Because California is a big place and under a drought...not enough water
California Fires
by leavingwt 26 Replies latest social current
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Dagney
Rain rain, please come today.
The air is so bad, you can't even see the cloud of smoke. It's just one white sky.
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snowbird
All who are affected have my sympathy.
Sylvia
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leavingwt
Feds Didn't Clear Brush in Wildfire Area
Federal authorities failed to follow through on plans earlier this year to burn away highly flammable brush in a forest on the edge of Los Angeles to avoid the very kind of wildfire now raging there, The Associated Press has learned.
Months before the huge blaze erupted, the U.S. Forest Service obtained permits to burn away the undergrowth and brush on more than 1,700 acres of the Angeles National Forest . But just 193 acres had been cleared by the time the fire broke out, Forest Service resource officer Steve Bear said.
The agency defended its efforts, saying weather, wind and environmental rules tightly limit how often these "prescribed burns" can be conducted.
Bear said crews using machinery and hand tools managed to trim 5,000 acres in the forest this year before the money ran out. Ideally, "at least a couple thousand more acres" would have been cleared.
Could more have been done to clear tinder-dry hillsides and canyons?
"We don't necessarily disagree with that," Bear said. "We weren't able to complete what we wanted to do."
Some critics suggested that protests from environmentalists over prescribed burns contributed to the disaster, which came after the brush was allowed to build up for as much as 40 years.
"This brush was ready to explode," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich , whose district overlaps the forest. "The environmentalists have gone to the extreme to prevent controlled burns, and as a result we have this catastrophe today."
Prescribed burns are intended to protect homes and lives by eliminating fuel that can cause explosive wildfires. The wildfire that has blackened 140,000 acres — or nearly 219 square miles — in the forest over the past week has been fed by the kind of tinder-dry vegetation that prescribed burns are designed to safely devour.
The blaze has destroyed more than five dozen homes, killed two firefighters and forced thousands of people to flee. Firefighters reported modest progress Wednesday as investigators said the blaze was human-caused, though it was not clear exactly how the fire started or whether it was accidental or arson.
Figures from the California's South Coast Air Quality Management District suggested even less was protectively burned.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090903/ap_on_re_us/us_wildfires_prescribed_burns
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purplesofa
Here are a couple of pics I found online that I wanted to share, hope they show up
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What-A-Coincidence
The feds allowed it to happpen to create FEMA CAMPS.
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wha happened?
oh WAC, we all know the fires were started by conservative republicans who were trying to help Cheney feel at home because he's been away from hell for some time now
