Here's how to respond to those misleading posts claiming our recent fires are all about tree huggers | President Trump is wrong about wildfire prevention (Opinion) - CNN

just a few items cobbled together...

this first one thanks to California Chaparral Institute on Facebook –

Here's how to respond to those misleading posts claiming our recent fires are all about tree huggers preventing logging and a supposed fuel build up via past fire suppression.

1. Most of California's most devastating fires were far from any forest (see map below).

2. For those few devastating fires that were near forests, all of those forests around the communities destroyed had the kind of suggested thinning and fuel treatments misinformed commentators claim didn't exist.

3. Much of the area around Paradise that burned in the Camp Fire had burned 10 years ago, had been salvage logged, and was composed of habitats other than forest (e.g. post fire shrublands). The wind-driven ember rain that destroyed the town came primarily from open grassland/post fire/mixed woodland environments northeast of the town. A large percentage of the trees within the devastated town did not burn. See the fire progression map here and match it with the current view on Google Earth:
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/map/6250/4/90791

4. Climate change is drying the state. Dryer conditions lead to a more flammable landscape. We may see more of the kind of winds that powered the Camp Fire into Paradise. More fires will dramatically alter the kinds of habitats we are used to seeing. Non-native weed filled landscapes that dominate places like Riverside County will likely become more common. More on this issue here:
http://www.californiachaparral.com/threatstochaparral.html

It is more than discouraging when someone claims our wildfires are all about forests, dead trees, lack of logging, or unnatural fuel build up via past fire suppression. Such claims are a disservice to the families who have lost so much and hamper our efforts to solve the problem.

What is it about? Flammable homes and communities located on flammable terrain.

Please see our solutions in our letter to Governor Brown below.

Here is a well-researched article on the Woolsey Fire from the LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/proj…/la-me-woolsey-fire-progression/

Here's how to protect your home from wildfire:
http://www.californiachaparral.com/bprotectingyourhome.html

Here's our information flyer on external sprinklers:
http://www.californiachaparral.com/…/INDEPENDENT_EXTERNAL_S…

Here's why Governor Brown and the California State Legislature failed us - they ignored the real problem:
http://www.californiachaparral.com/…/Gov_Brown_2017_Wildfir…

Here are the most devastating wildfires in California to November 17, 2018 (fire, structures burned, fatalities):

Fires 2017-2018
Camp/12,263/71 (as of 11/17/2018)*
Tubbs/ 5636/ 22
Redwood/ 546 / 9
Carr/ 1599/ 8
Atlas/ 783/ 6
Nuns/ 1355/ 3
Woolsey/500+/3 (as of 11/17/2018)
Thomas/ 1063/ 2
Ferguson/ 131/ 2
Mendocino/ 277/ 1

Previous devastating fires prior to 2017 where losses were also unrelated to forests and dead trees:
Tunnel (1991)/ 2900 /25
Cedar (2003)/ 2820/ 15
Harris (2007)/ 548/ 8
Old (2003)/ 1003/ 6
Witch Creek (2007)/ 1650/ 2
Butte (2015)/ 921/ 2
Jones (1999)/ 954/ 1
Paint (1990)/ 641/ 1

Significant forested area involved, but not seriously impacted by dead trees:
Valley (2015)/ 1955/ 4
*Camp Fire involved forest within the fire perimeter, but most of the area within/near the devastated town of Paradise was a mix of habitats.

President Trump is wrong about wildfire prevention (Opinion) - CNN

(CNN)With the shocking loss of thousands of homes and dozens of lives in the Camp and Woolsey fires in Northern and Southern California, people are looking for answers as they try to understand how a tragedy such as this can be prevented in the future.

As people struggled to evacuate, President Donald Trump in a tweet blamed the fires on poor forest management and repeated the claims before his visit to California. While Trump did not explicitly call for an expansion of logging in his latest response, he has previously touted this strategy as a way to curb fires. Meanwhile, the federal government is moving to allow commercial logging in areas such as the Los Padres National Forest outside Santa Barbara, claiming it will prevent fires. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has also blamed "environmental terrorist groups" for preventing the government from properly managing forests.

It is deeply troubling that Trump and his administration would support logging as a way to curb fires when studies have shown it's ineffective. In the most comprehensive scientific analysis conducted on the issue of forest management and fire intensity -- which looked at more than 1,500 fires on tens of millions of acres across the Western United States over three decades -- we found that forests with the fewest environmental protections and the most logging actually tend to burn much more intensely, not less.

This may seem counterintuitive, but logging leaves behind combustible twigs and branches on the forest floor, which can make fires spread faster. It also reduces the cooling shade of the forest canopy, which creates hotter and drier conditions, and the invasive weeds that take over readily burn. Denser forests buffer and reduce the winds that drive wildland fires, but this effect is largely eliminated by logging.

The fact is that Northern California's Butte County, which has been ravaged by the Camp Fire, had been heavily logged in previous years. In the area immediately to the east of Paradise, dead trees had been extensively logged and removed on both private and public lands, and commercial "thinning" operations had been conducted across large expanses of the nearby Plumas National Forest, supposedly to protect nearby towns from wild land fire…

more: President Trump is wrong about wildfire prevention (Opinion) - CNN

As California Burns, Trump and Zinke Use Catastrophe to Benefit Industry | Earthjustice

U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke wrote recently that “radical environmentalists would rather see forest and communities burn than see a logger in the woods. ” In Zinke’s zero-sum equation, the devastating wildfires in California would stop if those radical environmentalists would let the timber industry cut down more trees.

The truth is that Zinke and House Republicans are using the destruction across the West as an excuse to chip away at bedrock environmental laws created to ensure that science drives decisions about the future of our nation’s forests.

Everyone agrees that we must protect homes and lives from the catastrophic effects of fires, but Zinke’s argument is dangerously oversimplified, cynically disingenuous and downright false. And that’s not the worst part. He also proclaims that climate change has “nothing to do” with these wildfires, even as scientists and firefighting officials unanimously assert that climate change is creating the conditions that allow destructive wildfires to thrive. These types of fires will only grow in intensity and frequency if we do nothing to address climate change…

more: As California Burns, Trump and Zinke Use Catastrophe to Benefit Industry | Earthjustice

see also: 

Trump, offering no evidence, blames deadly California fires on “gross mismanagement of the forests”

Camp Fire: The Terrifying Science Behind California’s Massive Blaze | WIRED

Northern California Fires – on Fire Watch

my area on the 13th

i won't post a bunch of photos or details here, but want to say that the past week has been dramatic - you would have seen it in the news - an international story. just to say: safe here, but devastation is not all that far away. the air quality improved today, forecast winds arrived but not too strong – the Red Flag Warning for the [San Francisco] North Bay Area has been lifted. while firefighters have made major progress with containment this weekend, we are not "out of the woods" yet. Thankfully the forecast is for calm to light winds for the next three days to be followed by rain!

see todays LA Times: California wildfires have killed 40 people; dozens still missing as firefighters make progress - LA Times

my resource notes on Facebook –
• #SonomaValley #SonomaCounty #FireStorm *** RESOURCES ***
• FireStorm :: MENTAL HEALTH --- "Disaster Mental Health"

The Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite captured this image of smoke from wildfires in the US state of California on 9 October 2017. Wildfires broke out in parts of the state on 8 October 2017 around Napa Valley, and the smoke was spread by strong northeasterly winds.

In early October 2017, a series of wildfires started burning across the state of California, United States. They broke out throughout Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino, Butte, and Solano counties during severe fire weather conditions effectively leading to a major red flag warning from much of the Northern California area. Seventeen separate wildfires were reported at this time.[3] These fires included the Tubbs Fire (the most destructive), the Atlas Fire, Nuns Fire and others.

Due to the extreme conditions, shortly after the fires ignited on October 8 and 9, they rapidly grew to become extensive, full-scale incidents spanning from 1,000 acres (400 hectares) to well over 20,000 acres (8,100 ha) each within a single day. By October 14, the fires had burned more than 210,000 acres (85,000 ha), and destroyed an estimated 5,700 structures [4][1] while forcing 90,000 people to evacuate from their homes.[5] The Northern California fires have killed at least 42 people[1] and hospitalized at least 185,[6] making the week of October 8, 2017, the deadliest week of wildfires in California history.[7][8][1][9][2] Collectively, this event constitutes the largest loss of life due to wildfires in the United States since the Cloquet Fire in 1918.[10]

more: https://en.wikipedia.org/…/October_2017_Northern_California…

CAL FIRE - California Statewide Fire Map