Another day, another case of Donald Trump ignorantly tweeting from the hip. Or maybe not quite so much. On Saturday, the President blamed the deadly forest fires in California, which have killed over 40 people in the town of Paradise near San Francisco and devastated celebrity-inhabited areas outside Los Angeles, on poor forest management.
It drew a furious response from, among others, singer-songwriter Neil Young whose home was reduced to a smouldering ruin and who posted on his website: ‘California is vulnerable – not because of poor forest management as DT (our so-called president) would have us think. We are vulnerable because of climate change; the extreme weather events and our extended drought is part of it.’
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The fires this Summer could have been prevented or at least minimized with good forest practices. The current fires are different. The problem now is the wind. In the Fall California gets the Santa Anna winds and a fire cannot be contained. They propagate/travel at about the speed of the wind. They hop over fire lines and areas where good forest practices have been maintained. It would be impossible to remove all of the dead and dried grass, bushes, sagebrush, undergrowth etc. and in these winds burning material can be carried 5-10 miles.
ReplyDeleteMy advice to anyone in an area of a high wind driven fire is at the first notice, get out. Don't wait for authorities to tell you.
the Santa Anna winds
DeleteI remember those.
I read a story yesterday about a policeman knocked on a families
ReplyDeletedoor and told them they had an hour to evacuate. He said he
drove by the house five minutes later and the house was
completely burned to the ground. Unpredictable.
I guess Santa Ana winds can do that. Remarkable.
Delete