Causes of Calif. Wildfires

Mountainmanbob said:

https://nypost.com/2019/10/30/devine-mismanagement-stubbornness-have-set-california-ablaze/

Locking up forests and preventing tree clearing and the systematic fuel reduction required in any prudent management of nature has been a disaster in a state that is “built to burn.”

Now that the cataclysm predicted by world forestry and fire experts has come to pass, the culprits are blaming climate change.

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When I was young I was on a crew that cut fire breaks throughout our forest areas. Fires did not spread so fast in those days.
Thank you CA. politicians --
once again for nothing.
Now -- what Party are they from?
MB

Click to expand...

Bob, do you think this is the Christian thing to do? That while there's folks on this forum who live in these areas, have been terrified on account of the fires, you just want to enjoy yourself and make it political?

You realize that a lot of the fires have been on federally managed land, do you not?

I think this is a callous thread and it reflects poorly on Christians on account of it being featured.

Edit
@Zanting, that surely was kind of you to mark my post for prayers!!

I appreciate that you realize how callous & uncharitable it is to have such an obvious feeling of schadenfreude about a wildfire that is causing terror for a lot of folks. To throw out blame, much of it being rooted in total ignorance as unfortunately Donald Trump has set the terrible example. God bless you for implicitly acknowledging how ugly and wrong that is, wanting to pray for Bob, pray for the folks of California! God bless you!

It would be good if people would stop lying and using the distress and death of people to score political points for their 'side'. That's absolutely reprehensible. Prayers are welcome and avail much, but politicking and weirdo conspiracy theories are not.

I am from Sonoma County (my family came there in the 1880s, so we're not recent rich transplants from the Bay Area or further south, as the stereotype now goes; my family were farmers, as everyone was before the rise of the wine industry in recent decades which has largely displaced other agricultural activity), and I grew up in one of the towns that was recently evacuated due to the fire in Santa Rosa. My brother and his family live in Santa Rosa, and were evacuated in the recent fire and in the fire two years ago. My best friend and his family are from Santa Rosa and still live there. They were evacuated both times. My best friend's in-laws lost their home in 2017 to the Tubbs fire, and then had to go through the ordeal of being evacuated and possibly losing their home again in the most recent fire. Thanks be to God, that did not happen this time.

I would never say that we would not benefit from better leadership and better land management (wouldn't everywhere?), but as has already been pointed out, President Trump is flat-out wrong and not really investigating matters before declaring that this is a problem of poor forest management. Many of these fires do not start in forested areas (some do, but not all), and affect large, urban areas, not just out of the way places covered in brush. For instance, the Coffey Park neighborhood in Santa Rosa, which burned to the ground in 2017, is right in the middle of everything (I think it's next to a Kohl's and some kind of shopping center? I don't remember as it has been years since I've been there, and today it is busy being rebuilt from the ground up, so there's not really any reason to go there), as were the various businesses that were lost in that horrible fire. We're talking about a heavily urbanized area. I saw the fire jump 6 lanes of traffic on the dang freeway in Santa Rosa...what's the president going to say to that? Was the freeway covered in easily burned overgrowth?

The 2017 Tubbs fire, just by the way, was either caused by faulty consumer equipment (this was CalFire's determination) or faulty PG&E equipment that was poorly maintained (this is the belief of people on the ground near the starting point of the fire at the time, and the general belief of everyone in Sonoma County who was directly affected by it, as I and my family were; I left for Fort Bragg rather than wait for it to get us when it was about 6 miles away and could be seen just over the ridge at the edge of town...apparently the Kincade fire traveled faster and people were forcibly evacuated from my hometown just a few days in by the 27th of October, since the containment was too slow to guarantee the town's safety; I did not experience that one, however, since I've been living outside of the area for the last 2 years...I left after the horrible experience of the Tubbs fire because I knew I wouldn't want to go through that ever again). The case against PG&E involving the Tubbs fire is still ongoing, and has been allowed to proceed as you can read at the link. The cause of the Kincade fire is still being investigated as well, but it is less certain since it was just fully contained four days ago on November 6th. It is said to be a malfunction in a PG&E transmission line at the point of origin, but there is also talk that since there was relatively low damage and no deaths (374 structures/175 homes destroyed and 4 non-fatal injuries in the Kincade fire vs. 5,638 structures/over 5,000 homes and 22 deaths in the Tubbs fire) this time, PG&E may get to weasel their way out of this and stick homeowners with all the cost of their apparently antiquated and unmanageable equipment. I guess it's a credit to our firefighters (who are awesome and 100% real heroes! I watched them protect homes in Windsor, where I once lived and I still have some friends and their families who live there, and it was seriously like watching superheroes -- fearless, brave, serious, and getting job done in what seemed like absolutely hellish conditions).

Still, I wonder: with so much death and destruction apparently caused by the ineptitude and recklessness of a giant corporation that can't be bothered to use some of the millions of dollars we pay them in California to actually update or properly manage their equipment, why doesn't Trump go after PG&E? Why does he instead just whine and complain about the eeeevil Democrats who supposedly don't know what to do about forests, even though that is largely not the issue?

I don't want to think this about the president, but it's hard not to at least entertain the idea that he cares more about what he can make of these tragedies in terms of energizing his base against the 'other side' than about doing something to help or prevent more of these events from happening in the future. Did President G.W. Bush rail against New Orleans for the obvious deficiencies in its levy system after Katrina? Not that I remember (though it was years ago, so I could be remembering incorrectly). President Trump is simply not presidential in his ways of communicating, nor his message in this case.

We don't need people expressing fake concern for people they actually disdain due to their voting habits. If you want to help, great, please do. I linked further up in the post to the organization Coffey Strong, which was created by Coffey Park residents in the wake of the complete destruction of their neighborhood to help people come back and rebuild. Maybe you can contact them and see how you can help, if they are still in need of that. (I know they're still rebuilding, but I don't know how far along they are.)

And if you can't or don't want to help, fine. At least don't make the people actually affected by this out to be the bad guys. The fires would've happened even if we were under Republican leadership, as the party in power does not determine PG&E's maintenance schedule.

The best thing to do is to pray, of course. Even though I am not currently living there, since that is where basically all my family and friends are, I get frequent updates via Facebook et al. This person got to go back to work, this other person was overjoyed to finally have their power back on so that can cook a real meal, etc. Very basic life stuff, that everyone should both have and be thankful for. It has been a very interesting couple of weeks. Lots of gratitude all over that it wasn't as bad as last time. You don't usually find the people of Sonoma County blaming anything on the Republicans or the government more generally. Nobody believes that President Trump started or is otherwise responsible for the fire.

It is not like this crisis just started recently, and I can't see it as an easy fix either. It's a huge mess. There are plenty of players at fault here.

I think PG&E's efforts towards green energy is admirable, and it does look like they invested a huge amount towards this. I have to wonder if maybe they should have invested a little less - waiting for technology to make it much more efficient - and working with government to move some of the electrical underground. The costs for that are enormous, but most of it - like many large governments - is insane.

With the huge amounts of cultural pressure to go green, and do it better than anyone else? CA is ahead of the curve in other areas, and wanted to do this too. Nothing WRONG with that by the way! Yet, business wise it is more cost efficient to do more green power than make the electrical grid go underground. Less costly with keeping their equipment up also. It's also politically popular. No doubt government will claim there was no pressure for PG&E to push the Green over keeping up with the traditional stuff, but they would be lying. This will happen in other states too in time.

You have a government entity that is so large, and has so much red tape to get anything done. Costs skyrocket and are wasted to the point of standstill - CA isn't the only state in that boat just keep in mind. It makes upgrades and maintenance costs insane as well. So, when you do more green energy? It looks good on paper, but when a crisis hits? The powers that be look for those to push under the bus. Sadly, governments and corporations that exist due to them aren't go on balance and common sense. That is a thing of the past.

I think both PG&E and the government are at fault for that. This didn't happen overnight, and in politics they always take simplistic approaches for fault. It's easier to do that, and make your talking points work better than the other party than admit blame in anyway. Our system has fixed it so it is suicidal to admit anything.

I realize forest management isn't the whole portion, but that also has been neglected and ignored. That isn't something the state hasn't admitted too. Infrastructure and managements of lands inside and outside the forested areas are the government's responsibility. That is what you pay the high taxes for. The push for power, sense of eliteness and with it goes personal wealth is what majority of government officials are about - with the powers that be that is, not average Joe/Jill. CA isn't the only state that isn't getting what they paid for. They just happen to be front and center at this time.