The Water Cooler – Who Do You Blame For The Raging Wildfires In California Year After Year?

First PG&E than arsonists than lightening for starting them. Then the State and the Feds for not having the foresight for having fire lookouts or the equipment to fight the fire. It may be a good idea if the feds who control national forests in the west started their own fire fighting air force. Can’t do much about lightning but arsonist can be given life as a minimum. Governments, Feds, states, cities, and property owners should be responsible for keeping their trees out of power lines. If you plant a tree under a power line why should PG&E be responsible for that. PG&E should charge for tree removal and trimming.

The state and federal BLM for not managing their forests.

– Department of the Interior and the National Parks Service
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– California State Parks Department
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– State Building Codes for not requiring certain fire-resistive construction in designated areas.
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– PGE for failing to manage and oversee their easements
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– Local fire protection districts who are slow in requiring weed abatement.
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– Property owners who don’t clear their property of weeds & underbrush and fail maintain safe zones around structures.
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– Environmentalists like the Sierra Club, various “land conservancies”, and other groups who oppose wildland fire management and want nature to be “natural”.
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Forest mismanagement.

Plenty of blame to go around, overpopulation of the forest area, Mother Nature with lightning strikes, the drought with lack of snowfall and the drying of the forest bed, not clearing the forest of the dead fuel on the forest floor along with the dead trees infested with bugs, and then there is the human fire bug, an last but not least PG&E. Everyone blames PG&E, because their the one with the money to help pay for the cost of fire fighting

It’s the Rake Manufacturing Guild.

Obviously.

They hate Californians and refuse to provide sufficient tools to sufficiently rake our forests.

Decades of fire suppression, along with a cessation of thinning of forests and not enough controlled burns have created this problem. Placing homes and even communities in the middle of these ovens creates a perfect storm, so to speak.

BTW- There are a lot of so-called environmental groups which actively work to thwart proper forest management and make everything more expensive. Too bad the media isn’t interested in pursuing that story.

The self important EPA. They have no clue about forrest management. Even the American Indians burned brush out from underneath the trees in a controlled burn to prevent the mass amount of healthy live trees from burning. There was never this type of fires in the forrest’s prior to the EPA becoming a thing.

I read an article recently by an expert in forestry (honestly not sure if he was legit or a phony) that was written over 20 Years ago, that predicted fires like we are experiencing now. The articulate was well written, and articulate, and made no mention of politics which seemed to legitimize it all that much more. He claimed the culprit of the fires would be caused by poor management by the responsible agencies in the western states.

The misguided policy of fire suppression for the past hundred years. For thousands of years prior to that California’s native peoples carefully managed California’s natural predisposition to burn throughout the dry seasons. Fires were allowed, encouraged, and even set as soon as enough dry plant and tree matter was available. Most of these small fires did not even kill the trees as they whipped past and through, and they burned just enough to scour the lands of excess fuel and crack open native seeds (we have many native seeds that will not open without the presence of fire!). Then the native people were sent packing so to speak, and the newcomers decided it would be best not to let anything at all burn. After many years with this policy there are now tons upon tons of tinder dry fuel built up all over the whole state just waiting for that one spark that will finally set it off into a completely unstoppable inferno. These fires burn so hot and for so long they kill everything in their paths and completely sterilize the soil, leaving permanent scars behind. Erosion of mountains is inevitable and unstoppable, and clean river systems are permanently clogged, changed, and redirected. I’ve seen nobody throughout several administrations since the realization of this major erroneous policy came about who has figured out how to address the issue, which requires removing tons upon tons of tinder dry fuel all over the whole state, which would take MASSIVE amounts of time, labor, and resources. This is way to big a problem to lay at the feet of one person or a few hundred or even a thousand. It has been a disaster many, many years in the making.

Instead of “who,” I wish responsible bureaucrats/elected representatives would identify the main reasons for such a rapid spread (I mean, it is already known), and then what can be implemented to facilitate limiting the damage. I say this in part because if recent history has shown, in California, very few people (certainly not “we the people”) suffer any consequence of their misdeeds, so why waste energy on it. Also, because of the ever growing power of the government, we the people cannot go to improve the conditions/implement solutions to help with the situation; “we the people” would suffer the consequences, unfortunately.

I have just read one bunch of dumb remarks from how the Indians did it to the government is doing it on purpose. Probably the government doing it is the closest but not by controlling the weather but by not having the proper equipment to do the job. I give up, hire an Indian and clean the forest floor. I’m sure that will work.

“An investigation found the governor has misrepresented his accomplishments and even disinvested (stole money) in wildfire prevention.
The investigation found Newsom overstated (lied), by an astounding 690%, the number of acres treated with fuel breaks and prescribed burns in the very forestry projects he said needed to be prioritized to protect the state’s most vulnerable communities”

Recall this AH

https://tinyurl.com/yxvw7ksv

For a possible answer to this question, do a search for this……….
What was the cause of the ‘Dixie fire’ in N. Ca. ?

Fires are a natural occurrence, especially in a predominately arid climate such as California. Looking at the tree rings of the Giant Redwoods, you can see the fires that have happened over hundreds of years. That being said, I’m a former fire fighter with the Forest Service – spent 4 years on the Hot Shot crew out of eastern Oregon. For the past 30+ years the environmentalists have made it such that logging (not clear cutting, but selective logging) has been more or less banned in this state. This is poor management of our forests. When logging outfits sign contracts, they are required to perform more than just harvesting trees, part of their contract requires that they remove old debris (fuel) from the forest floors and create brush piles for prescribed burns later, they have to remove dead timber which also removes tinder dry fuels, and they cut in logging roads which act as natural fire breaks. We should allow grazing to resume on public lands to mitigate fast burning fuels (think dry grasses and brush). PG&E does have a responsibility to maintain their power lines, and they’ve been liable in the past (placing profits above safety, and the CPUC is culpable in that as well) for this. But it does boil down to proper forest management, which has been lacking for over 30+ years. California used to have 5 operating lumber mills in the state, now we don’t have any. As for climate change, yes there is climate change….we experience cycles of drought in California, and we are experiencing one right now. Couple the drought cycle with poor mismanagement of our forests and public lands, and we get what we are experiencing now.