Fires - what a year (2021)

[Neal]

I don't have a reference as to how bad this is to the past but I'm pretty amazed of the fire activity this year. As a pilot I use this resource to identify fires and smoke and for those in the North West and CA this may be helpful for you to know what's going on where.

Some know I recently bought an airplane which requires a 40 hour fly off before I can travel with it. I took delivery in OR on August 10th. Between the 110 degree heat and smoke I had to leave it in OR and return to VA. Flying through the smoke is terrible with ash left all over the leading edges of everything and obvious concerns for getting into the engine. I took it to Yakima for its first service visit two days into the fly off and I got stuck at Yakima due to the big fire out west not escaping until 3 days later and that was bad! I should never have gotten into Yakima in the first place, the visibility was marginal and I should have returned to OR. It was hard to breathe, this is clearly very very unhealthy.

Fire and Smoke Map

fire.airnow.gov

 

[Scooterfan]

Decades ago the Sierra Club "demanded" that (cattle) crazing on forest land be stopped (and it was). Subsequently, many invasive pests have accounted for large die offs of pines throughout the West. Requests to log dead wood were denied. Our forests are poorly managed. When you allow fuel to build up and accumulate for decades when fire starts, it burns hotter (thus more difficult to extinguish). We will continue have have HUGE burn offs until someone decides it time to manage our forests again. In the meantime, the maps will continue to look like the one you offered above ? and you may have to wait until spring to fly your new airplane home. Like the wise book says..."when a man digs a pit, he will fall in it..."

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

How bad is the 2021 fire situation compared to prior years? It is record-breaking here in the Pacific Northwest! And, last year was pretty bad! I keep wondering how long it will be until there are no forests left to burn.

As some may know, I spent a couple of years fighting forest fires in California and Montana-Wyoming (Yellowstone NP) in my younger days. From my limited (and ancient) perspective, three major factors have made the past several years as difficult as they have been. First, forest management practices have been poor, especially on state and federal land. It is costly to do preemptive undergrowth management, so it doesn’t get done. The result is a massive amount of fuel for wildfires.

A similar cost-related issue is proper maintenance of electrical power distribution systems. The big utilities simply don’t keep the space under their lines clear and their poles/lines properly maintained. When a strong wind comes along, lines and poles break, falling into the aforementioned fuel supply. The results are predictable.

Finally, maintaining a well-trained and quickly available stock of firefighters is expensive, so that doesn’t happen as well. When major fires break out (as are currently occurring in California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana) there are not enough trained/experienced wildlands firefighters available to contain them. As a result, they burn uncontrolled for far longer than they would if adequate resources were available. Of course, this costs money and federal/state governments can’t/won’t appropriate it.

I won’t get into the climate change discussion as that is a political lightning rod! The reference to “lightning rod” is deliberate; those discussions also create raging conflagrations.

TJ

 

[Scooterfan]

Nicely stated TJ...you are spot on. In addition, what gets NO play time is due to C19 (and other pressures) inmate firefighters are not being used to fight these wildland fires. Little has been said in the past how valuable these men and women are in (California) fire fighting, but they are sorely missed these last two years. Until someone decides to clean up the forest floor and remove dead material, we will simply have to let it burn itself out.

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

In addition, what gets NO play time is due to C19 (and other pressures) inmate firefighters are not being used to fight these wildland fires. Little has been said in the past how valuable these men and women are in (California) fire fighting, but they are sorely missed these last two years. Until someone decides to clean up the forest floor and remove dead material, we will simply have to let it burn itself out.

Absolutely correct! I worked alongside inmate firefighters in California and they were great partners! Losing that resource has hit the firefighter resource hard. Thanks for reminding me.

TJ

 

[J&JD]

should never have gotten into Yakima in the first place, the visibility was marginal and I should have returned to OR. It was hard to breathe, this is clearly very very unhealthy.

So, @Neal , is your new ride still in Yakima?

 

[Neal]

So, @Neal , is your new ride still in Yakima?

Hood River, OR - 4S2

I got out of there when the smoke broke on Sunday morning (had first oil change on Thursday) and they are continuing to struggle with their production and flight testing. I'll return early October if the smoke/fires allow me a path east that I can enjoy otherwise I'll go later. I want to enjoy the journey across the US and not do it IFR.

 

[Neal]

I seem to recall when I did a tour as part of my Yellowstone adventure on a RV caravan the tour guide saying something about putting out fires is not always a good thing. Nature has its way of recycling and managing forests and when we get in the way it causes problems such as the overgrowth and inability to manage forest growth.

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

I seem to recall when I did a tour as part of my Yellowstone adventure on a RV caravan the tour guide saying something about putting out fires is not always a good thing. Nature has its way of recycling and managing forests and when we get in the way it causes problems such as the overgrowth and inability to manage forest growth.

This is true, but it comes with some caveats. You do have to protect people, towns, etc. One of the big problems (though not so much in Yellowstone) is that people are moving out into more remote places these days.

Back in my dinosaur days, the official policy was to put out all fires as quickly as possible. So, we did that. It wasn’t until later that policy makers started realizing that by doing that, the understory fuel load (brush) increased dramatically.

Policy is now swinging back to “managing” fires rather than immediately putting them out. But, as I said, that has become more complicated because more people are building homes and other structures out in the forest. There are ways to do ”managed burns” in areas to clear out the understory brush in many areas but quite a bit of that work needs to be done using good, old-fashioned manual labor and that is expensive.

The real problem is not fire, it is people! Too many of them in the wrong places!

TJ

 

[Texas Clodhopper]

I had a large Yellow Pine plantation and my forester did a control burn about every 3-5 years to keep the understory at a minimum.