Thread: Southern California Fires

I know there are several members here from Southern California and some may be being displaced or threatened by the ongoing fires of this area. I know Mark , who I consider a friend indeed, has relayed info to me about the evacuation procedures affecting him and his family, and I don't think I'm being too forward or revealing to pass this on and ask for everyone to keep in mind, pray, wish hopefully for , etc. for Mark, his family, and the general area.

Thanks,

Justin

I hope everything is well with our CA members.

I have seen footage of the fire on the news here.
Since these fires occurr regularly in california, I was wondering why there is no standard 150 or 200 yard clearing between the trees and the county limits?

I'm sure Mark can pipe in with some info but I don't know what you can do with such high winds --- a really awesome and frightening thing.

Justin

Originally Posted by Bruno

I hope everything is well with our CA members.

I have seen footage of the fire on the news here.
Since these fires occurr regularly in california, I was wondering why there is no standard 150 or 200 yard clearing between the trees and the county limits?

Thank you Justin and Bruno!
Bruno, to answer your question we call the standard clearing that you are talking about freeways! This is the biggest fire that southern California has seen in her history as California! In southern Ca. we get winds at this time of the year that travel from east to west at between 30 and 80 miles per hour, known as Santa Ana's. This being the driest time of the year fires can start rather easily, and then you combine this with the wind, there is almost no where that this fire couldn't go, and, if it is not contained almost immediately it becomes rather unstoppable. at this point the firefighters concentrate their efforts towards keeping structures from catching fire and just letting the fire burn the available fuel, all the time praying for the winds to stop so that they can stop the fire!
there were up to 20 different fires between the Mexican border and the north end of Los Angeles, up to 750,000 households evacuated, and more than 1,000 homes destroyed!

By the way, I would like to wish my fellow southern Californians the best of luck and may Gods grace shine on them! Heavydutysg and Bth88 are SoCal members also and I know there are others! Please chime in so that we know you are OK!

Mark

I just found this thread -

Mark, our thoughts are with you and yours.

The footage on the TV is frightening indeed. I don't think a freeway would stop that conflagration. I see those 100' high walls of flames, and a single brave fire fighter that hasn't slept in 3 days squirting a stream of water on it .... wow...what a fearsome blaze.

It rained here yesterday..... I have a whole new appreciation for rain.

-whatever

-Lou

Unfortunately, there is worse to come. After the fire finally dies out, there will be thousands upon thousands of acres without vegetation. When rains resume, there will literally be tons of soil washed away to be deposited in the bays, mudslides and the destruction of additional homes and roads, etc.

Not to mention insurance hassles, lack of building supplies, lack of people to use building supplies and so on.

The folks of California are going to be in a world of hurt for a long time to come after the fires are gone.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I was wondering why there is no standard 150 or 200 yard clearing between the trees and the county limits?

Bruno,
To add to what Mark said, besides the wind gusting up to 80mph, you also have the fact that much of this area of Calif. has had only about 2-inches of rainfall so far this year!! So the brush and forest floor litter is tinder dry. Couple this with the fact that the Santa Ana winds blow across the inland deserts toward the sea... this drops the relative humidity to 15% or less. So, once a fire is ignited it burns fiercely. The fires are sometimes started by a careless act of man (cigarette toss, camp fire left smoldering, sun reflecting through a discarded glass or plastic bottle, etc.), but more often than not they're started by a dry lightening strike.

Much of what's burning is brush and small shrubs, but there certainly are trees, too. "Forest" management in the US is much different than in Europe (as told to me by some German natives). Here the forest floor is left to gather whatever nature puts there, whereas in many parts of Europe the forest floor is kept fairly clean (which reduces the fuel source for fires). It's simply a matter of scale... several of the forests here in Arizona (which also experiences wild fires frequently) are roughly 2-million acres each (that's almost 8,000 sq. km. each... roughly 1/4th the size of Belgium?). And the terrain is very rugged in many cases, so firefighting is very difficult. Here in AZ they actually purposefully burn sections of forest periodically to reduce the fuel that accumulates on the forest floor.

Within the US, almost 10-million acres were consumed by wildfires last year... see [here].

My heart goes out to all those affected in Calif. I just saw on CNN that the number of people displaced at this point is over 900,000 now and property loss is over $1-billion at this point. I would guess that most of the people affected DO NOT have insurance coverage for wildfires.

Just like everyone else here, I hope things are well with all SRP members who live in the affected areas.

Let's pray for their safety and for that of the firefighters....and for rain.

For the CA members: do you think mandating masonry construction and tile/steel roofing would lessen the destruction? There would still have to be evacuation, but would the homes still be there or are the fires just too hot? After working around the world, I was amazed that the US is one of the few industrial nations still constructing homes using wooden frames, almost exclusively.