As it turns out, the most good for
the most people (well, the ecosystems we people are depending on) might
have been literally NO Intervention... go figure.
Guerin and the SimTable(tm) folks are naturally *much* more up to date
on contemporary firefighting conditions and culture. During my
father's time in the business, they had not yet realized the extent of
the hazard they were creating by suppressing so many fires, causing
ecosystems to go out of balance, allowing small, fast burning forest
materials to build up to the point that they could ignite the larger,
slower-to-burn full grown trees. They *were* aware of it however,
having the example of the US Park Service whose policy at the time
(started shifting in 1969) was "complete suppression", overzealously
not allowing *any* fire that they could stop.
I opened the topic here by saying it was a "timely but potentially
contentious topic" because there is still a lot of contention over how
much fire-suppression is appropriate and even more contention about
anthropogenic climate change.
I'm generally a believer in anthropogenic climate change but don't
believe that there is the level of confirmed evidence the stronger
proponents claim (the movement does have hysterics whose hysteria may
not help the cause so much). I believe that the stronger climate
change deniers have other agendas which they should not be proud of and
they tend to have their own hysterics as well.
All that said, humanity has a lot of momentum in it's release of
greenhouse gasses (primary likely cause of global climate change at this
time)... and we *are not* going to stop or reverse quickly no matter
what happens (short of an asteroid making a bigger mess out of us
first). For the most part, hot dry areas will get hotter and drier
(though climactic and weather patterns *can* act in the opposite fashion
in some regions) and marginal areas will get hotter and drier. So
forest and other types of wildland fires will be much more common and
more difficult to control. With increased penetration of human
habitation and other uses of these areas, the *threat to human
livelihood* will also continue to increase.
Again, Guerin might have the numbers handy but there are definitely
thresholds of temperature and humidity in different bioregions where
fires go from unlikely to very likely... Fire Science has come a long
way from when my father was in the business... back then it was mostly
about throwing a few dozen men with shovels and pulaskis near the front
of the fire so they could "encourage" it toward areas less likely to
burn (open meadows, talus slopes, top of the ridge)... and to knock down
spot-fires thrown from the main fire before they could become new
sources of a propagating fire.
As for Trader Joe's "hot food", I can't help you... although, the threat
of (ionizing) radiation in any context seems like it would be the
easiest to detect (as opposed to any number of chemical or biological
contaminations)?
And as for your travel-tip requests... I'd claim that following the
*obvious* guidelines would be enough, but have to report that a friend
who has had a colostomy was recently detained for some time while they
decided what to do about the fact that (apparently) the plastics in his
ostomy bag reminded their chemical sensors of some species of
explosives. Maybe you should try AmTrak, GreyHound, or try putting an
ad on Craigslist instead...
Carry on!
- Steve
Another one for people that know vastly more about weather and chaos
than I do:
Forest fires season this year and the temperature outside: I love
summer->october side of fall it's stupid pretty out. That being said:
How much of the 25-40c heat as reported by NOA. Is thehe dry
conditions and what seems to be just about zero humidity is inside of
normal?
What I'm groping for is: yowza is it hot and dry, and it seems like
anything in the forests that can burn is burning- is this-somewhat
normal? oO
I seem to recall downtown about now (ie 430-5pm) trying to flood last
year and the year before and the year before etc.
Nick you seem to speak temperature and humidity any thoughts?
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