This thread suckered me into registering so I could share a few thoughts. Mostly california fire specific.
First, climate change is a copout excuse for these fires. I'm not denying or affirming climate change itself here, just saying that in the context of protecting people and property from wildfires, it misses the mark.
Looking at the neat diagram on wildland fire behavior (courtesty of
OSU Extension) as somebody trying to reduce fire behavior, it sure seems that managing weather or topography is kind of cost-prohibitive. Managing fuels is the easiest and cheapest fastest approach. Sure, veg treatment is "expensive", but when CDF/CalFire drops ~$300M on only 12 helicopters, we can see that there's some money to be thrown at this thing.
Second, I'm not saying to not invest more resources towards a solution, but we should invest those resources wisely. For instance, at the
very least a reliable advanced warning/evac and information system would be a good start before 12 new helicopters. So that the 1.7 million households classified as having "High" or "Extreme" fire risk (
Source) will ALL get a warning with enough lead time to let them actually make decisions about what to do rather than running for their lives. That versus 0.000007 helicopters per household. Or, for more perspective, look at one of those slick Fecon machines above. Say it can treat fuels for $1,500 an acre (high estimate). That's potentially 200,000 acres of fuelbreak, where fires CAN be stopped.
Third is the red tape on veg projects. Many of them are regulated under mostly the same rules as timber harvesting here in the state (read: stringent). Again, to be pragmatic, there's a reason those rules came to be. But what's the point of protecting the owl, murrelet, fisher, and frog habitat; or the numerous archaeological sites from "damaging operations" when the lack of operations can cause much more drastic and widespread damage to these resources from a fire. There's some pretty appalling shit being spewed out there, such as
this and
this. The second link there has your Timbco btw
YotaAtieToo
In short, people have been managing the landscape around them here in the state for as long as people have been here. There's nothing wrong with that if we do it wisely. We're not doing that now. Then push for a gross negligence standard for prescribed burners instead of simple negligence (
info). And get involved with your local firesafe council out there. There are a lot of people doing good things with those.
Rant over, now roast me for shitting on CDF